Over 60 percent of the world’s most popular YouTube videos are blocked in Germany – South Sudan only manages to block about 15 percent.

GEMA, which represents recording artists as well as publishers, wants YouTube to pay a fee for each and every video viewed on the site that contains music of one of the artists represented by GEMA (which include every major label artist, as well as most indies). YouTube has rejected that approach, and instead wants to pay a percentage of the ad revenue it makes with those videos.

Negotiations have, well, broken down. Feelings have been hurt. Lawsuits have been filed.

“Dieses Video ist in Deutschland nicht verfügbar, weil es möglicherweise Musik enthält, für die die erforderlichen Musikrechte von der Gema nicht eingeräumt wurden.”