Copyrights Of Sony Music To Greek National Anthem SLAMMED By Gov't - Action Planned

 (Photo credit: Free Grunge Textures - www.freestock.ca)

A couple of days ago we featured a story on HellasFrappe that was too surreal to be true. Turns out that it is! In that article we discover that Sony Music is paid royalties every time the Greek national anthem is played online. The issue was finally tackled in Parliament by two deputies from the Independent Greeks party, Ioannis Dimaras and Terens Qouik, who repeated what we had first published earlier in the week: Whoever uses the national anthem online must pay royalties to a private company holding the copyright.

This angered Culture Minister Panos Panagiotopoulos who rightfully said that the national anthem has a symbolic character and cultural value to every Greek citizen, assuring that all necessary measures have been taken to fully protect this right. However he revealed that there is an attempt to make political use of the national anthem.

Knowing very well that not everything on this planet can be commercialized, he said that the issue is not simply a national creation, it is the soul of the entire nation. And he is right. Not everything is about money.

Panagiotopoulos underlined that the anthem symbolizes "our national identity" and that it does not belong to a company but "only to Greeks.”  He then reassured everyone that the government was going to take action immediately on the matter and that online platforms (such as YouTube) have already been notified and have recognized this right, and admitted their stupidity.

The Minister also pledged that by the end of the year an Organization of Copyrights Protection will be set up to make sure of that and that Ministry of Culture has also notified UNESCO of this issue.

The whole issue was revealed when the former workers of ERT uploaded a video to YouTube with the anthem blaring in the background (Click here to read story). They were shocked and dismayed to discover that the company management and music distribution IODA, now known as Orchard owns the copyright of Greece's National Anthem (lyrics Dionysios Solomos, music by Nikolaos Mantzaros) and therefore its use is prohibited without assigned copyrights!

The company was apparently founded in 2003 and has a global network of collective management and distribution of music and movies.

The former workers said that when the video was uploaded on Youtube, the video channel sent them a notice telling them that they should remove certain sections of the video because the audio accompanying the images was under copyright and if that was not feasible then YouTube would run advertisements at the beginning of the video in the framework of reimbursing the holder of the copyright the due amounts.

So who is behind this company? Apparently the company is active in about 27 countries and cooperates with the biggest online media content providers such as YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, etc. in, etc... and belongs largely to the Sony Music Entertainment (in other words... the Japanese own the copyright to the Greek national anthem).

We are glad that the government answered our questions, and are grateful to the two MPs from the Independent Greeks party for bringing this to the attention of Parliament, but we hope that it does not remain in black and white and that action is taken soon.