[Reader-list] FW: [boell] [lab] copy adorno, go to jail? textz.com doesn't think so (fwd)

[Britta Ohm]

Quite a peculiar case from the site of Germany where an institutionally
supported and orderly preserved body of copy- and property-rights is just
beginning to crumble - in this sense one could really say that Germany is
only at the very beginning of 'becoming global' (imagine all those
property-holders of all the masses of pirated and copied music, films,
texts, symbols etc. that circulate Asia alone would engage in court cases!).
Cheers - Britta

Von: Seda Guerses <guerses at informatik.hu-berlin.de>
An: boell at yahoogroups.de
Betreff: [boell] [lab] copy adorno, go to jail? textz.com doesn't think so
(fwd)
Datum: Die, 24. Feb 2004 17:42 Uhr



Subject: [lab] copy adorno, go to jail? textz.com doesn't think so

Copy Adorno, Go To Jail? Textz.com Doesn't Think So

The Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture, presided
by
Jan Philipp Reemtsma, has just advanced science and culture to a whole new
level: Sebastian Luetgert, the founder of textz.com, is facing a warrant of
arrest and may go to jail if he fails to pay more than 2,300 euros in
damages
for the alleged copying of two essays by Theodor W. Adorno that the
foundation
claims as their "intellectual property". Reemtsma was kindly asked to
settle,
but refused.

The case dates back to August 2002, when the foundation filed for a
preliminary
injunction against Luetgert at the Hamburg State Court, referring to the
alleged
distibution of two works by Theodor W. Adorno, "Jargon der Eigentlichkeit"
and
"Fascism and Anti-Semitic Propaganda". Since not a single e-mail was sent to
notify textz.com of the matter, and since written notification failed to
reach
the defendant, textz.com only learned about the issue after a few days. The
works in question were immediately removed from the site to avoid any
further
legal hassles.

In December 2003, Luetgert found himself confronted with a warrant of
arrest,
obtained against him by the Hamburg Foundation, citing unpaid claims related
to
the unauthorized copying of said works. In January 2004, Luetgert addressed
the
issue in a letter to Reemtsma and asked for a scholarship so he could pay
this
debt and avoid jail time. Reemtsma did not reply, but handed the letter over
to
his foundation's lawyers - Senfft, Kersten, Voss-Andreae & Schwenn - who
insist
on the payment of 2,331.32 Euros for alleged damages and legal fees.

Textz.com believes that an "intellectual proprietor" of Theodor W. Adorno
and
Walter Benjamin who claims to advance science and culture by sending people
to
jail for taking Adorno and Benjamin serious is seriously wrong on a whole
number
of points. The Hamburg Foundation undererstimates the resistance of their
possessions against their legal protection just as much as their lawyers
underestimate the ability of the Internet to route around damage. In the
end,
they may even be wrong in thinking that they will ever get their property
back.

Today, in an open letter (http://textz.com/adorno/open_letter.txt), Reemtsma
has
been notified that his foundation's "intellectual property" has been
returned to
the public domain. This first-of-its-kind protest signals a refusal to let
copyright holders and lawyers censor the very works they pretend to protect
and
control what the public can archive or read. There is a universal right to
copy
that will never cease to apply, and there is copyright legislation that
will.
The spectre haunting the scientific and cultural industries is a new commons
materializing before their very own eyes. We're just at the beginning.

Textz.com
February 24, 2004

http://textz.com
mailto:textz at textz.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

How you can support textz.com:

- Spread the word. Tell your friends, tell a journalist, write about it, put
it
   on a website, post it to a mailing list, etc. Textz.com is also available
for
   interviews, just mail to press at textz.org.

- Sign our petition at http://textz.com/adorno/petition.html.

- Write a letter to Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Hamburg Foundation for the
Advancement
   of Science and Culture, Mittelweg 36, 20148 Hamburg, Germany. If you
like,
   send a copy of your letter to textz at textz.org.

- Donate to textz.com via http://textz.com/adorno/donate.html.

- Buy a copy of Robert Luxemburg's "The Conceptual Crisis of Private
Property as
   a Crisis in Practice" (http://textz.com/crisis). All proceedings will go
to
   textz.com's fund for legal expenses.

- Put our "Free Adorno" banner (http://textz.com/adorno/banner.gif) on your
   website, and/or link to http://textz.com/adorno.

- Meet textz.com at Neuro Festival, February 26-29, Munich, Germany (check
   http://neuro.kein.org for details) and join our discussion about further
   strategies in this case.

- Select all, copy, paste, save, upload, share. Reappropriate. (And
remember:
   there is no need to break what you can circumvent. Don't innovate,
imitate.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Related links:

Documentation of our correnspondence:
http://textz.com/adorno/documentation.de.txt
http://textz.com/adorno/documentation.en-babelfish.txt

Press coverage:
http://textz.com/adorno/press.txt

Open Letter to Jan Philipp Reemtsma:
http://textz.com/adorno/open_letter.txt

The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction:
http://textz.com/adorno/work_of_art.txt

Franz Kafka on "intellectual property":
http://textz.com/kafka

Textz.com mission statement, early 2001:
http://textz.com/concept

What others say about textz.com:
http://textz.com/press

The textz that textz.com is all about:
http://textz.com/cache
http://textz.com/textz

Some state-of-the-art copyright circumvention technologies:
http://textz.com/trash
http://textz.com/crisis

Some more stuff we have not yet been sued for:
http://textz.com/search
http://textz.com/news

Drop us a line, send us a text, or subscribe to our newsletter:
http://textz.com/contact

Finally, while freeing Adorno, please free the Grey Album too:
http://textz.com/greyalbum/greyalbum.html

_________________________________________________________________
[lab]                i n t e r n a                <lab at b.lab.net>
un/subscribe https://b.lab.net/mailman/listinfo/lab




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