Week 41/2025

Du gibst nicht auf

Nikolaus Forgó

03 Oct 2025 — 6 min read

Waiting for Die Strottern and Blech in Kronen Kino Mistelbach.

NSFW

This week's song is from "Stimmgewitter Augustin". They're collaborating with Die Strottern here and it's the perfect song for the season - and for many other seasons as well.

Augustin celebrates it's 30th birthday in 2025 which is why an exhibition in Wien Museum is dedicated to the journal. And here's a text and an OE1 feature about the choir and the publication.

If you're not on Spotify, here's another option to listen to the song that I didn't find on YouTube:

Retrospect

The Future Foundation

A new initiative, The Future Foundation, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Sarah Spiekermann, and its members presented themselves and their 10 rules

at an event in Vienna's Museumsquartier. The venue, Libelle, was spectacular.

Here's the list of founders (that includes quite some people with legal background such as Prof. Dr. Christiane Wendehorst or Paul Nemitz). Kathpress, profil and others write about them.

#arsboni

I can report on two very nice sessions, one remote, one on site in the #laundry.

The head of ETH's library services, Dr. Raffael Ball, spoke with me about the impact of AI on contemprorary research.

It's again an example for a conversation in which I show to be (overly?) pessimistic and negative, putting my conversation partner into the dificcult situation to defend things as they are.

Prof. Dr. Burkhard Hess joined me in the laundry and we had a very nice, yet either not too optimistic, conversation about the alternative dispute resolution rules (articles 20, 21, in particular) in the digital services act.

Hess highlighted, inter alia, the different rules of procedure at ADR-institutions such as User Rights and Appeals Centre Europe. The enforcement scenario of the DSA looks very much like GDPR 2.0 to me wheni it comes to consistency of interpretation of the law.

Winter Term

Students are back at Universities. We had a very nice welcome session with our first year law students on Tuesday evening.

Dean of studies Christian Koller and Dean Britta Zoechling-Jud in Juridicum's largest auditorium, U 10

Prospect

Winter Term

The winter term at UNIVIE is starting, as mentioned. Here's the best motto I found to share with fresh law school students.

"Success is Resilience".

International League of Competition Law (LIDC)

The International League of Competition Law (LIDC) is holding its yearly conference in Vienna next week.

Together with Anna Tauber I have the honour to be the international reporter for for Question B

"What responsibility or obligations should online platforms have when it comes to eliminating infringements by their users, especially in the areas of IP and unfair competition?"

Anna did a lot of tremendous work on this. We are going to present our results, that are based on many national reports,

on Saturday morning.

Here's the programme, registration still possible (but expensive), no stream.

Before that I will be in Brussels all week for project proposal reviews which is the reason why I am not planning any ars boni or similar sessions next week.

Look and Feel

Die Strottern und Blech

I attented a very nice concert in Kronen Kino Mistelbach. Klemens Lechner called the hall the nicest venue they had played in in the whole year - and I assume he was right. I learned several lessons.

First, there was enough time and room to admire how well "Blech" - Martin Eberle and Martin Ptak - contribute to the performance.

Second, they played a rather melancholic and experimental list of songs, including one of Kurt Sowinetz from 1974 or so, on depression (I bin allaa). I am old enough to remember Sowinetz' songs (Alle Menschen san ma zwida!) and albums and how full of taboo mental illness was back then.

They played, of course, as an encore this most beautiful love song ever written

and U1

and sound more experimental and electronic now, as one can hear quite nicely here

but also in 2011 (BEAUTIFUL!!)

When trying to find the Sowinetz-song on Spotify (I bin allaa, again),

this week's NSFW and "Stimmgewitter Augustin" came to my attention and many more songs I will refer to in the next editions of this newsletter. Let me mention just one:

This is a nice interpretation of "Geh in Oasch" ("Kiss my ass")

that is a nice addition to the version of Norbert Schneider

and Georg Danzer's 47 years old original

Excuse my French.

The Future of Universities

Nature has a quite interesting special on how higher education changes.

I learned, inter alia, that the world’s oldest university still in operation is the University of Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, established 869.

Hateland - Deep State - Gruppe Reuß

ARD has a podcast on the high treason group "Gruppe Reuß".

It's interesting for several reasons. First, because it's another example how a "typical" podcast made by a public broacaster sounds nowadays: Personal touch of a reporter telling the whole story from his own personal perspective, lots of sound effects that are constantly repeated, cliffhangers etc. Second, because the story per se is so absurd and crazy. Third, because this conspiracy is so closely connected with other - often Covid-related - disruptions in our society that start with a mixture of paranoia, science scepticism, esoteric ideas, right wing activism etc. and sometimes end in the planning of an armed coup d'etat. Fourth, because several of the accused have a legal background, including the cell's alleged "secretary of state" who is a former lawyer (and former student of mine) from Hannover. Here's an LTO-story and the Federal Supreme Court's decision on the prolongation of his pre-trial detention.

Fifth, because it's thrilling to read how a whole legal career can end in such a technocratically written (probably correct - who am I to judge) verdict ("Nach Würdigung der Umstände des Einzelfalls ist es wahrscheinlicher, dass sich der Beschuldigte - sollte er auf freien Fuß gelangen - dem Strafverfahren entziehen, als dass er sich ihm zur Verfügung halten werde. Er hat im Falle seiner Verurteilung angesichts der Schwere des Tatvorwurfs und des Gewichts seiner mutmaßlichen Tatbeiträge selbst unter Berücksichtigung seiner bisherigen Straflosigkeit und seiner erhöhten Haftempfindlichkeit mit einer erheblichen Freiheitsstrafe zu rechnen. Dem hieraus resultierenden großen Fluchtanreiz stehen keine hinreichenden fluchthindernden Umstände entgegen. Seine berufliche Tätigkeit in einem IT-Unternehmen und als Rechtsanwalt wird er nach Bekanntwerden der gegen ihn erhobenen Vorwürfe kaum mehr fortsetzen können.").

Junior Professorship

Lukas Faymann recommended an interesting episode in the Podcast "Paragrafinnen". It's an interview with Professor Dr. Paulina Jo Pesch on academic career paths in Germany in IP/IT-law.