Week 43/2025

Put it by the door like a rose bouquet

Nikolaus Forgó

17 Oct 2025 — 8 min read

UNIVIE's Aula welcoming students (and staff).

NSFW

This week's song for the week is from an artist called Emily Blue.

YouTube has a studio

and a live version

The reason why this is this week's song isn't so much that I like it (although I appreciate it). It's more because Spotify brought a song of an artist called Enlly Blue into my playlist this week.

I liked that one too, a little, but due to my learnings from Let Babylon Burn (see Weekly 36/2025) and AI-generated music on Spotify in general I googled the artist "Enlly Blue" to learn more about her before dealing with her music in more detail. Google, though, interpreted this as a typo and brought me plenty of hits for Emily Blue - who is, indeed, a real person. It took me some time to identify the confusion and to learn - again - that Enlly Blue - different from Emily Blue - is totally AI generated.

Here's "her" YouTube Channel

I am wondering now whether the women dancing to her music in "her" Instagram channel are real or AI-generated as well.

Personal learning: Not only is Spotify flooded by AI-generated music, but also some of the "artists" have names that are to be confused with real people and it's geeting more and more difficult to tell who is really existing and what is sung by whom.

And the problem is spreading, as screenshots from my Spotify suggestions indicate:

Here's a somehow opposite story fitting to this: Zeit im Bild - Austria's best known and most prestigious news program, produced by the public broadcaster ORF - brought a reel on their Instagram channel showing the crash of a helicopter this week. You can however read in the comments how many people believe that the video is totally AI generated.

We're living in interesting times. Somebody (or something?) with a special kind of humor put the line "I am a storm you can't control" into the lyrics of "Keep on Boogiin'".

Retrospect

Ligue internationale du Droit de la Concurrence LIDC Congress 2025

The LIDC had its yearly congress in "Haus der Industrie" in Vienna, very diligently organised by Hannes Seidelberger and his team, and I had the privilege to deliver our international report together with Anna Tauber on Saturday morning. Anna did a terrific job - so convincingly that one of the attendees called her professor before asking a question.

I then listened to a panel on "2 years of Unitary Patent" with Klaus Grabinski, President of the Court of Appeal / Unified Patent Court (Luxemburg), the panel chair Michael Woller and Mary-Rose McGuire, Professor of Intellectual Property and Civil Procedure Law (University of Osnabruck, Germany).

Nice event, nice venue, the relevant reports are published online and will also be printed as a book at Springer.

AI and Human Rights

Prof. Dr. Iris Eisenberger and Prof. Dr. Reinhard Klaushofer edited a book on AI and Human Rights that was published with Manz recently.

Here's (most of) the table of content.

Slavery in Mesopotamia

The Vienna Legal History Society (WRG) organised a very interesting presentation, delivered by Prof. Dr. Michael Jursa, from UNIVIE's department in oriental studies, on more than 1.500 years of slavery in Mesopotamia.

I was, in particular, fascinated by the richness of color in which he lead us through the hstoric changes in slavery by interpreting (the remainings of) ancient court files and in the different methodological approaches to analyse them today.

By the way: The next WRG-event on November 11th, will certainly be very interesting as well: the speaker, Dr. Michael Kunze, is not only a legal historian and Jhering-expert, but also a very successful lyricist of oustandingly popular pop songs such as "Ein Bett im Kornfeld", "Ein ehrenwertes Haus" or "Griechischer Wein" (1975!)

Criminal Justice

The criminal justice section of the Austrian Judges Association held a three days seminar in Styria. Day 1 was (mainly) dedicated to AI in criminal justice and I had the pleasure to speak there -which allowed me to stay for the rest of the day as well.

I learned, in particular, a lot from Paul Marouschak, deputy head of Criminal Intelligence Service Austria on AI and police work and, at a very interesting fireside talk in the evening, from the heads of Graz' and Vienna's departments of forensic medicine, Prof. Dr. Sarah Heinze and Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Klupp.

The number of autopsies has fallen dramatically in the last 20 years, the profession is challenged by over-aging and a dramatic lack of young talent. The recent establishment of the Centres for Protection Against Violence (Gewaltschutzzentren) in Vienna and Graz was praised by everybody present (with up to 700 cases in Vienna only in the first year of establishment) while lack of competence of not-specialised doctors in matters of violent crime was criticised. A recent report from Austria's Court of Auditors (Rechnungshof) mentions some of these crirical points as well and was also discussed.

It was also a nice opportunity to meet Niki Popper again.

I was very impressed by the relaxed, friendly and dedicated athmosphere at this event, (mainly) organised my the (new) president of the regional court (Landesgeriicht) St. Pölten, Martina Spreitzer-Kropiunik. And I was also quite relieved that everything went (relatively) well with my presentation - despite the audience's level of expertise and professional background.

An early morning run brought me (coincidentally) to Kunstpark St. Ruprecht.

Prospect

European Forest Institut

On Monday, October 20th, at 14.00 im a giving a lecture at the European Forest Institute.

Free entry, online, registration required. Some more info also on Linkedin.

#arsboni

Two sessions are ahead of us.

On Monday, October 20, at 17.00 I will meet Peter Jeitschko online and talk about speech recognition, AI and legal work. Peter founded, inter alia, kanzleihelfer.ai and arztbrief.ai but also works on AI-driven recruitment processes (jethire.ai). We will speak about the potential of AI in supporting experts and about exsiting and upcoming legislation as a planning factor.

On Wednesday, October 22, I will chat with Katharina Bisset. Katharina is a very skilled and geeky lawyer, an ex student of mine and a perfect interview partner when it comes to digitalisation in the legal domain. Tis edition is also part of my winter term course on legal methodology and legal tech.

How much Security does our Freedom need?

That's a question asked (and hopefully answered) at the 23rd Security Conference at Danube University Krems on Wednesday, October 22. I'm on the afternoon panel and will meet, inter alia, the head of Austria's police intelligence services Omar Haijawi-Pirchner (who will resign soon and who is one of the country's most outspoken supporters of messaging surveillance) there.

The conference has two interesting keynotes as well:

Here's the full programme, registration still possible, (presumably) no stream (but possibly videos after the event available, see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKriW4B0pQ for last year's contributions).

Look and Feel

YouTube, Copyright and E-Bace

I don't have the slightest clue on how to play bace. This is probably why YouTube constantly sends me recommendations of people knowing how to master this instrument. One of these recommendations is on a quite funny Italian guy ("Davie504") with an impressive amount of subscribers who recently made a not so funny yet very interesting video on a "copyright strike" he received for playing Beethoven's moonlight sonata on an e-bace.

Here's the corpus delicti (I like the humor and - as far as I can tell - he plays the bace really well):

As this is YouTube, there's already a lawyer's reaction video out on this (no surprises there, though).

While YouTube wants to help me to find my musical talents, Meta is - for whatever reason - currently of the opinion that I might be interested in shamanism, esoterics, homeopathy and similar nonsense: Facebook and Instagram flood me with advertisements for courses, seminars and events on matters like "soul-healing", "rebirth" or "human energetics".

I don't put any links here, also for not leading you into the same trap, but I am quite fascinated (and concerned) about the depth and size of this rabbithole. And, being a lawyer, I ask myself how such very expensive nonsense can be legally offered in Austria - which is why I am constantly triggered to click on the most absurd of these links - which then brings even more of this heavily commercialised and cynical stupidity into my timeline.

I'm not sure yet whether I will find an exit, but let me share the possibly most beautiful version of the sonata with you, for the meantime.