Newsletter

Week 45/2024

Until the monster comes out

Nikolaus Forgó

31 Oct 2024 — 8 min read

Sunday morning walk with some friends of the department - and Daisy. © Anna Tauber

NSFW

This week’s song is from an Austrian singer/songwriter I admire. It’s literally NSFW, but it fits into the season - somehow.

YouTube:

Her new album will be released early November and can be preordered.

Robert Rotifer presumably wrote about Kovacs “If you thought there was just no more space left in your life for singer-songwriters with acoustic guitars, you might be making a terrible mistake.Have a listen to Mira Lu Kovacs before you die. This woman knows how touse both herwide-ranging, changeable voice and her stunning classicalguitar technique to quietly spectacular effect.” (Rotifer, btw, is also a person making the world a better place - Notice to self: Do a little more research on what he is currently doing, things like Heartbeat!)

I saw her first in 2018 when she performed (together with EsRAP) the (in my view) best version ever sung of “Die Arbeiter von Wien” at the opening of “Wiener Festwochen” .

When doing some research on this, I also learned that there is a Japanes version of the song available, provided by the “Japanese Communist Party”.

Their website is a direct ticket back into the 90ies, design-, but also contentwise.

À propos NSFW: Watching the video’s automatically generated subtitles while listening on YouTube produces a funny Schrödinger-like phenomenon and allegory on the stupidity of AI.

“Fuck” is constantly and simulatously here and not here: You hear it quite clearly (and a hundred times), but can’t see it.

Isn’t the internet just beautiful? :-)

Retrospect

Geek stuff

Poor Walter Strobl, whom I had interviewed in the laundry, was so kind to come back and do the same thing once again because my Rode Rodecaster Pro had failed to properly record the first session. The original outcome sounded like this example from a fellow podcaster presumably having the same issue:

The incident shows several aspects on how streched to the limit many of our social and legal concepts in private law are: Time is the most scarce resource for almost everybody in this game and social capital and good will are the currencies we primarily pay with. Needing to ask a guest (doing this pro bono) to return and to do the very same interview once again is a price nobody can afford on the long run. However, the Rodecaster Pro (“Pro” as if it were for professionals …) has had - as I had to learn - this issue for several years now - without any visible reaction from the manufacturer.

So, what can/should I do now and how does the law help customers like me here?

Costs so far: 2 hours or more frustrated for Walter Strobl, 10 hours or more for me uselessly trying to recover some audio and reading countles Reddit and other entries in attempting to find the source of the problem; more importantly: lots of good will needed here that encumber my reputation.

More importantly, I lost trust in the whole setup (worth, I don’t know, 1.500 € perhaps, mics included) as I can’t identify the reason of the error and can’t afford such errors. The consequence of this is that I bought a new SD-card (although it’s almost certain to me that the card is not the source of the problem) (50 €) and a second, independent audio system (Rode Wireless Pro, 350 € ) that I will use as a (second) backup from now on. My guests will therefore speak into not just one, but two microphones - which makes the whole setup, of course, again, more prone to (human) errors.

And for the manufacturer it’s, most likely, still the most rational decision to continue to simply ignore complaints, apart from

Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again GIFs | Tenor

Is this fair?

BTW: Does anyone know a proper alternative to the Rodecatser Pro? I am considering to switch to a better system as quickly as possible (and affordable).

(PS.: I know that this is a first world problem, yes, but also no: It’s about market power in content creation.)

#arsboni

Thanks to Walter Strobl’s flexibility, the video was recorded for a second time and is online. I was never befor as happy as here about the sound in the laundry :-).

It’s about the lack of independence of Austria’s public broadcaster and about a recent, not helpful, yet difficult to interpret, decision of the Constitutional Court on the matter.

A current CJEU preliminary ruling on seizure ob a mobile phone was discussed with the attorney representing the accused on Wednesday.

This is a really funny episode, I laughed a lot. The story is somehow a caricature of police behavior in Western Austrian rural areas. And it’s about a single judge in a very minor case asking the CJEU and developing significant European wide impact and visibility by doing so.

I also did a very teaching related episode: Hande, Lukas and me discussed the art law clinic on Thursday. This is a very innovative teaching format that deserves more attention.

And last, not least, I had the pleasure to have the criminal defence lawyer of one of the men accused of having planned a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert earlier this year in the laudry, Werner Tomanek.

The video is not set on public yet ( I will do this either on Friday or early next week), but you can watch it already here:

(Should I provide such “goodies” more frequently? Would you appreciate this?)

The video starts with a rather clear statement on my mood. It shows - again - a reality picture of police work that is very different from how it should be according to the law. Tomanek clearly states that standard 1 to 1 communication via apps such as WhatsApp can be intercepted on a routinely basis - which is very different from what one normally hears.

Those also interested in the technicalities of the laundry might notice that the position of the mics has changed:

From here

to here

The main reason is that I want to make the mics less prominent in frame, but I am still experimenting with this as the new position might hinder spontaneous arm movements while talking.

I would really appreciate feedback which option is better - soundwise and visually - or whther there’s another way to optimise this.

Birthday Party

We had a wonderful 25 years birthday party of our LLM.-Programme on Tuesday. I really enjoyed the event wiht lots of old and new friends, lots of kind words and excellent presentations from Prof. Dr. Dietmar Jahnel and Prof. Dr. Andreas Walter. Walter gave a - just brilliant - overview on the Metall auf Metall case that has kept German and European Courts busy for more than 25 years - and is far from being over yet.

Arte has a short introduction on what the case is about with the 3 seconds sound track all the dispute is about in it

and Wikipedia has a chronology of the legal case. LTO reports on the most current question, currently pending at the CJEU on what “pastiche” might mean.

Some friends and colleagues wrote about the event on Linkedin, for example here, here and here, having pictures similar to this one showing Andreas Walter:

I got an original copy of “Die Presse” from May 3rd 1999 as a present because there’s an article on us in this edition.

I owe Dr. Markus Holzweber so much: for 20 years of hard work in the programme and for organising this event - again - so thoughtfully. It’s such a huge privilege to work with him.

Prospect

Gigs

There are three shows taking place next week I am proud to be a part of:

AI in Cancer

On Monday, the CD Lab Machine Learning Driven Precision Imaging, Saskia, Michael and me are part of, organises a half day symposion on "AI in Cancer Imaging”. One of the law related inputs is a presentation on “Health data spaces - what if the GDPR is not the issue?” by Prof. Griet Verhenneman.

The entry is free, registration is requested, no stream (as far as I can tell).

What is Journalism?

Presseclub Concordia tries to answer this question in a symposion on Thursday.

I am one of the speakers, together with Martin Kotynek, Hans Peter Lehofer, Klaus Meier, Edith Meinhart, Paul Pichler, Walter Strobl, Katharina Zwins.

Free entry, registration required, no stream (as far as I can tell).

Smart Regulation Symposium 2024

Friday will bring me to Graz for a conference on smart regulation

I chose a very “simple” topic which is: “Can academic legal expertise contribute to the success of European research network projects and what does this mean for (basic) legal research? An interim assessment after 50 projects.”

Free entry, registration requested, no stream (as far as I can tell).

#arsboni

I will interview Christina Helf on Wednesday, November 6th at 11.00 am. She is responsible for an interesting legal tech project

trying to make parliamentary work more accessible and findable.

Look and Feel

Weissensee

is not only the name of a beautiful lake in Austria but also the title of a very remarkable TV-series on Netflix.

It’s about life in GDR in the 80ies before and after “Die Wende” of 1989/1990.

I am currently somewhere in season 2 (taking place in the late 80ies) and like it a lot. The series is not as dense as “Das Leben der Anderen” - what a masterpiece this was! - but still colorates the feeling of pursuit, tightness, despair, hope and stuffiness that might have been “reality” then and is worth being watched, in my view.