copyright parties

The last blog post received quite some comments which I would like to answer. So reader Jared Khithim asked about the use of my proposals for a pre-preprint achive:

..this seems to be a quite clear violation of your copyrights! Are you going to sue Holtzbrinck?

Reader M. Boulangel saw this similarily and wondered wether I wouldn’t like to set up my own preprint archive and last but not least reader Mandy asked about the CC-10 birthday party:

…is boring talks the new berlin party scoop?

So regarding the copyright issue: No – I don’t want to sue Holtzbrinck. In fact it’s not only that I find my suggestions not overly original and rather intuitive but also that I think that it’s good that at least some people care about the issue. Moreover I don’t want to set up a preprint archive – I actually had already set up** and maintained a preprint archive for almost ten years at the former sfb288 which starts with lecture notes* by Ludvig Faddeev from autumn 1991.

I could also imagine that eventually some kind of pre-preprint archive may exist already at some institution, as there are meanwhile many institutional repositories. Or there may be related projects. Like for the Mimirix project we used trac for (amongst others) reading the students works and who knows wether there aren’t universities who already set up their own online dissertation pre-print archive. I still think it would be good to have something like this with a long term support offered by a global public institution like the arxiv.org. A company like Holtzbrinck has to keep its own business interest in focus and this may unfortunately turn out to be eventually at some point against the original idea of science.

Concluding – I eventually would use my “copyrights” passively, that is in case someone would e.g. try to forbid the arxiv.org to set up such a thing, because of copyright issues (there are still software patents in the US) then I could eventually try to help the arxiv with my timestamped proposals, which are distributed over the internet. But I don’t think that this is going to happen.

*the preprints have no licence, since back then a kind of creative commons share-a-like licence was sort of self-understood for preprints, I actually don’t know how the arxiv handles these new laws.
**with technical help from colleagues

Regarding the party… the party of course started after the talks, images after the click.



The party took place in the lobby of the Haus Ungarn (the former .CHB), which hosts also the Goldneun restaurant and bar.


In the foreground the www.netzpolitik.org in-crowd with Markus Beckedahl and Henrik Moltke, the latter used to be the danish project lead of creative commons and was involved in the project freebeer.


Apart from the Goldneun cocktail bar there was also a beerbar, called “made in Berlin”.


The cocktail bar was nicely decorated with flowers.


The Berlin fernsehturm with the “Park Inn” Hotel formerly known as “Hotel Stadt Berlin” which is probably the most famous interhotel.


Unfortunately it was tooo dark to make many pictures of the cool interior of the location. In the foto, behind the staircase, you see a bit of an interactive mirror. If you come close to the light speckled wall in the background then your image is scanned and gets “reflected” as little dots.


The location is partially encircled by a big glass front with currently moisty windows due to the frost.


The location has also a little terrace, in the background a Ferris wheel.


Next to the Ferris wheel is the Marienkirche, presumably Berlins second oldest church, here behind the turntables.


The DJ’s behind the turntables played cool Creative Commons licenced music from Kraftfuttermischwerk and Peter Withoutfield (Blogrebellen). There was though not much dancing – at least while I was there it seemed people wanted mostly to talk.


The CC tart was cut.


The mirror columns of the location were a hiding place for those who had to work.


Like a business’ death angel – a sculpture is standing in front of cigarette vendor machines.


And as one can see at the ash tray unfortunately the cigarette business florished.

3 Responses to “copyright parties”

  1. eduardtellerwäscher Says:

    If you are in for historical Berlin then Hackendahl is your place!

    berlin beds and breakfast tourism youth hostel appartments restaurants life dancing diestille disko dinner eating out

  2. about in-crowd's Says:

    …is boring talks the new berlin party scoop?

    For those who speak german, I recommend this comment of a person from the city of Cologne about Berlin’s in-crowd blasé attitude:

    https://www.spreeblick.com/blog/2010/03/08/der-berliner-szenemensch/#comment-1762963

    Berlin leidet unter einer verlogenen Selbstüberschätzung. Es ist eine aus Dörfern zusammengesetzte Stadt. Es fehlt das Metropolitane. Jeder bleibt in seinem Kiez. Deshalb fühlt sich der Provinzler ja dort so wohl. Das der Wedding zum Szeneviertel geworden ist finde ich amüsant.

  3. nad Says:

    I’ll translate about-in-crowd’s citation, in order to make the whole comment better understandable:

    Berlin leidet unter einer verlogenen Selbstüberschätzung. Es ist eine aus Dörfern zusammengesetzte Stadt. Es fehlt das Metropolitane. Jeder bleibt in seinem Kiez. Deshalb fühlt sich der Provinzler ja dort so wohl. Das der Wedding zum Szeneviertel geworden ist finde ich amüsant.

    translation without guarantee:

    Berlin suffers under a lying overconfidence. It is a city, which had been composed by piecing together villages. What’s missing is a metropolitan character. Everyone stays in one’s own Kiez. That’s why the provincial feels so happy there. I find the fact that Wedding had been now declared to be a Szeneviertel,** amusing.

    ** a “Szeneviertel” is something like a “trendy district.”

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