Dear all,
some of you may already know about the issue, some of you may not. Textz.com -- which, juridically, boils down to me -- is currently having a problem with two essays by Theodor W. Adorno. Their copyright holder -- a Hamburg foundation run by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, well-known theory collector and wealthy philanthropist who owns a big slice of Adorno and Benjamin -- has obtained a warrant of arrest against me, claiming textz.com has trespassed on their "intellectual property". The case has already stirred a bizarre controversy in German mainstream press, but I think that the issue deserves some more attention beyond just that.
Attached is an open letter sent to the Hamburg foundation, as well as the press release textz.com has issued last week. The latter includes both a how-to that lists a few ways to support textz.com and a collection of links that point to some more background information, correspondence, press coverage, and the like. Most of it is archived at http://textz.com/adorno -- and since at least some of it is even quite funny, I hope that I'm not completely wasting your time.
Best regards, Sebastian Luetgert textz.com Berlin, Germany
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Free Adorno, Free Benjamin
An Open Letter to Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Regarding His "Intellectual Property"
Jan Philipp Reemtsma Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture Mittelweg 36 20148 Hamburg/Germany
Dear Jan Philipp Reemtsma,
you are a man of immense wealth - a wealth that is not limited to the material world, but stretches far into the realm of the intellectual. You have founded and are continuously funding a number of institutions and archives that claim to serve the public by advancing both scientific research and cultural expression. Today, we have to notify you that, just as your material riches are about to increase by another few thousand Euros, you have irrevocably lost the rights to some of your most precious pieces of "intellectual property".
As you, as its president, must be aware of, the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture has sued - and obtained a preliminary injunction against - the owner of textz.com, who, according to your lawyers, Senfft, Kersten, Voss-Andreae and Schwenn, has caused your foundation damages of more than 2,300 Euros by making available for download two essays by Theodor W. Adorno. Even though textz.com, by never paying or even acknowledging these fictitious damages, has given you sufficient time to realize your mistake, you have filed for and obtained a warrant of arrest against the - still undefended - defendant.
Jail time for copying Adorno: that's where you have crossed the line that separates ordinary copyright cases from extraordinary tales of copyright madness - despite, and maybe just because, the formal correctness of your procedure. As an "intellectual proprietor" of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, you should be aware of the power that still emanates from their works: a negative, dialectical, weak and historical power that stretches far beyond the reach of any court of law, and that it impossible to contain in any of your archives. "Intellectually", Adorno and Benjamin will always escape the idea of becoming commodities, and their works, even as the private property they have become, have a peculiar tendency to vanish the very moment you try to get hold of them.
The question of "intellectual property" is not if the producers of creative works should be denied their right to material reproduction through their creative work, or if the temporary owners of such works should be hung by the guts of their lawyers. The question of "intellectual property" is when it will finally be acknowledged that the people have a universal right to the reappropriation of the means of production, that creative works - however privatized and commodified they may have become - are a such means of production, and that their reproduction ist a fundamental and fully legitimate form of production itself.
Even confronted with today's draconic laws against digital reproduction - the state of permanent emergency and institutionalized panic that is the "war against piracy" - people have never ceased to copy, paste, modify, save, upload, download, print and share digital data. In the case of "intellectual property", the power of the factual exceeds by far the power of the law. The people are perfectly aware of the historical fact that no law is ever just given. Law is created though factual struggle, and it erodes through factual struggle. Thus, the critique of "intellectual property" cannot remain individual, sporadic, and theoretical - it has to become swarming, massively parallel, and practical.
We are glad to announce that, effective today, every single work by Adorno and Benjamin that you claim as your "intellectual property" has become part of the very public domain that had granted you these copyrights in the first place. Of course they will not be available instantly, and of course we will not publish them ourselves - but you can take our word that they will be out, in countless locations and formats, and that not even a legion of lawyers will manage to get them back. Maybe it helps if you think of your "intellectual property" as a genie, and of your foundation as a bottling business.
We like non-fiction, and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious "intellectual property" laws that serve fictitious copyright holders. We live in a time where we have fictitious private institutions that are going to war against piracy for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of rights management or the fiction of intellectual theft - we are against this war, Mr. Reemtsma. Shame on you, Mr. Reemtsma, shame on you. And any time you got the Arts and the Sciences against you, your time is up.
Thank you very much,
The Berlin Foundation for the Advancement of Production and Reproduction
a.k.a. A.S.Ambulanzen Berlin/Germany February 24, 2004
P.S.: We know that German Neo-Fascists have attacked you numerous times for the exhibition on the crimes of the German Wehrmacht, curated by your Hamburg Institute for Social Research, and that they continue to defame you as the "heir of a tobacco company", which not only, and in the first place, perfectly fits an anti-semitic cliché, but also resonates, in many of these defamations, with hints to your "personal responsability for the death of millions of smokers". Please be assured that - even though we don't share your opinion that said exhibition was a "success", and even though tobacco may be just another commodity that kills - we, as a group of smokers who know the Germans and their history, are on your side, no matter what, in defense of society against Fascism. If you side with us in defense of wealth against scarcity is an entirely different question - but we bet that one day you will.
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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. We're just at the beginning.
Textz.com February 24, 2004
http://textz.com mailto:textz at textz.org
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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.)
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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.de.txt http://textz.com/adorno/press.en-babelfish.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
