best year: 2004 [that was a tough choice]

best month: april [that was easy]

most overrated fad gadget: iPod [yet again and even iPod porn did not help!]

best food: roasted chicken flavored crips by zweifel [and vegetarian even]

best trend: blogging a novel [keep em coming]

best tactics to survive the us-election traumata: bittorrenting the daily show [humour might heal all wounds, eventually, at some point, maybe]

best new techy thingsie: CC for sampling license [finally but i am so not complaining]

saddest techy thingsie: apple [they have gone so microsoft]

biggest bummer: george duubeli bush [duubeli bleibt]

most hideous word: nipplegate [we demand more nipple and less gate(s)!]

nice try: microsoft trying to push into the blogging business [think different]

saddest revival: art getting censored [but hey, farting is still legal - in some places]

best and - okay okay - only selectah j mix: he said blah blah blah

best dj mix: sofabar by dj ramax

favorite new threads: spamshirt [it is it is]

favorite blogses: xradiograph [blog.art] raymi the minx [life is poetry] dailykos [daily political rants]

funniest swf: numanuma.swf [best not to drink a glass of milk while watching this] [via habi]

most naive swiss [ex]politicians: christoph blocher, for asking google to correct the “jaemmerlicher waschlappen” search results and ruth metzler, just because…

sure signs i must be getting hella old: not one but 2 of my favorite magazines died The Face and jockey slut R.I.P.

more R.I.P.: susan sontag. john peel. joe strummer. johnny ramone. marco pantani. & way too many in southasia, sudan and iraq. and worldwide daily from malnutrition.

who should not do lists like these: people like me who can only barely remember the last few months

that’ll do. i won’t do more.
as i was still trying to decide if i should do a propper end-of year-list or sumink obviously these | guys did the best possible job ever…
and gooogle was pretty damn close…

the great censorship contest:

contribution 1:

contribution 2:

contribution3:

contribution4:

contribution5:

want to contribute? grab the image quickly here, till tomorrow 9:59:59, or grab it totally casually here, “somebody” found it there already…

yesterday afternoon 29.12.2004 14:44 we received an email [in german, but you can see it here] asking us to take down an image from our server.
we were given until the 31.12.2004 10:00 to do so.

the image in question is a photo montage showing someone, who looks alot like the former swiss federal councillor ruth metzler, hanging out at a nudist beach.

the context: there are 7 federal councillors who make up the executive branch of the swiss government. in december 2003 ruth metzler, then federal councillor and head of the department of police and justice, was voted out of office. it was tragic, but only if looked at from a certain angle. frau metzler was/is an extremly right-wing, almost neocon, young, dynamic politician. so on that level, no harm done. however when she was forced to leave people were outraged. mostly because she was replaced with the most right-wing and xenophobic politician this country has ever seen, christoph blocher, and also because this meant that from then on only one woman was present in the federal council.

this photo montage is trying to make fun of this by showing metzler actually enjoying her early (if forced) retirement.

the image is part of a satirical, political calendar for the year 2004 in which we photoshopped swiss political personalities in absurd and surreal situations. this work was meant to be humerous, satirical, artistic, provocative, yes, guilty of all these things, but not hurtful. it was inspired by the english equivalent naked mp calendar 2004 done by sickboy (that i cant seem to find online at the moment).

it is our conviction that people with public mandates are public figures, and as such have to be willing and able to put up with satire. i guess it would take a certain sense of humour and grandeur to appreciate such a satirical depiction. but apparently frau metzler does not seem to possess these traits.

past cases have proven that it is quite ridiculous to ask people to remove content from the internet. in a case like this one, it might even get more people to see the image in question than was originally the case. this statement is in no way meant as a threat. just stating the obvious, something which frau metzler and her lawyer husband might not really have thought through properly.

after the recent scandal surrounding swiss artist hirschhorn i hasten to add: this project was NOT funded by any federal grant in any way.

what are we going to do about this? what are our options here?

A. leave the image up and risk a big mess with possibly a trial and a pricy bill to pay

ideally this is what we would like to do. however we would have to feel quite a huge community support to take this stance. an amount of support, that up untill now we have not felt. because after all, lets face it, we are one of the many blogs that have maybe 5 to 6 readers, and thats on a good day.
we neither have the money for a trial nor can we risk our server being shut down, because we are hosting all our other projects on the same server.

B. take the image down, and replace it with a provocative comment

we take the image down at exactly 9:59:59, the date of impending doom, and replace it with a provocative statement and links to “somebody” else, who is already hosting the image on their server as we speak
[and we have nothing to do with this…! we swear].
that might teach them a lesson about the medium in question, the internet, and about how difficult it is to take down content from the internet.
edit: yesterday we spoke to a swiss lawyer and he said at this point a case like this would not stand a chance in a swiss court. he recommended that we take the image down. although he then went on to say a few things that made us seriously question his objectivity that part of his assessment still seemed to hold up. he said we would face considerable charges and punishment for defamation of personality, if thats the correct juridical term (in german: persönlichkeitsverletzung).

C. take the image down, quiet as a lamb, and not rock the boat further

and what else? write an apologetic letter to ruth metzler?
uhm, thats not an option i am afraid…

so we might have to go with plan B. unless…

edit: we will have to go with plan B. as of today 31.12.2004 9:59:59 the image will no longer appear on http://www.web-laun.ch/laclassepolitique2004/july.html.
but oops, as “sombody” already pointed out in his comment here, the image has already been copied to another server, without our knowing…

are there any swiss lawyers out there that can help me?

———–

Sehr geehrter Herr [pieceoplastic]

Sie bilden auf Ihrer Website (http://www.web-laun.ch/laclassepolitique2004/july.html) eine Bildmontage von Ruth Metzler-Arnold ab.

Mit dieser Darstellung verletzen Sie die Persönlichkeit von Ruth Metzler-Arnold. Ich fordere Sie auf, diese Abbildung unverzüglich, spätestens aber bis zum 31. Dezember 2004, 10,00 Uhr aus dem Web zu entfernen.

Sollten Sie dieser Aufforderung nicht fristgerecht nachkommen, behält sich Ruth Metzler-Arnold vor, entsprechende rechtliche Schritte in die Wege zu leiten.

Freundliche Grüsse / Meilleures salutations / Distinti saluti / Kind
regards

Lukas Metzler
AMG Rechtsanwälte
Neumarkt 4
Kornhausstrasse 26
Postfach 12
CH-9001 St. Gallen

http://www.amglaw.ch
mailto:lukas.metzler@amglaw.ch

Telefon: +41 71 224 90 00
Direkt: +41 71 224 90 09
Fax: +41 71 224 90 05
Mobile: +41 79 601 31 31

———

today we received above email asking us to take down this satirical photomontage of ex-federal councillor ruth metzler. we have 2 days to do so, otherwise the lawyer, who we think happens to be ruth metzlers husband, reserves the right to take further steps.

what would you do???

edit:

i wrote to the EFF about this. lets see how and if they will respond… [cheerz the other michael]

and these would be the lawyers here in switzerland to contact if there were further problems.
edit: openlaw.ch
correction: i contacted openlaw and christian laux just called me.
what a huge whimp and really not the good lawyer for this. well actually they dont evnb take on cases like this. but he told me, to take the image down asap and he even went as far as questioning the validity of trying to push the envelope a little with this. and here’s the kicker, he told me: you wont do the creative commons movement any good with this…
dude, what happened to freedom of expression, artistic freedom and such principles that open source lawyers are supposed to defend?

indymedia houston thinks so and they is texans, they should know…

yesterday i went to visit my godson for a post-x-mas visit. his name is tarik, he is 10.

we share our love for computer games, so he was totally exited to show me his latest gaming conquests, ZELDA on gamecube and AGE OF MYTHOLOGY on pc-game. so there he was playing age of mythology, as me, but of course it was him doing all the clicking and dragging and house building and cow slaughtering and farming and most importantly battling enemies - like a maniac.
he would let me decide on the few choices given whenever we reached a new age, always suggesting what he would like me to choose with a ospiciously hovering mouse.

“i” played RA and later LOKI. tarik had of course previously grabbed (and memorised) all the necessary cheat codes on the internet. “O CANADA” gave him an incredibly powerful laser-spitting bear - “now i am already practically invincible”. “DIVINE INTERVENTION” gave him near endless supply of the tornados and earthquakes he could unleash on his enemies - “lets see what happens with these donkeys if i tornado them…”.

so there tarik was typing the cheat codes one-finger-eagle technique and frankly, that got a bit boring for me. so i taught him the *drumroll* joy of copy/paste. ctrl c/ctrl v.

needless to say he was teh psyched!!!
he had seen a friend of his doing this before, but had never found out how he did it. so from now on it was “DIVINE INTERVENTION” galore in serial ctrl v. and tornado after earthquake after attacking trees raged through enemy country. needless to say we finished LOKI in about 2 minutes time. “unfair, i wanted to show you all the sublime [his word!] powers you would get later on in the game”. the “unsublime” tornados had finished it all. bummer. but hey. i wanted to see ZELDA…

later, in the car as we went to buy him his soccer boots as a x-mas present, he told me: “i dont believe in all the jesus and god crap. me its the gods i believe in, like in age of mythology”.
i asked him which one was his favorite god. he said, “i like them all, because they are all different and all have different powers”.

then he told me, for the soccer eurocup this last summer he had been a supporter of greece… again because of the greek gods in his game.

so nobody tell me computer games don’t teach you for life!!!1

[via klav]

forget boxing day - eventho we ARE actually going to a boxing event here –> kursaal bern… - today is international pizza punk day.
pizza is so perfectly anti-festive. the perfect anti-dote after all those cookies and foundue chinoises…
plus: pizza actually works quite well with boxing and punks. we used to put slices of pizza on our faces to get the nice pimples look going. so there…

[stuff what got stuck in my brwoser tabs over this last week]

sick ass videos: poodles & casual suicidee [apparently this link no longer works] - wrong and VERY wrong [via klav]

forget the freeland hellraiser here’s the freelance hairdresser - silly mash-ups i especially like bring the bean bag [via rob’s]

passengers aren’t God - rapping flight attendant self-confidence booster [via sinosplice]

prae_etoy_LOOks_andSTYLEz - what the etoy boys looked like before they turned into clones of eachother in the mid-90’s

Konsumkritik - Antiamerikanismus - Europäischer Nationalismus - thought-provoking article re: european anti-americanism - in german [via bernergazette pjotr]

download: he said blah blah blah - a selectah j mix [90.65MB]
burn it: onto a CD [should fit on any regular 80 min. cd]
print: CD cover [499KB pdf]
claim: it was made by a starDJ from timbuktu

cover ready to download

this longer version contains a 13 minute bonus mix, but it therefore wont fit onto an audio CD.
only to be listened to on your mp3 players. [and no, you wont catch me saying the iWord… think again, buster]

to sum up:
mp3 player version: 92 minutes [92:35:380]. 84.77MB mp3 [128kbps]
audio CD version: 79 minutes [79:12:468]. 90.65MB mp3 [164kbps]
CD cover: 499KB pdf
complete tracklist and info: here

and be warned: it is shite! [as usual]