Bad behaviour

I have seen a lot of bad behaviour this week, and it's not been from our politicians. I was in Germany most of last week, working on a project in Erlangen, near to the Bavarian city of Nuremburg. While I was there I was taken by my hosts to sample the atmosphere (and the amber nectar) of the local Erlangen Beer Festival. It was quite a sight, with hundreds of metres of benches and trestle tables stretching out across a large hillside area, with live stages and all kinds of music from thrash metal to oompah bands, to satisfy the musical tastes of just about everyone. The beer flowed freely and was consumed from large steins. Most people enjoyed the event, but quite a few also overindulged to such an extent that they were eventually dancing on the tables in hordes. I guess that's what beer festivals are about. Before we knew it we were engulfed by the heaving mass and I managed to extricate myself. Now I know why it was called the Munich Putsch - people kept putsching and tschoving me, and schtepping on my feet. People began falling off the tables, and so did the steins, many breaking explosively beneath the stomping feet of the drunken ones. We got out of the way pretty quickly, and smiled at the antics, but I still managed to get stomped on a few times, and my jacket now smells strangely of a variety of Bavarian brews. I'm glad I didn't wear my new white Reeboks to the event - they would have been absolutely ruined. I know it can happen anywhere, not just in Germany, but it was kind of fun, end of story.

Er.... not quite. Yesterday, waiting for my train to Nuremburg, I encountered more drunken hordes at Erlangen Railway Station, all trying to get home after a full night out on the town. And this time it wasn't so funny. Some were so worse for wear they had to be helped along the platform. Others amused themselves by smashing full beer bottles, and the platform soon resembled a scene from the movie Die Hard. I can only guess they didn't think the beer was that good. The worst was to come though, when several drunken young guys turned on others in the throng and there ensued a thumping match and more breaking of glass. Several passengers, myself included, had to move sharply out of the way. The Station Master shouted across the he was raufing die Polizei, and they shouted back, please do, we'll fight them as well. Ach du lieber Gott. In the distance the sirens began to wail, and before long, half a dozen tooled up Polizei had descended to 'sort things out'. It was at that point my train arrived and I gratefully got the hell out of there.

The other bad behaviour of note this week was less violent, but is supposedly bad enough for Google to start shutting down blogs. BBC Click this week featured one notable incident where videoblogger had his account taken down because he had posted footage of the build up to the Jimmy Carr comedy show (audience arriving etc, but none of the actual show). The blog was spotted by the said comic's management team (who ironically seem to have no sense of humour) who then complained to Google. Google removed the entire account. The blogger then had to fight for several months to get his blog restored. Apparently he had fallen foul of Google's "3 strikes and your out" rule, having previously transgressed by inadvertently posting up copyrighted material on his YouTube account. The blogger makes the point that a) It's a draconian measure to take down an entire blog just for a few minor breaches, especially after he said he would delete the offending posts the moment he was informed he had potentially breached copyright, and b) Google doesn't really fully explain what is involved in this rule, so how can people comply if they don't know? I wonder what other bloggers out there think about this? Is the blogger just whinging, or had he got a point? Is the way Google manage this rule fair or are they being too heavy handed? And who is behaving badly here, the videoblogger.... or Google?

This work by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License