The UCD DJ collective and Commerce and Economics society have been forced to change the name of a “Berghain” night in Dublin’s Grand Social Club following a threat of legal action from the official Berghain group.
The original posters depicted a black and white image of the facade of the prominent German nightclub with its name embossed in bold at the top of the picture.
FourFour magazine revealed that the societies had been contacted by the Berghain group and asked to remove all copyrighted images. The DJ Collective was contacted via an Instagram-directed message and specifically asked to “remove the copyrighted name Berghain, Berghain logo, photographs of the facade and interior of Berghain”. The society was asked to ensure that the above were removed from all publications.
The Berghain team provided January 11th at 4 pm as a deadline for this action. Berghain officials warned the society that if they did not adhere to this request then they would “take legal action”.
Both the UCD DJ Collective and the C&E Society’s original Instagram posts were removed and replaced with a new poster advertising the event as “Berlin Night”. This was done on the 11th of January at roughly 2:30 pm.
In the new post, the Berghain facade and logo are also absent and replaced with new images. In the caption, both societies revealed that “Berghain actually texted us to change the name of the event”.
Shortly after this, the DJ Collective posted three Instagram stories addressing the controversy. In the first, they highlighted that the event “is going ahead under a new alias”.
The second included a screenshot of the message from Berghain but its contents had been blocked by an image of a song that played over the story in an effort to make light of the situation.
The final post was in a more serious tone as the DJ Collective addressed its love for Berghain and everything it’s given “to club culture, dance music and the community”.
The College Tribune has contacted both UCD DJ Collective and Berghain for a comment about this issue but is yet to receive a response.
Ellen Clusker – News Editor
