Please point me to those articles.
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Already did. Not going to repeat anymore.
I’m done here. No point. Haters gonna hate anyway. No matter what.
Got better things to do in life. Should have known better and stayed out of this thread. /shrug
Peace out!
For whatever reason, I cannot shake the feeling that Behringer is making fun of us. The videos they release, the photos on their webpages for each synth… I know you can call it a bad sense of humor, and it might be. But it ‘feels’ like there is some mockery going on. It’s probably the reason I’ve been one click away from several Behringer synths and always go another direction last second. Something about them just rubs me the wrong way.
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Alternatively it was made directly with Uli over the shoulder of the designer, amused by his own joke and micro-managing but with no sanity-check.
This is total conjecture of course, but neither likely scenario paint a pretty picture.
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If their glassdoor is anything to go by thats pretty much how it mustve went down.
That’s what press releases / statements are for. The boss making a dank meme is going to fail.
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Noticing behringer is trademarking existing products from other companies is news and not “sensationalist clickbait”. Its absolutely incorrect to claim that this is “normal”. You dont see Korg, Roland, Elektron, or any other synth company do this.
Please stop trying to paint CDM as a clickbait blog when you most likely had not heard about it before behringer had its mask slip for the xth time.
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Crap move by Behringer, very out of touch and just adds fuel to the fire but when did journalists become some protected species?, this guy seems like he has chip on his shoulder.
Actually journalists are a protected species. Laws allow them to keep sources secret, for example. They play an important role in balancing power in a democracy. Why do you think they re the first ones to disappear when autoritarian regimes emerge?
Where a music tech blogger not shy of some hyperbole stands in this is another question, though what s clear is that a very large corporation is using it s power to mock a critical voice, in a very immoral way.
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I should have added music before journalist. You are right, amongst the sea of self serving journalism there has been some bravery in the face of oppression, but it is so far from the norm, especially in the arena we are discussing.
The image not only associate antisemitism because of the long nose, but the whole style of drawing, posture of character and mimic.
Kirn is a jewish surname.
I still think/hope this was unintentional.
The problem isn’t about somebody doing a bad joke, it’s about the asymmetric, imbalance of power. As a big company you shouldn’t make fun of a small music journalist. And it’s not that they did this once, but there are 2 more facebooks from the past (January / February), where they made fun specifically about him.
A company should be able to deal with criticism and not react by bullying/making fun of somebody for two months…
Peter Kirn was one of the few music journalist who reported about some not so great actions by Behringer (like how they sued forum posters on gearslutz or sued a blog that called them copycat).
Filling a trademark on Peter Kirns name turned this bad joke into something really shitty…
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I saw caricatures of him far beyond the godwin point. But they were all made by individuals, not corporations, which is quite a big difference.
Behringer have now deleted their apology, it seems.
This is basically my stance on the whole thing. To be honest, I obviously see the resemblance between the image in their video and that typical anti-semitic charicature, but I don’t believe that was intentional at all. In fact, I think that peoples’ willingness to scream “anti-semitism” actually detracts from the real, more tangible argument here. The anti-semitism argument is based entirely on speculation, and is tenuous at best, but the ACTUAL issue here is that Behringer lacks the humility and dignity that one should assume in such a position. The fact that they felt the need to orchestrate such an attack on an independent journalist; trademarking his name, writing and producing a video specifically targeted at him, and doing so publicly, is just bad form. It reeks of insecurity and narcissism, and constitutes a glimpse into who Uli actually is as a person. This is not friendly banter; it’s not a jab at a mate; it’s an attack on someone who threatened Behringer’s image, veiled with low-brow humour and dripping with high-ego insecurity.
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Just to note, though I presume you’ve now checked out of this thread, that I also asked you for details of Kirn’s supposed attacks much earlier in the discussion and received no reply.
People claiming that CDM have committed some sort of offence against Behringer really need to a.) be clear exactly what they’re accusing Kirn of and b.) explain how that in any way excuses or diminishes Behringer’s response. So far I’ve seen no evidence of either.
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I think they’re two sides of the same coin tbh. Behringer’s decision to harass Kirn, and the fact they’ve done so using racist imagery (even if unintentionally) are both the result of the same things: their colossal lack of self-awareness, their ego, their total failure to consider how their actions would come across to other people or the impact they might have.
It’s obviously impossible to know exactly how deliberate the anti-Semitic stuff was, but the fact that the image itself mirrors racist tropes isn’t tenuous in the slightest, and the fact no-one spotted that stems from exactly the same process as bullying Kirn in the first place.
It’s important to be clear here: this is not about claiming that anyone at Behringer is or isn’t anti-Semitic (which would, as you say, be speculative) but that, regardless of their beliefs or intentions, they published a clearly anti-Semitic caricature in order to attack someone they didn’t like. That’s not a tenuous claim, and it’s one they’ve entirely failed to address or properly apologise for.
Either the bullying or the racism would be bad on its own, but the combination of both of them just underlines how utterly fucked Behringer’s corporate processes and underlying ideology are.
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Took a look at one of Peter Kirn’s articles that mention Behringer. I don’t see what set off Uli B. so much
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try this one maybe 
https://cdm.link/2018/06/behringer-threatens-legal-action-against-a-site-that-called-it-a-copycat/
Ah, I see. You can get someone mad, but that person might not act on it immediately. Maybe rage builds up over the course of 4 years or so, until the slightest thing finally sets him off
One thing is for sure: No matter who is right or wrong, the Behringer reputation is always attached to controversy. Every week, they announce new products, and just as often there is a story that’s really shady. I don’t think most people can deny that this stuff sits in the back of their mind when they see the Berhringer name.