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(By Sarah Muller)

For twentysomething Germans, the love might not extend past the Hoff.

Three friends from Hamburg recently came to New York for a visit. (Lovely bunch of people. Very open-minded, always up for anything.) One night during dinner — and somewhat out of the blue — their chief pop-culture export of the moment came up: Tokio Hotel.

On this side of the Atlantic, the boy band has been gathering both
buzz and rabid, tween young fans. (Hey, we already apologized for that one!) But my friends aren't buying into the hair, the eyeliner or the hype.

Words like "embarrassment" and "lame" were thrown around a lot. One woman said Tokio Hotel only appeal to "kids and teenagers between 6 and 12 years old" or those "too young to realize what kind of stupid phonies these boys are." My guy friend begged Americans like myself to "take them off our hands." He added, simply, "They suck."

I'll be the first to admit this was not exactly a scientific poll, though they could represent a bigger backlash to come. Is this band just part of a prepubescent phase, or are fans onto something big?

Just curious. Tell us what you think.

Here Tom, Gustav and Bill opening presents!!

Enyoj!

Lucky @ THA

Open Letter on the Day of Intellectual Property

Dear Chancellor,
tomorrow is the Day of Intellectual Property. As componists and musicians, writers and publishers, as actors and movie makers we appreciate it a lot that with this day attention is supposed to be drawn to the worth of intellectual property. Because unfortunately we have to watch how the right on a proper protection of our works is violated every day. Most of all in the internet millions of songs, movies or audio books are offered and downloaded wrongfully, without the cretives, that stand behind these products being rewarded fairly. Like that soley in the last year 300 Millions of music peaces have been downloaded illegally from the internet. Ten times the amount of music pieces that were sold legally. Several millions of people take advantage of file sharing networks and other illegal sources on a regular basis. And although not only the victims, but also the general society is harmed due to tax deficits and unemployment, the state so far has been watching almost without taking any actions. In China you stand examplaryly for the interests of German industry concerning the topic of product pirating. Please do that in Germany aswell for more respect of the protection of intellectual property. Because as the only way to defend themselves, artists, creatives and the involved industries have to operate juristically against those who offer illegal material. Intellectual property on the contrary is – as the boss of the same-named picture empire Mark Getty said once – the oil of the 21st century. Behind that is the cognition that cultural and creative business is already and most importantly in the future the engine for growth and wealth. Without music and audio books we wouldn’t need iPods, without movies no flat srcreen TVs, without broad band contentrs we wouldn’t need fast internet connections. Like that unfortunately about 70% of German internet usage go to – mostly illegal – sharing networks. But while the worth a billion telecommunication industry gets massive profits out of illegal contents, they refuse to protect the intellectual property. In Europe more an dmore countries realize that masses of individual court cases can only be a solution for the moment and that technological progress and protection of intellectual property mustn’t be opposites. France and England step forward with examplary initiatives. There internet providers, aswell as the movie and music industry are requested to develop methods, together with customer protectors and data protection specialists under the supervision of the state, to balance the interests of all involved fairly.
Dear chancellor, we know that on such a way, lots of political and legal hurdles have to be overcome. That is why we ask you: Please take care of this topic yourself, and make it boss business. Because, while established artists can still live on their success from the past, the internet piratery mostly hits young upcoming talents. In the long run cultural and creative diversity will decrease in our country and we will loose one of our most important recources of the future.

Hoping for you support and with greetings,[list of artists]

The letter Tokio Hotel and thousends of other German artists have signed.

"Hey Tokio Hotel team!

Did you see the awesome new thing on Tokio Hotel's MySpace? They just installed the Super Hug application and you can actually Throw Bill at all your friends. The band is going to give out a GIANT signed Tokio Hotel poster and signed CD to the person who "Throws Bill" the most amount of times. Five runners-up will also get a signed CD! So get to it! We'll be watching! Click here to start throwing Bill! If you don’t have MySpace, don't worry — you can also "Throw Bill" on Facebook by clicking here.

In other Tokio Hotel news — did you see their concert on MSN control room? GO HERE to see the concert and then check out the cool banners, wallpapers and more that MSN made just for you all! http://www.controlroom.com/myspace/tokiohotel/downloads.htm Take the banners and post them everywhere — don’t forget to report what you’ve done at TotalAssault.com! We’ll be watching and picking out a winner for a limited edition poster!

Have fun THROWING BILL!
- Meliss"

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            look there!!

01_Ready Set Go
02_Final Day
03_Scream
04_Dont jump
05_Totgeliebt
06_Monsoon
07_Break Away
08_Black
09_On the Edge
10_Raise your hands
11_By your side
12_Durch den Monsun