Thursday, October 07, 2004

CopyCommunism for Nobel Laureate To Be?

Today the Nobel price for literature was awarded to Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. I haven't read any of her books, as with most of the laureates of the past years, Coetzee being a notable exception. The Leiter Reports has a post with a link to her homepage and an article, which sounds like I should start reading her:
"Highly respected abroad for her literary exploration of gender issues, sexuality and violence in society, Jelinek is also controversial in her native Austria for her views on contemporary political issues, such as the Iraq war, anti-Semitism and xenophobia."
And:
"Jelinek retired from public life in 1996 after rightwing politicians from Joerg Haider's Freedom Party (FPOe) used her name in campaigns, denouncing her work as low and immoral art."
Her homepage, with lots of works, carries the following copyright statement

Sämtliche hier wiedergegebenen Texte sind urheberrechtlich geschützt und dürfen ohne ausdrückliche Erlaubnis in keiner Form wiedergegeben oder zitiert werden.

Translation: "The here collected texts are copyright protected and may not be republished or citated with the expressive permission of the author."


Citation falls, of course, under the copyright exemptions, and is generally allowed without authorization of the rightsholder. Maybe the Austrian copyright law has some other view on this. However, for a writer who has been a member of the Austrian Communist Party for several decades, this overly restriction of (intellectual) property seems a bit strange. Though it could be part of some disillusion after falling from the fate. Maybe she could step back to CopyCommunism Light, and try a Creative Commons license.

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