Sweden's 66-Year-Old Law Protecting Literary Classics Fails Its First Court Test
A Swedish court rejected the Swedish Academy's attempt to use a rarely invoked copyright clause to prevent a far-right website from republishing classical poems. The case exposes a fundamental tension: laws designed to protect cultural heritage from "offensive" use are increasingly incompatible with modern free speech standards and may need revision.
Originaltitel: The politics of canons and classics: heritage and identity in Swedish copyright law
<p>In the spring of 2021, the Swedish Academy accused the national socialist website Nordfront of copyright infringement for publishing excerpts of poems by three National Romantic poets. Even though the works were in the public domain, the Academy argued that the publication violated §51 of the Swedish copyright law, also known as the protection of classics, which protects works by deceased authors that are of cultural significance against being reproduced in ways that can be considered offensive. Originally passed in 1960, this was the first time that this paragraph had been tried in court. The court ruled in favour of Nordfront, thereby calling the applicability of §51 into question. This article analyses the Nordfront case from a cultural, political and legal perspective. It compares the case to previous uses of §51 but also relates it to a recent initiative to establish a national cultural canon. The article finds that the use of the protection of classics largely reflects changes in the heritage and cultural policy discourses of the late twentieth century, where the conservative approach that shaped the formulation and early use of §51 has given way to a more liberal view of culture. Finally, the article discusses the role of the protection of classics and the canon debate in a contemporary cultural heritage context and reflects on how to relate to the politicization of heritage actualized by the culture wars.</p>