Poets receive compensation for poems in obituaries

The authors of poems in obituaries have long been without compensation, but now an agreement has been signed between the Swedish Cemetery Bureau (SBF) and the Administration of Literary Rights in Sweden (ALIS), which is to ensure that poets who wrote the poems used in obituaries replacement.

The issue has been debated for a long time and according to SBF they have asked their affiliated agencies not to propose protected works in obituaries, but have offered, for example, verses from the Bible in recent years. Nevertheless, copyright-protected poems are still widely used.

“Legally, this has been prohibited. We understand that you do not want to argue with a verse in an ad, but if we want the literature and poetry to actually be the ones who create it, and often have it as the only way of life, have compensation for their work every time it is used. In our society, the copyright system is an important part of keeping the literary work alive, ”says ALIS President Eduard Pröckl in a press release.

The administration will be handled through the website familjesidan.se, where those who advertise on the site get the copyright regulated. This means that all poems published through an authorized burial agency receive copyright money. If the death ads instead go directly through the newspaper that publishes them, the agreement does not apply.