The actual reason why I'm in Görlitz is the annual P.E.N. club gathering. So far, the two biggest topics of conversation shape up to be a) human rights in China, and b) the so-called "Google settlement" and how to fight it. A) is because China is the guest country of this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, and as the book fair organizers, being the hosts, are probably going to play ball with the Chinese and not present anything China doesn't want to see, the presentation of authors persecuted by the regime falls on the PEN centre's shoulders. So cue various lectures making the point the human right situation is worse then ever. Especially, quoth one lecturer, since what a writer can go to prison for these days pretty much depends on the whim of a local boss and/or crime czar. Even if he/she is a journalist who has been explicitly asked to investigate provincial corruption by the goverment. At least in ye olde orthodox days there was a party line you could go against; these days, the Chinese CP doesn't have a party line anymore, and what makes you a traitor really is in no way predictable anymore, either. It all depends on whim. Some individual cases talked about, with addresses to write them to show them they're not forgotten:

- Shi Tao, Chinese journalist and poet, condemned to ten years of prison for "transmitting state secrets": Shi Tao/ Deshan Prison/ Postbox 564/ 415001 Changde City/ Hunan Province/ Peoples Republic of China
- Dolma Kyab, Tibetan teacher of geography and history at the university of Quinghai; arrested in 2005 due to an unpublished manuscript about the destruction of Tibetan environment: Dolma Kyab/ Xi'ning Prison/ Qinghai Province/ Peoples Republic of China
- Huang Jinquiu, journalist and author, arrested after his return to China from Malaysia (where he had studied journalism): Huang Jinquiu/ Pukou Prison/ Nanjing City/ Jiangsu Province/ Peoples Republic of China

The Shi Tao case is especially infamous because a) Yahoo gave his IP adress to the Chinese (the "transmission of state secrets" was an email in which he transmitted the instructions for journalists about how to (not) treat the then impending anniversary of Tianmen Square) and b) the recipient of a Chinese literary award claimed at the end of 2008 that Shi Tao never was in prison but was free in China and wasn't a writer anymore, which meant that the head of the writers-in-prison programm of PEN had to prove Shi Tao was indeed just where he used to be, in a Chinese prison, and he did. Also, one of Shi Tao's poems, "June" ("Liuyue") was part of a PEN campaign, the so-called Poem Relay, which meant it was translated and recorded in over 90 languages and travelled via an Google Earth map to every place the Olympic fire did, too, arriving in China for the opening of the games.

B), the Google Settlement topic, could also be subtitled: why we're worried about our livelihood and that of every future writer on the planet. Now, in Germany copyright, roughly speaking, means that anything published more than 70 years ago is free - you can reprint, scan, record, whatever without paying royalties - and anything first published within the last 70 years falls under copyright, for which you have to pay royalties. In 2005, Google started a program where they scan the books in American libraries and put them online. Any book in an American library, no matter when it was first published, and or even whether it was published in the US at all. This led to several American publishers sueing, which led to a settlement in New York, which led, last year, to everyone in Europe waking up to what was going on and starting to petition and protest in Brussels for the EU commissioners to fight the Google power, protest the settlement and not let an American judge in essence abolish world wide copyright. Because once something is online, it's available world wide. And no matter whether or not one is actually translated into English, presumably in some American library there could be copies of one's book(s), and even if not, once the precedent is established, it's bye-bye copyright (and thus income to live from) for authors everywhere. Whether or not the most recent petitions drafted at this conference (which come complete with "bubblegum trademarks get respected internationally, but creating books does not?!?" indignation) will have any success remains to be seen, but imagine a collection of upset bees buzzing around, and you get the idea of what conversations at the conference are like.

Going back to the bees now, hoping to learn more...