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Copyright Expires On Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf
HughPickens.com writes: Adolf Hitler's Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf was originally printed in 1925 — eight years before Hitler came to power. After Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, the Allied forces handed the copyright to the book to the state of Bavaria who refused to allow the book to be reprinted to prevent incitement of hatred. Now BBC reports that under European copyright law, the rights of an author of a literary or artistic work runs for the life of the author and for 70 years after his death — in Hitler's case on 30 April 1945, when he shot himself in his bunker in Berlin, so for the first time in 70 years, Mein Kampf will be available to buy in Germany.
Authorizing the book's release into the public domain has been a tortuous process. In 2012 it was agreed, after much consultation between Bavarian authorities and representatives of Jewish and Roma communities, that a scholarly edition should be planned in an attempt to demystify the book. Munich's Institute of Contemporary History will publish the new edition with thousands of academic notes, will aim to show that Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive. From the original book's 1,000 pages, the publisher has produced a two-volume book that is twice as long as the original, with 3,700 annotations. Christian Hartmann, one of the team of five historians who spent several years working on the academic edition, described his relief at being able to analyze the text, even if he felt in need of regularly airing his tiny Munich office in order to cope with the task. "It is a real feeling of triumph, to be able to pick over this rubbish and then to debunk it bit by bit."
Authorizing the book's release into the public domain has been a tortuous process. In 2012 it was agreed, after much consultation between Bavarian authorities and representatives of Jewish and Roma communities, that a scholarly edition should be planned in an attempt to demystify the book. Munich's Institute of Contemporary History will publish the new edition with thousands of academic notes, will aim to show that Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive. From the original book's 1,000 pages, the publisher has produced a two-volume book that is twice as long as the original, with 3,700 annotations. Christian Hartmann, one of the team of five historians who spent several years working on the academic edition, described his relief at being able to analyze the text, even if he felt in need of regularly airing his tiny Munich office in order to cope with the task. "It is a real feeling of triumph, to be able to pick over this rubbish and then to debunk it bit by bit."
Why the fuzz over this old book?
The book has been available in almost all countries except Germany, it is available on Amazon in both German and English, and it is of course available on the Internet, e.g. on www.hitler.org. Anyone interested in Mein Kampf can read it for free or for a few dollars. It hasn't caused a neo-nazi uprise anywhere so far, and it won't even if it is published in Germany.
I don't get it.
It's more like an attempt to bury the book completely in the annotations so nobody wants to read it, including scholars. Which is probably the point of the exercise.
This is about copyrights actually expiring thus "unlocking" the material from the equivalent of the Disney Vault (_citation_) so to speak; oh, if I only had a dollar for every person on Earth that does not know copyrights have an expiration date...
That being said, in still Pre-TPP Canada, our expiration date is "only" half a century after the entire remaining lifespan of the author, so in this (and in many, many others) Mein Kampf has been in the public domain for two decades, and I don't see a large National Socialist Canadian Worker's Party.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Why would he be considered more than an editor at best? It is not The Diary of Otto Frank, or The Diary of Anne Frank and her father Otto Frank, it is The Diary of Anne Frank. He may have censored some of her adolescent sexual thoughts, but he didn't create any new content for the diary, he only removed existing.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I was thinking the opposite, just publish it. Our societies are more and more afraid of letting people make up their own minds (however much of a struggle that may be) without guidance and context which add their own, often hidden biases.
After reading that editor's comments, I half expect the book to be published with lots of crossings-out and big red scrawls saying, "WRONG!!! Do it again!!!! F minus".
I hope the added material will try to be measured and reasonable for a critical reader to accept and not just say "Hitler bad". Which he was.
I'd not heard of fisking before (outside file-systems) but I highly recommend Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilization".
Have you read it? It's the mindless ramblings of a delusional madman with a combination of a persecution- and superiority complex.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If only we could apply this to other works too... I'd love it if all copies of The Communist Manifesto came pre-Fisked. It would help people from getting confused their first year in college.
That, and the Quran, Hadiths, Tafseers and Sira - the 'sacred' books of Islam. That is, take all these works, annotate them heavily w/ the critiques of Ali Sina, Srjda Trifkovic, Bat Yeor and others who have studied it from something other than a devotional approach, and then release it. Outlaw the original versions of Bukhari, Ibn Khatir, Ibn Ishaq, Jalalayn, Mawdidi and so on. It would help decontaminate the mind of today's Nazis i.e. non-agnostic Muslims.
I agree - just publish it. If you're afraid that the population will be seduced by it, you have bigger problems than the book.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
To be clear: there are two Anne Frank Foundations, both founded by her dad Otto. The Swiss Anne Frank Fonds which owns the copyrights to the diary, and the Dutch Anne Frank Stichting which amongst other things manages the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. The Fonds claims that the father is co-author and that this means their copyright holds until 70 years after his death. The Stichting disputes the claim that Anne's father should be considered a co-author.
One copyright expert has said that the claim of the Fonds has no legal basis whatsoever: a court will first have to recognize Otto as co-author, and it is very unlikely that they will do so for the original diary. Until that happens, they can not continue to claim copyright. One exception may be certain parts of the diary that have been published in 1986. Back then, copyright law in several European countries protected a work for 50 years after its first publication instead of until 70 years after the author's death.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You know who else wrote a book? Hilter!
This is free beer vs free speech personified. Why should we have to pirate what should belong to the world?
IMHO, the book is probably only interesting to historians
There is still a Nazi movement in Germany. When I was in school, there were people who liked to read it, although I wasn't sure why. Probably as a symbol of rebellion or something, I was never sure if they liked to read it or just carry it around with them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The same for the Bible since there are many different versions, not to mention the Old and New Testaments or the many books the Vatican refuses to acknowledge as part of its history, such as the Gospel of Mary.
If one could get into the underground Vatican library and root around for one day, the amount of contradictory material and hidden treasures of Catholic doctrine being butchered would be very enlightening.
I know someone who's sister does translations of old Latin and has been to the library. According to her, if you don't know the exact title of the book or manuscript you are looking for, the librarians play dumb.
If you do give them the correct name, they get it for you. You are not allowed to go to the shelf/drawer/whatever to get it, presumably so you can't see what else they have hidden.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Mein Kampf" was arguably a derivative work itself. There were a lot of others writing similar racialist pamphlets or books in the late 19th- and early 20th- centuries.
Such as Henry Ford. Much of Mein Kampf is plagiarized from a German translation of Ford's The International Jew.
>Outlaw the original versions
Outlawing books? What THE FUCK is wrong with you?
It's the mindless ramblings of a delusional madman with a combination of a persecution- and superiority complex.
Are you referring to Trumps book or Hitlers book?
There is still a Nazi movement in Germany
Hitler's chalet above Berchtesgaden, the Kehlsteinhaus*, is now a tourist attraction, with a nice restaurant and tour guides who are quite upfront about the history. However, it has an ongoing problem with Hitlerpilger, "Hitler pilgrims" who hike up at night and leave little bouquets and love notes for the Fuhrer around the ruins of his Berghof nearby.
*Non-German media call it the Eagle's Nest, after a metaphor attached to it by a visiting journalist circa 1938; but in Germany it is and always has been the Kehlsteinhaus, named for the minor peak it sits on.
When can we end this insanity that is copyright? How does anyone think it is a good idea to allow copyright to be used to totally prevent and suspress the use of intellectual property?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
See, freedom isn't free. A lot of Captain Freedom types forget this, but the ideal of free speech doesn't exist because speech is harmless. It's simply a compromise - the oppression of dangerous speech is considered more harmful than the speech itself.
Populations can be and have been seduced by this kind of material. In fact we are talking about a book that is quite famous for doing just that.
If you truely believe in the principle of free speech you need to engage with this fact honestly and say "I am comfortable with the danger". Others (especially minorities) might take a different view.
It was war reparations and the collapse of the German economy in 1931 and then the Great Depression that led to WW2, not a book, and especially not this book.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Hence the continued popularity of Che t-shirts.
Meh... I'm mixed racially, certainly not a skinhead or a Nazi, and I've read it. I even read it while I was still a teen. I did a report on it for a history class. The teacher was, shall we say, right pissed but she was unbiased in her grading. We had a *discussion* about what was and what was not appropriate material to present for in-class reports. That would be the same year I did an entire oral biology report on a sperm whale's penis. It was a rebellious year. It was the early 1970s, it's what we did.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Have you read it? It's the mindless ramblings of a delusional madman with a combination of a persecution- and superiority complex.
Yet apparently some academics think we need to be spoon fed their refutations alongside the book. So, in their eyes, it must be a powerful tome indeed.
Which is really silly. I think most people are aware of the horrible things done under Hitler's rule - we don't need some academic to point out he was a madman. We should be able to read just the original text, and draw our own conclusions. I don't think many people will somehow conclude Hitler was a great thinker and visionary. Even if he somehow turned out to be eloquent, we have the lens of history to help us interpret his words.
#DeleteChrome
Better Bier und Weisswurst than we ever had hereabouts...
Yet factually literally, it is still not as bad as the Bible, The Koran or the Torah, yet government does not do anything serious to reign in those works and force the editing to align with law, especially prior to their distribution to minors. When those works recommend or even worse demand behaviour outside of the rule of law, those who distribute them should be challenged, no excuses). Whether it is an older work or a more modern work they should be held accountable to the same laws equally, especially when the contents are actively taught to minors.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I am not comfortable with danger, which is why I'm trying to minimize it. And that means not giving the next Hitler wannabe a fully functional censorship machine to silence any opposition with.
They're free to do so, but in the light of the entire human history that makes them either idiots or Hitler wannabes.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You know what I find really weird? 364 comments and NO mention of Godwin's Law. Oh well, someone has t do it!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Donald Trump has his total party platform free of charge.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.