Diary of Anne Frank Subject To Copyright Dispute (theguardian.com)

Bruce66423 writes: The Diary of Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager killed by the Nazis whose writing survived in the Amsterdam building where she had hidden, is causing problems. It has been 70 years since she died, making it public domain by European law. A French academic has made it available online with profits going to charity. However, the Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation established by Anne’s father Otto Frank, claims that: “Otto Frank and children’s author and translator, Mirjam Pressler, were inter alia responsible for the various edited versions of fragments of the diary” in 1947 and 1991. They add: "the copyrights to these adaptations have been vested in Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler, who in effect created readable books from Anne Frank’s original writings."

Comments

Where is the dispute?

[guruevi]

- The original is public domain, someone is making it available which is entirely legal.
- Someone else has copyright on the adaptation, the adaptation isn't being published as public domain.

Why would the adapters claim copyright on the original by virtue of its adaptions? If that were the case, numerous people would be able to claim copyright on all biblical manuscripts or someone claiming copyright on papyrus artifacts or stone tablets at museums.

Re:Where is the dispute?

[Kjella]

The full version has to my knownledge never been published, only the edited versions so I assume that is what is being made available. Now if it was an adaptation that would be copyrighted, like Disney turning old folk tales into movies. But it's not really an adaptation, it's an excerpt at least that is what is claimed. You can't find an old book with a hundred pages, pick ten and say this "adaptation" is copyrighted anew. Once the copyright expires the whole text is passed into the public domain and you can quote any parts you want. So...

If the published versions are a strict subset of Anne Frank's writings, the copyright is expired. That they published selected diary entries can't prevent others from quoting them too. If they've done more than to retract certain entries and actually edit the diary then yes it's still copyrighted but its authenticity as the literal diary of Anne Frank is compromised. They can't have it both ways, either it is her diary and the copyright is expired or it's a post-war original work of authorship based on her diary, but not both.

Re:Where is the dispute?

[AchilleTalon]

The diary was first published in 1947 in Dutch and in 1952 in English (the American edition). In 1986 a commented version was edited and published and in 2001 5 missing pages were added and published again. The 5 missing pages were removed by Anne's father, Otto, because these pages were showing tension between Otto and his wife and they were showing Anne was not loving so much her mother. These pages were given by Otto before his death to Cornelis Suijk who finally sold them to Anne Frank's foundation for 300 000 USD. Cornelis Suijk was previously director at the Anne Frank's foundation.

Re:Where is the dispute?

[jabuzz]

At best Otto Frank was Ann Frank's editor. As far as I am aware this is one of a very few cases where the editor is claiming copyright and is thus highly dubious and open to legal challenge.

The other editor claiming copyright I can think of is Christopher Tolkien.

A similar dubious copyright claim is that of Lyn Pratchett who attributed as having copyright interests in Terry later books, something again which is legally dubious as she was not responsible for the creation of the books.

Re:Where is the dispute?

[silentcoder]

As it stands, the diary as it is generally read in the US is severely abridged. Frank's original included significant discussion of all the other things that a girl going through puberty tends to experience - including sex drive and masturbation (and how this is affected by the kind of conditions she was living in).

Those bits are usually left out of the version used in schools, which is the only version most Americans have ever read - which is a bloody tragedy.

Then again - I bet most anti-refugee republicans have read the book while attending school, and I also bet none of them know that the Frank family had applied for refugee access to the USA before the war and been denied... I don't think they realize the irony of having once felt such sympathy with that young victim while now actively campaigning to create a whole new generation of her.

The few who do would probably think it's hillarious to say something "like thank goodness for people like us then since clearly being a xenophobic asshole leads to the creation of rare and exceptional literature".

Bible translations are copyrighted

[tepples]

If that were the case, numerous people would be able to claim copyright on all biblical manuscripts

Bible translators routinely enforce copyright in their translations. This is why the World English Bible (WEB) project exists, to produce a revision of the pre-1923 ASV into contemporary English and license it under CC0.