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?

[AthanasiusKircher]

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.

Actually, that's precisely what they are claiming, and there are valid legal arguments for it under copyright law. Multiple new editions of an old work can be published and may be copyrighted. As someone who has worked on scholarly editions of source materials (though I've never been a primary author on one), there's a lot of original research that often goes into making judgment calls on how to take some handwritten source and turn it into a printed text. In particular, you often have multiple sources (e.g., different drafts, different fragments of manuscripts) which require reconciliation and interpretation.

I don't know anything about the sources of Anne Frank's diary, though -- but I do know that apparently Anne Frank began rewriting some portions with an intent on publication at some point in 1944. That presumably means that any edition would have to make choices about how to present the sections she originally wrote vs. her redrafted ones for publication, which also may require reconciling elements in the portions which had not been rewritten before her death to make sense with the ones which had been rewritten.

This may or may not be a straightforward process to put all this together in a format that would be easily accessible and understood by readers. I don't know enough about the sources.

Nevertheless, what we have here apparently is the following:

(1) The first edited version was published in 1947 by Otto Frank. I don't know how much editing was done here, but apparently it was more than just selecting entries, given that there would be multiple versions of some entries. The copyright to that is claimed by Otto Frank, who died in 1980, and applicable copyright law for his version thus extends to 70 years after his death.

(2) The original diaries were finally published in a scholarly "critical edition" in 1986. Under applicable copyright law at that time, posthumous publications were granted a 50 year term after the first PUBLICATION. So, that would extend to 50 years after 1986.

Thus, yes it is both. It is her diary, but copyright law as of 1986 said what matters in posthumous publication was the date of publication, not when the author died. (That law has since been changed in the EU, but old works still under copyright are grandfathered in.) And it is also a post-war "original" edited work, whose copyright expires at a different date. This is actually quite common for scholarly editions, such as edited publications of correspondence by famous people, etc.

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".

Re:Oh, no!

[93 Escort Wagon]

I just knew someone would Godwin this discussion...

Yet more proof ...

[UnknownSoldier]

... greed destroys history.

We already have this shenanigans with early 8-bit software lost to the annuls of time because of some bullshit copyright that we're not allowed to preserve for fear that someday, somewhere, some company will want to try to "leverage" archaic Imaginary Property.
 

Editors are not authors

[Anonymous Coward]

The debate over whether editors have a copyright interest in a given work is not a new debate. What is different about this case is that the author could not have any say over how her works were edited or say over whether her writings should have been published in the first place. Most of the edits done were to remove personal family information or mundane aspects of Anne's life. Because most of the edits were removing information, I'd suggest that Otto could not be considered an author. Indeed, in all the copies I have seen published, none of them credit Otto or Mirjam as co-authors. While they may have some copyright claim previously, those copyrights ended with the life of the author plus 70 years, not editor plus 70 years, and not publisher plus 70 years.

Re:Editors are not authors

[AthanasiusKircher]

The debate over whether editors have a copyright interest in a given work is not a new debate. What is different about this case is that the author could not have any say over how her works were edited or say over whether her writings should have been published in the first place.

This is not a unique issue at all. Famous people of the past often have left behind hoards of unpublished papers, correspondence, etc. Many scholars create editions of such things, often long after those people have died -- sometimes centuries later.

In these cases, it is generally standard that the editor/compiler holds copyright on that edition from the date of publication, rather than anything having to do with the death of the author. Of course the original documents may long ago have become public domain (and hence may be republished freely without permission), but the edition generally requires quite a bit of work to put together. (I admit I know very little about how much was done in the case Anne Frank, though.)

Indeed, in all the copies I have seen published, none of them credit Otto or Mirjam as co-authors.

This is the more interesting issue, to me. If these publications actually ascribed the work completely to Anne Frank, even if they were edited, then Otto Frank should be considered more as an editor in the sense of an internal copyeditor at a publishing house that cleans up a manuscript, rather than as a "scholarly" editor who has to make tough decisions about reconciling different versions of texts and how to turn an unedited mess into something comprehensible. The latter is generally entitled to be treated as an "editor" in the formal sense and perhaps granted copyright, but the former is not generally entitled to such protections.

Cynical Question

[ebonum]

I've seen a lot of "charities" that are family controlled and pay amazingly high executive salaries. At the same time, the workers make near min. wage or volunteer their time. Another trick is to have the charity pay for meals, flights, leased cars, etc. for the executives.

I would want to see the full, actual financials of this charity before I have an opinion.

This seems like a no-brainer

[davidwr]

The original diary, and any direct quotations from it that show up in edited editions, are in the public domain (in Europe)

Editions consisting only of quotations from the original, such as "censored" editions, are in the public domain.

Editions which have copyright-able creative content added by someone else are the works of more than one author and the death of Anne Frank 70 years ago doesn't put the entire work in the public domain, just those parts that are direct quotations or non-copyright-able changes. These are similar to musical arrangements - the authorship of the arrangement is shared.

Translations generally get a fresh copyright (well, at least those done by professional human translators - which is almost certainly true here), so they aren't automatically in the public domain. Short excerpts from a translation where there is only one reasonable way to translation the original probably are in the public domain, as there was no creativity involved in translating that short section. However, anything longer than a few sentences and excerpts longer than a few words can be translated multiple ways and the translator probably has a copyright interest. A machine-translation or an "algorithmic" translation done by a human which has only one possible outcome (basically, a "human computer" doing the translation) very likely does not have a fresh copyright.

Here's the rub:

I don't know if the actual original manuscripts are available for inspection. If they are not, then anyone re-publishing any published materials is taking a big legal gamble.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

Re:money goes to charity. Court ruled ends in 2036

[Dereck1701]

"which gives all proceeds to charity"

I don't think I've ever encountered a "charity" that didn't skim a fair amount of the money off of the top for someones personal enrichment. It should also be noted that there are apparently two "Anne Frank" charities, The "Anne Frank Foundation" and the "Anne Frank Fund" which have had their own little legal squabbles in the past over the "over-commercialization of Anne’s legacy".

http://nonprofitquarterly.org/...

Re: Slashdot: News for SJW

[Anonymous Coward]

Or more accurately because copyright law has been a part of geek culture since forever? Or have we all forgotten about that? You know, the EFF, the FSF, the DMCA, Lawrence Lessig, open source/free software, copyleft...

Re:money goes to charity. Court ruled ends in 2036

[jrumney]

I don't think I've ever encountered a "charity" that didn't skim a fair amount of the money off of the top for someones personal enrichment.

Things like the former director of the charity selling 7 pages that were handed to him while he was director back to the charity for $300k, for example.

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.