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US Copyright Law Forces Wikimedia To Remove the Diary of Anne Frank (wikimedia.org)
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation announced its removal of The Diary of Anne Frank from Wikisource, a digital library of free texts. According to the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act, works are protected for 95 years from the date of publication, meaning Wikimedia is not allowed to host a copy of the book before 2042. Rogers, the Legal Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, says this is just one of the many examples of the overreach of the United States' current copyright law. He goes on to say, "Our removal serves as an excellent example of why the law should be changed to prevent repeated extensions of copyright terms."
This makes complete sense. The point of copyright is to make artists confident that they or their immediate heirs will be able to benefit from their works for a limited time. I'm sure that if Anne Frank knew that almost a century after her diary was written it would be available on a global network of electronic devices that hadn't been invented in her lifetime she would not have wrote the diary at all. I'm also sure that if her father had known that he would have definitely refused to publish it.
Court already ruled essentially in Eldred https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft that copyright can make public domain works return to being copyrighted.
It's long been held that "ex post facto" only considers what the law is at the time the government claims you broke it. That's how the government tends to ban things, by outlawing "possession" rather than sale or creation. If you bought something legally that the government then bans, if you are possessing it then you're breaking the possession law right now, and ex post facto does not apply.
Therefore if you make a copy right now of some item whose copyright term was extended, you're breaking the current law right now.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
On an editorial note, I would not have read the Diary of Anne Frank had I not been forced to in school, and 30 years of alcohol abuse and Prozac has mostly wiped away most of the memories of the books I was forced to read in school. So if any of my past English teachers are reading, yeah, thanks for that. And also, Herman Melville just wrote all that shit about the whale because he liked to hear himself talk. There. I said it. So whatever. Anne Frank can keep her damn copyright for all I care, and for all the good it'll do her.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This makes complete sense. The point of copyright is to make artists confident that they or their immediate heirs will be able to benefit from their works for a limited time.
This does not make any sense at all. Why should the heirs of the artist be allowed to benefit from the artist's work? No other job provides benefits for heirs after the death of the worker unless that worker has saved some of their income and put it into a suitable savings vehicle.
Artists should be recompensed under the same set of ideals. Copyright should be a fixed length regardless of the life of the author. This should be long enough that the creator will gain adequate recompense for the work but the current system is ridicuous. Why should a work created by an artist who dies immediately after creating it earn less than a similar work created by an artist who lives for 50 years after creating it?
With fixed term copyright if the artist dies before the copyright expiration then, and only then, should the heirs inherit the copyright for the remaining term. If the copyright expires before the creator then either they can create more works or they can live off their savings. This is what everyone else has to do so why can't artists work under the same system?