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."

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Re:Promotion of the useful arts

[dryeo]

Right at the beginning of modern copyright, beginning of the 18th century, the publishers started on this thing about "for the artist" and even then they paid a tuppence for unlimited rights while going on about the starving artist.
It was actually the unelected House of Lords that put their foot down, overrode the elected (bribed) House of Commons who were going to make copyright eternal and limited copyright to 14+14 years for the advancement of learning.
When the first works fell out of copyright they went to the courts claiming copyright was a common law right. Luckily they lost that one.