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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."
"it's" is short for "it is". Substitute that into the sentence. Does it make sense? No, it does not.
And before any googleclippers respond, "it has" doesn't fucking fit either.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
First Godwin!
Captcha: cuntcheese
The alternative is a trolling arms race until the world grinds to a patented halt.
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.
and register itself as a non-profit organization in, oh I don't know, the Bahamas, or Liberia, or somewhere other than big-brotherland where it currently lives.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
But Anne Frank's Diary was published in 1947. Extending that copyright beyond the term in effect at the time it was published is a violation of the constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws.
But then, IANAL and the Supreme Court would probably be overruled by Mickey Mouse anyway.
Have gnu, will travel.
It is the Dutch version they removed. According to Dutch copyright it is in the public domain now. (70 years after the death of the author) Although, because is money to be made, this is also contested.
in his roaches-infested city - so much so he has become one - and that if you don't like it to move where he has.
I first misread it as Dirty Anne Frank and through it was a reference to some of the lesser known and more intimate passages only.
Those people sure are good at making millions off of other peoples content. They should focus on content that the rights holders want to be free.
2042 we hope the mouse needs more time real soon and that can get pushed back to 2050 or maybe even 2100
I had video in colour of Adolf Hitler made by Eva Brown. YouTube says it is copyright infringement but doesn't remove it. It is claimed to be owned by a company in England. If I was exterminated today my diary could not be published for 95 years. Copyright laws can be easily used to hide an ugly part of history. In our country it is standard procedure to put people away and silence them for 70 years after death because of copyright law.
What do they plan to censor next? 1984? Mein Kampf? The Handmaid's Tale? The Red Book? The Iron Heel? Dreams from my Mother? It Can't Happen Here? Primary Colors? The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?
Will their tyranny ever end?
Or, who knows, they may even be able to pass the "forever less one day" proposal. (Yes, a former MPAA president actually wanted to do this.)
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
The point of copyright law is to ensure that rights-holders can profit from zero-production-cost items for as long as possible (ideally, indefinitely). The notion of it providing an economic incentive to produce such works is a concern, but it is a lesser concern.
I realize that isn't how it should be. But facts don't care about "should"s.
The rights holders for the Diary of Anne Frank are probably reading Rogers' comments and thinking "fuck you, pay me." And that goes for everyone who wants to read the diary...the rights holders want you to pay for it, and they have no qualms about using the legal system to force the money out of you.
No, that's utter rubbish.
The legal holder of the copyright would have exclusive control for 95 years.
That might be some assignee that you sold right to, your heirs, etc. etc.
Nobody is being denied reading The Diary of Ann Frank. You can buy it on Amazon. Or in probably any of the remaining walk-in bookstores.
http://www.amazon.com/Diary-An...
While, yes, a copyright holder might without a work from the market for some political or other nefarious purpose, you've chosen a poor example. And, the sad fact is, most unavailable works are unavailable through neglect or disinterest on the part of the copyright holder, not willful withholding from the market.
So Mein Kampf is not protected by US copyright, but Anne Frank's diary is.
Possibly not, but it wouldn't stop Ernie Wise.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
prospects a're TCP/IP stack has locating #GNAA,
More will respect the implementation of copyright law as soon as that implementation respects the original intent of copyright law.
If the implementation goes contrary to it's original intent and is disrespectful to the culture of the american people, it is our civic duty to go against it and fight for it to change whenever possible.
70 years after ww2 diaries written inside Auschwitz popped up just like that. It was written by a Sondercommando, the people forced to run the gas chambers. There never was a publisher there never was family since it was anonymously written. 70 years before we in modern society gained the right to read the personal diary of someone forced to kill, and in turn be gassed by the next Sondercommando since Sondercommando were gassed themselves every 3 months at most
The following note was found buried in the Auschwitz crematoria and was written by Zalman Gradowski, a member of the Sonderkommando who was killed in the 7 October 1944 revolt:
"Dear finder of these notes, I have one request of you, which is, in fact, the practical objective for my writing ... that my days of Hell, that my hopeless tomorrow will find a purpose in the future. I am transmitting only a part of what happened in the Birkenau-Auschwitz Hell. You will realize what reality looked like ... From all this you will have a picture of how our people perished."[27].
Copyright allows this message written in 1944 to be kept from public for 70yr since is no publisher, there is no survivor.
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?
It is the US tail wagging the world's dog - and we need to start rejecting this over-reach. In this case the Wikipedia foundation should be off shore from the US and its servers likewise. The material should be held on the servers and either block access from US based IP addresses for specific material, or have a statement requiring you to identify that you are not violating US copyright law before you get access. All this would require is the database of files held to include fields for the copyright expiry date of the material in different countries.
Or we can continue to bow before the Empire...
Greedy Jews wanting their damn money.
The Anne Frank foundation has been gold-digging in Europe as well: http://www.theguardian.com/boo... This is a world-wide problem, and European publishers, lobbyists, politicians, and authors are just as much to blame for this as Disney and their supporters in Congress, if not more so.
#NUKETHEUSA
Just do it. The whole world would be better off.
Find a country with a more reasonable attitude and good internet links. Not necessarily a null set. However that's not the point of my deeper point; the data should be held subject to a person reporting the country they are located in, and the restriction applied at that point. This would only require a country willing to allow this policy.
What kind of Mickey mouse law is this? Ohm wait. It's BECAUSE of Mickey Mouse.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:158EF5CCB81567186E7FD080CB0157F0D527DE72&dn=the+diary+of+a+young+girl+the+definitive+anne+frank+epub&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fglotorrents.pw%3A6969%2Fannounce
Fuck the government. We're owned, so there's no use trying to fool yourself about it.
Make that retroactive, pretty please, so as to retroactively revoke the ridiculous retroactive extensions.
The whole thing flies in the face of even libertarian notions of contract: that you only get what you shake for, in the first instance.
Douglas Adams used to quip "I love deadlines. I love the sound they make as they whoosh past." Market capitalists love markets. They love the sound the rigging makes as it twangs in the salty sea air. "Arrrr, r-r-r-r-retroactively extended copyright. First we shakes, then we takes."
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?
The events in the diary took place decades before I was born, yet I will likely die before I have a chance to read it unencumbered in the public domain? Yeah, that makes sense, especially when the motivation of the diary had nothing at all to do with profit in the first place.
Oh wait, that's still under copyright too.. Damnit!
And what's going to happen the next time mickey mouse's copyright comes up, they'll change the law again and extend it even further. At this rate it'll be 200 years of copyright. Who am I kidding? The way these pricks "play" the game, copyright will be effectively perpetual and many of these works will never, ever enter the public domain.
Pirate everything. Fuck them, 20 years copyright is more than enough.
Come on now, be fair, is offering a whole day free at least. We not animals, we live in a society and it feels good to give back, once in a while (or in this case once in a 'forever')
Copyright law is governed by international treaties, and most countries are signatories to those treaties. People self-reporting their location isn't going to cut it.
The few countries that are not subject to such treaties are so poor that they aren't going to waste money on hosting free copies of Anne Franke's diaries. And if they did, publishers would simply get them kicked off the Internet altogether.
But Anne Frank's Diary was published in 1947. Extending that copyright beyond the term in effect at the time it was published is a violation of the constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws.
The geek remains ignorant of the most fundamental distinctions between civil and criminal law.
Over the years, when deciding ex post facto cases, the United States Supreme Court has referred repeatedly to its ruling in Calder v. Bull, in which Justice Samuel Chase held that the prohibition applied only to criminal matters, not civil matters...
Ex post facto law
Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. 386 (1798) is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided four important points of constitutional law.
First that the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution only applies to criminal acts, and then only if the law does one of four things: ''1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender.'' The decision restates this later as laws ''hat create, or aggregate, the crime; or encrease(sic) the punishment, or change the rules of evidence, for the purpose of conviction.''
Calfer v. Bull
So the fucking asshole Anne Frank Foundation set up originally by her Dad wants to protect their legally unjust monopoly on an important part of human history, even if once again it means genocide and perhaps again against the Jews? Fuck you, Mirjam Pressler. You make me sick you piece of shit.
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.
Why should their immediate heirs get anything? They didn't create anything.
Honest, if you can't make money after 34 years (the original time period in the US of 17+17) you should get the fuck out of way and let the culture take hold of what you've done. 95 years is complete bullshit. The Berne 50 year isn't too bad, but still pushing it.
Why should "artists" be able to do that, but not the workers and engineers who worked on a road or bridges? Why can't their descendants collect royalties in perpetuity on their work?
Because companies have abused copyright law for corporate monopoly and "artists" have got along for a free ride.
The reason Pressler and the greedy shits at the Anne Frank Foundation are bleeding this for all its worth is because that foundation generates cash and if you look closely you may find that 'charitable foundation' creams some of it off in 'salaries' and 'operational overheads', and they get to choose who receives that 'charitable donation' which won't be a random stranger. It's about the money, people.
How ironic people can read Hitler's book but not Frank's? Is that what Anne Frank would have wanted? I seriously doubt it. Fuck these greedy shits.
Isn't it funny how a lot of other things are "grandfathered" in - even electrical safety, but copyright rules are allowed to change everything and take things back out of the public domain.
I see it as a sign of corruption and the biggest donor being seen as more important than the nation itself.
Well speaking of Mickey Mouse...
Forget Mickey Mouse.
The expiration of the copyright on Steamboat Willie gives you the right to produce derivatives based on Steamboat Willie and only Steamboat Willie. Eight minutes of silent-era sight gags with a synchronized sound track and a thin narrative thread. Walt Disney Animation Studios' Steamboat Willie
The character designs --- which is what the geek really wants --- are trademarked, and without them you do not have the Mouse in any recognizable form.
Mickey Mouse appears as a character in over 200 films, videos, and video games --- and god alone knows how often in other media. Mickey Mouse (Character) You would have a hell of time coming up with an original --- non-infringing --- story for the Mouse.
or for any of the other franchised Disney characters.
And maybe then they will not treat the Palestinians with such cruelty.
real diaries don't have multiple editions.
Not true.
Mary Chesnut used her diary and notes to work toward a final version in 1881 --- 1884. Based on her drafts, historians do not believe she was finished with her work. Because Chesnut had no children, before her death she gave her diary to her closest friend Isabella D. Martin and urged her to have it published. The diary was first published in 1905 as a heavily edited and abridged edition. Ben Ames Williams' 1949 version was described as more readable, but sacrificing historical reliability and many of Chesnut's literary references. The 1981 version by C. Vann Woodward retained more of her original work, provides an overview of her life and society in the introduction, and was annotated to identify fully the large cast of characters, places and events.
Mary Boykin Chesnut
So the historical lessons warning about oppression offered by a young girl, caring not for copywrite bullshit or profit are trumped by grammar nazis.
I am now ashamed to be human.
https://kat.cr/the-diary-of-an...
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.
The 95-year copyright term is a joke. You say, "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..." That's not correct. The point of copyright is to encourage creation by giving artists the ability to earn a return on their investment of time, effort, and sometimes money.
But the time value of money means that almost all of the value of a work will occur within the first twenty to thirty years.
I'm sure glad Anne will continue to benefit from the sale of her diaries.
Oh wait...
If you don't want even more of this shit (via law laundering), JUST SAY NO TO TTIP.
It'll be picking the worst laws from both sides and smearing them all around the place. Copyright == death+95 in Europe? Yessir! And at the next turn of the mickey mouse screw? Yessir!
Big media houses in EU are just... jerking off at this thought.
This is a preview.
TTIP: JUST SAY NO.
Copyright should be perpetual.
If one finds a piece of work interesting and wants to work with it, I see no reason why the intellectual property owner shouldn't be compensated. After all, the onwer has created value that has long last appeal.
If you host where corporate totalitarianism and oligarchy rules, what do you expect?
This refer to criminal laws. The really question is how retroactive extension of copyright could possibly "promote the progress of science and useful arts".
Copyright holders are worse than the Nazis!
Can we go home now?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have the Right to leave my property to my heirs, including my intellectual property. They are then conferred the same rights to that property that I had. This includes copyrighted works.
If anything, Copyright protection should survive for as long as there are heirs to the property, without limitation. They have a right to that property, including the right to profit from it.
of why something like Wikipedia and Wikimedia can not be properly housed in the U.S.
It's owned by her dutch estate, some 4000 miles away from U.S. mainland, Newfoundland and Halifax not counting in. And dutch copyright timetable is different from the U.S.'s one! And on top of it, half of her diary was written and annotated by her own very uncle after the war!
attempt to erase the holocaust.
US Copyright law, like US patent law, and so many other areas of US law, is illegal in its current form.
It contains many avoidable elements that create an artificial demand for the services of legal professionals, and as such violates the right to ethical practice of law, arising under the 9th Amendment. This has been discussed in great detail previously on Slashdot, so there's no reason to belabor the point.
No entity of government can authorize the government to violate the Bill of Rights, the highest law in the land. It is unethical practice of law for lawyers to acknowledge anything to the contrary.
When is the US legal profession going to figure out that enforcement of illegal laws violates the law? Are the lessons of Nuremberg so hard to understand?
Fuck the people.
The People elected Hitler, and let him start that shit. And he was already shown to be a huge asshole as early as 1933, and nobody did shit.
As for the other countries, remember the SS St Louis?
So yea, Anne Franks heirs deserve all the fucking money they are legally entitled to. And fuck those who are trying to continue to cheat her even after her death, she was cheated of life, can't the cheating fucking stop?
You are assuming what the original purpose of the copyright law was. There is evidence to suggest that it was always about allowing an elite to control the distribution of works for financial gain...and by elite I do not mean the authors. I'd say media companies, but that would create an improper impression, as originally the works were all printed. (Well, there were also laws about what the bards were allowed to sing, different in different countries and times, but that was not usually for financial gain.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Nothing to be learned from it anyway. Should lock it up forever. (cough)
Why should the inheritance of intangible property be treated any differently?
You are making the wrong comparison. Intangible "property" is not property in the real world in which we live, it is simply an artificial legal construct which society created so that artists can make money from their work. If we started thinking about it as a way to reward for work instead of as property we would have a far better system.
The book is a fraud anyway.