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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."
And before any googleclippers respond, "it has" doesn't fucking fit either.
WTF is a googleclippers?
Does TFA count as pre-Godwinning the thread?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I still remember when we were discussing in this very site how the then current copyright length of 80 years was ridiculous. Now its 95? Great.
Your tax dollars at work here. Coz if I remember correctly revenue from so called 'intellectual property' to royalty lords (not necessarily authors) isn't taxed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Copyright protection generally lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. If the work was a "work for hire", then copyright persists for 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shorter. For works created before 1978, the copyright duration rules are complicated. However, works created before 1923 have made their way into the public domain.
So Miss Anne Frank was "hired" to write a diary while she was hidden from the Nazis? Who would have known.
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?
If I remember correctly, the common version of the diary is an edited version of the original. That is why it is copyrighted. The original isn't iirc.
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.
2042 we hope the mouse needs more time real soon and that can get pushed back to 2050 or maybe even 2100
*sigh*
Googleclipper:
"Someone who reads a post and understands a majority of the words, a minority of the sentences, none of the nuance and less still of the context; and then proceeds to type a word or two into Google and copy-paste the first result that comes up".
E.A.Blair, "Are the kids today utter shitcocks or what?" in "As I please", 1943-1945.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The possesive form of "it" is "its". They must have meant "its". This is a common mistake.
Indeed, its is so possessive...
How possessive is its?
Its not only wants its apostrophe, its wants all its s's in possessive!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
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." -
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.
Possibly not, but it wouldn't stop Ernie Wise.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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...
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.
just wtf are they teaching the kids?!?!
The important stuff? Like say, Pledge of Aellegiance.
-SR
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.
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?
From what I understand, the diary as published wasn't written by Anne but by her father largely/loosely based on her diary.
Your understanding is incorrect. There are two versions of the diary in Anne Frank's own handwriting - her original, and a more polished version she edited with a view to post-war publication. Otto Frank assembled the published book from both of Anne Frank's versions, excluding some passages but not adding new material. You can directly compare the three versions line by line in the original Dutch or in English translation in the Critical Editions published by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. The words are Anne Frank's, not her father's. He selected from the extant material, but did not re-write or invent.
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!
It was her words, but there were some editorial decisions because: a) she actually wrote two versions, and b) there were some sexually explicit entries in her diary that got left out for the initial publication. Subsequent editions added some of the deleted parts back in. Those later editions are also called Diary of a Young Girl. Here's a good article about it.
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
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
Aerosmith frontman asks Trump campaign to stop using song
Adele tells Donald Trump to stop pinching her songs for his campaign
When politicians use music without asking permission
95 years when the copyright is owned by a corporation IIRC, and face it, without that 95 year protection, Anne would never have written her diary due to lack of motivation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Meanwhile, aren't asshole politicians using copyright music during their campaigning, even against the express desires of the artists?
I heard one musician, think it was Randy Bachman, bitching because not only do they use his music (Taking Care of Business) without permission but then the campaign organization, who are responsible for all the shit that happens such as pirating music against the express wishes of the rights owner, goes bankrupt and is dissolved so there isn't even anyone to sue.
One law for us and no law for them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Blame the mouse house. Disney keeps lobbying for extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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.
Under Dutch law and many other countries laws, it is public domain, or do you think that Anne Frank needs the money?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
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."
From what I understand, the diary as published wasn't written by Anne but by her father largely/loosely based on her diary.
Your understanding is incorrect. There are two versions of the diary in Anne Frank's own handwriting - her original, and a more polished version she edited with a view to post-war publication.
That can never have happened, as Anne didn't even survive the war. She died in Feb or Mar '45 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. That was her father doing the edits.
I hope you do realise that neither of those versions is original. They are translations.
Copyright should be a fixed term, not based on the authors lifespan. Why should the works of a child be more valuable than those of an old man?
Meanwhile, aren't asshole politicians using copyright music during their campaigning, even against the express desires of the artists?
That depends. If an artist signs a contract with distributer xyz (not sure if that if the correct term for the industry) and xyz sells / licenses usage of the catalog of artist's music to someone, I would assume the artist loses the ability to approve / deny usage of their music. It depends on the terms of the different contracts.
If an artist doesn't want to lose control of the usage of their product (music), they need to either have terms that allow them some control or just not sign the contract. Of course, they would also lose the revenue.
Unless your contract allows control, you cannot have it both ways.
Patents now also don't protect the inventor, but rather some corporations.
The worse part is having to hear that litany about capitalism being good, when it's carefully avoided by said corporations...
First, it's not a matter of patent. It's copyright. There is a big difference.
Second, the artist had the "protection" up to the point where they signed to contract to allow the distribution. If the artist is getting paid for use of their product (music, in this case) and the terms do not give them the ability to control to whom the usage is sold, then they have nothing to say about the usage.
Capitalism is good. The artist got / gets revenue for usage of their product in exchange for giving up some level of control. The level of control is determined by the contract which they signed. They had a choice; sign, don't sign, or negotiate to get the level of control they want.
crap... i screwed up the quoting.
The first two lines were supposed to be a quote from the parent. My bad.
Anne Franke must surely be turning in her grave. She would have wanted it to be publicly available. Does the actual author have absolutely no say? How is it restrictive copyright is assumed if there is nobody to benefit from such restrictive regulation? Just WHOSE rights are they protecting in that event?
> Turns out you only need permission from the company with distribution rights, not the artist themselves.
Copyright seems not to protect the author, but corporations.
Patents now also don't protect the inventor, but rather some corporations.
The worse part is having to hear that litany about capitalism being good, when it's carefully avoided by said corporations...
The entire industry exists to feed the hyenas at the top.. preferably with meat from the carcass of the discarded artists...
The artists usually has absolutely NO idea during signing of the actual terms and / or the duplicity of the label. Plus they're usually broke stoned and in need of money and management.. all of which are promised if they just hand over publishing. Most artists aren't particularly good lawyers or accountants etc. Some are. They become super wealthy. Most live on( and carelessly blow) their advance and are dropped before they can ever hope to repay that amount. That they still owe back...
Figures. The DCMA people are Nazis and Nazism spreads like a disease..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Basing it on the author's lifespan isn't the issue, nor is extending the copyright period itself. What is wrong with the way that copyright has been extended is that the changes are retroactive. Copyright is, in essence, a contract between the creator of a work and the government, stating that for X period of time, the government will provide a mechanism under the law for the creator to enforce their control over the replication of their work, in exchange for releasing it to the public after that period. The government changing the period of copyright retroactively is changing the terms of a contract after the contract has been agreed to, and thereby committing a tort upon the citizenry by depriving them of their expectation of works entering the public domain under the terms of the copyright at the time of the work's creation.
This particular case is not about censorship. "The Diary of Anne Frank" is readily available if you buy it. This particular case is about money.
That said, this law, and other similar laws, are enablers of censorship. Any law that allows someone other than the author to withhold public availability of a work is an enabler of censorship.
THAT said, this is not an argument either for or against this particular law. I've made that in other places. This is an argument in favor of thinking clearly about what one is favoring or opposed to.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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)
As noted above, she was dreaming of the post-war future, though of course she never saw it. Her revision was prompted by a 'Radio Orange' radio broadcast from an exiled Dutch Government Minister in London, suggesting that wartime diaries and documents would be preserved after the Liberation as a record for future generations. But she can hardly have imagined that hers would become the most famous of all diaries of the Occupation.
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.
Which country do you refer to? It's not illegal to own or read in Germany...
This is going to blow your mind - Anne Frank did not know that she wasn't going to survive the war.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.