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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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/...
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