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."

Comments

Promotion of the useful arts

[JoshuaZ]

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.

Re:Promotion of the useful arts

[swb]

The problem seems to be that it's not really the artists pushing this, but the media empires that pushes the notion of perpetual, rent-seeking copyrights to shield business models.

The artist gets trotted out as phony victim of limits on copyright, like a marionette, and we're supposed to feel sorry for them and let the media empires keep finding ways to control all intellectual property forever.

In terms of performing artists, I think there's also a sense that they're being overcompensated for recordings -- basically a single performance. Historically, performers haven't made fortunes off narrow control of copyrighted material, they've been paid for performing. You strummed your lute at the Ye Olde Pub and collected some farthings. If you were lucky, you played for the court and got some gold coins.

Whether this is a fair concept or not, it's kind of how performers have been rewarded financially for most of history. Material inventions like dynamite seem to be different than creative performances.

Inherited Work

[Roger W Moore]

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?

Re: it's

[RDW]

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.

Re: it's

[porksauce]

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.

Re:it's

[dryeo]

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.