Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/10/anne-frank-diary-removal/

by rosser • 10 years ago

451 182 10 years ago

blog.wikimedia.org

nness• 10 years ago

I find it startling that, with the current terms of copyright, no music I'm listening to today or even in the last decade will be in the public domain before I die.

i5733232• 10 years ago

It's life of the author + 70 years so even if Disney no longer extends the copyright it won't be available in the public domain before your children die.

eggy• 10 years ago

I am more distressed that a work by a German, at the time stateless in the Netherlands, that long ago, and given the global importance of such a work, that the U.S. even has the copyright. The explanation in Wikimedia I understand clearly, but I do not acept it.

matthewbauer2• 10 years ago

It's interesting that there's even debate over whether it's public domain in Europe:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-02/anne-franks-diary-goes...

Esau• 10 years ago

Because money.

legulere2• 10 years ago

Why should foreign stuff not be protected by copyright? Think about american movies or software written in america not being protected abroad.

It's also not the US that owns the copyright but the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, which got the copyright from her father.

kuschku• 10 years ago

If I live in a country where copyright term is 1 day, and I publish online every Disney movie ever created, the US will enforce US copyright terms on me.

Why does the copyright of where the reader lives, not where the publishing person lives, matter?

zodiac• 10 years ago

The US doesn't "have the copyright", the author or her heirs etc owns the copyright under US law

magicfractal• 10 years ago

That's barbaric. That's why civil disobedience is the only adequate answer to the current overreach of copyright in the united states. It's up to us, technologists, to create and disseminate tools to help out in the dismantlement of an absurd system that is obsolete in the digital age.

joesmo2• 10 years ago

I agree. Civil disobedience is the only solution to such anti-intellectual crusades of greed. The only problem is that people that work on such tools will be persecuted (and prosecuted) even if those tools are completely legal (see the pirate bay, popcorn time, and anything related to bittorent). Still, better to risk trying than to bow down to greed.

moron4hire• 10 years ago

That's kind of the point of civil disobedience. You acknowledge that the penalty is worth standing up for your cause.

rangibaby• 10 years ago

That is the cost of freedom.

brooklyndude2• 10 years ago

Civil disobedience was a lot harder to do in 1776 then 2016. Marching in the street will probably have you bio-scanned, in a database, linked to your Metro Card.

So Plan B?

coliveira• 10 years ago

Are you really upset about access to a book that you can find in any library? There are reasons to be upset about copyright, but this is just nonsense to me. If you really want to read this book so much, and for free, patronize your local library.

Nutmog2• 10 years ago

Just to make sure, do you always vote for parties that are opposed to long copyright terms? If you were eligible to vote and didn't do this, then you have yourself to blame. Politicians are ultimately accountable to their voters and whatever laws you don't like are probably in place because most people either do like them or don't bother to check what they're voting for.

vacri4• 10 years ago

In the US, the jurisdiction in the article, which party is that?

contravariant• 10 years ago

It's silly to claim you're not allowed to disagree with something unless you consider it the decisive factor when determining who to vote for.

MaulingMonkey• 10 years ago

Voting for parties that are nominally opposed to long copyright terms is insufficient to counteract copyright extension lobbying. There's only a couple parties out there that are meaningfully opposed to long copyright terms. Do you suggest we all vote for the Pirate Party?

Unfortunately the average voter around here would rather scream at each other about taxes, and simply commit copyright infringement...

wyager• 10 years ago

Voting against copyright is likely to be a waste of time.

It would be much more effective to help write software that assists in the violation of copyright law.

slg• 10 years ago

This logic is the reason why we have so many archaic laws surrounding the technology. Too often our community simply decides it is easier to ignore the law in question than trying to fight it and so we withdraw ourselves from the debate.

It isn't our job as technologist to build tools to circumvent the law. It is our job as technologist to educate politicians and the greater population as a whole why these issues are important. Sure, civil disobedience can be a tool in that fight, but that alone isn't going to change anything.

deciplex2• 10 years ago

If you think that education, or the lack thereof, of politicians anywhere is the reason for absurd copyright law across the entire globe, you really aren't paying attention.

There is no argument clever enough or convincing enough to overpower the flood of money and bullshit that keeps copyright law the way it is. You may as well argue against the law of gravity. The only solution is to deprive the bad actors of the funds they need to keep the system corrupt, and since most people (rightly, in my opinion) can't accept simply abandoning large parts of their culture to that fight, the only option left is to make piracy widespread, easy, and safe.

ivanca3• 10 years ago

"Educate politicians"

Nonsense. Politicians already settled their mind a long time ago, it was when they were in college or before that, now its way too late. You don't believe me? Try to convince creationist politicians about evolution, and it doesn't matter how many proofs you show them, the complete fossil record, they are not going to get educated, you can prove them evolution is not against their beliefs but it will not matter at all.

They hate getting educated as much as they hate reductions in their salaries.

scotty794• 10 years ago

Politicians don't get educated. They get bought. Do you have as much money as copyright industry? No? Then, no, you can't have your sensible laws. You'll have theirs. The only action you can take is to ignore those unenforcible.

artichokeheart• 10 years ago

"It isn't our job as technologist to build tools to circumvent the law."

That job is done CC-BY-SA. Your work (and derivatives) under this licence is guaranteed by copyright laws to be free to use, remix and resell (provided those rights are passed on) for your life plus 70 years.

alanwatts3• 10 years ago

I'm going to give you an important kind of a picture. I hear a lot of people say "I don't like machinery and technology, it's making a lot of trouble." So we're going to take all the machinery away from all the countries of the world, all machinery, all the tracks and the wires, and the works and we're going to dump it all in the ocean. And you will discover that within 6 months, 2 billion people will die of starvation having gone through great pain. So we say "That's not a very good idea lets put all the machinery back where it was." Then, we're going to take all the politicians from all the countries around the world and we're going to send them on a trip around the sun, and you'll find we keep right on eating. And the political barriers now... scientists say very clear you could make the world work and take care of 100% of the people at a higher standard of living that anyone has ever known despite the increasing population, but you can't do it with the barriers, any more than you can try run a human organism with a wall between the ear, the eye, and the stomach. It is an organic whole, it is total industrialization.

-Buckminster Fuller

Fuller claimed that the reason why we cannot take care of the greater population as a whole is not because we don't have the technical feasibility to do so but because we are trying to solve our problems with politics. Trying to solve the problems of the electric age by using the paper-based political framework is futile and self-defeating.

ensignavenger• 10 years ago

You seem to be presenting a false dichotomy. Why not do both?

pythia__• 10 years ago

It isn't our job as technologist to build tools to circumvent the law.

Would you say the same thing to those building tools to circumvent the great firewall of China?

hansen2• 10 years ago

It's on library genesis :)

mirimir• 10 years ago

I agree. Copyright is irreversibly wedged. The only workable course is to ignore it. As most people do, in practice, when they can get away with it. So the job for technologists is to make that easier.

cookiecaper3• 10 years ago

There's a lot of danger in leaving a generally-ignored law on the books. If you make enemies in law enforcement, it makes it easy for them to imprison you. The fact that copyright law is so widely ignored today is proof that it's not socially tenable in the face of new technologies.

Ideally, our law would be updated to match new technical innovations, but instead the scope is only getting extended so that it's easier to prosecute people who are using digital capabilities to do natural things.

We need to seriously analyze the role of intellectual property in our culture. Why are so many of the world's most massive companies people who are exploiting IP/copyright? The margins are pretty high when all you have to do is order new prints of a DVD, for example. Is this really a fair trade, or might we be giving too much away?

quadrangle• 10 years ago

The clearest call for copyright civil disobedience:

http://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/12/07/make-art-not-law-2/

sklogic• 10 years ago

Sometimes a demonstrative, grotesque civil obedience is even better.

tajen• 10 years ago

Let's get together with Wikipedia to mount a DMCA story to take down Wikipedia until the law is removed ;) ?

JoeAltmaier• 10 years ago

How about a server in a satellite, with a Tor feed of anything anybody wants to put up there? Out of reach of oversight etc.

njharman• 10 years ago

I'm very much against modern IP/Copyright.

But calling that barbaric is absurd hyperbole. It casts people wanting copyright reform as fringe extremists. When when I explain how much copyrights actually cover, for how long, and the extreme penalties for violations most people can't believe it (many don't, it's too absurd and conflicts with their property and profits world view. similar to how you can't convince a climate denier with facts). But, if they do, they realize that MPAA, RIAA, et al are the fringe extremists.

phlakaton• 10 years ago

They're fringe extremists who are nevertheless the appointed representatives of vast numbers of artists, producers, and heavily-monied interests.

We're a bunch of angry people.

I have no problem with people expressing the outrage of the situation in strong language.

(That being said, I too am an artist and sympathize with their plight. I wouldn't like some of you do away with copyright outright. But these laws as written are shackles and chains on our artists and culture as well.)

bitwize• 10 years ago

Hope you like federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. And the loathing and contempt of virtually all creative people everywhere.

See the thing about life+70 is that it has made a few people very rich, so cultural creatives are going to oppose not only attempts to roll back life+70, but also any attempt to roll back anticircumvention laws. They're hoping that they'll be the next to win the superstar lottery, and on the off chance that they do, they don't want their jackpot cut down from what previous superstars have netted. Never mind that vanishingly few people ever win this lottery, or that life+70 benefits publishers far more than it does performers.

In order for civil disobedience to actually work, there has to be popular support for the disobedience, so the cops and prosecutors don't feel like asshats for enforcing what looks to be an unjust and detested law. There just won't be that level of support for opposing copyright laws, not for at least your life + 70 years. So yeah, being sued or imprisoned is about the best you can hope for.

diziet2• 10 years ago

But who holds the copyright?

matthewbauer2• 10 years ago

I think it's the "Anne Frank Fonds".

http://www.annefrank.ch/

diziet2• 10 years ago

Established by Anne's father and editor. Ok. I wonder if the Wikimedia foundation reached out to the Fond. and tried to get permission for posting of the content, or does Wikimedia only do certain licenses?

noonespecial• 10 years ago

Just like that silly explanation of the width of railroad tracks starting with the width of a roman horse's ass, the question of "why can't I read the Diary of Anne Frank" starts with "so there was this cartoon for little kids in the '20's called Mickey Mouse..."

We reach this ridiculous situation by serious people taking a series of thoughtful actions a tiny bit at a time. But serious and thoughtful actions only add upon themselves with each step. Ridiculousness multiplies.

icebraining2• 10 years ago

Was it really bit by bit? In most of the world, the Berne convention - signed in 1886 - implemented a copyright length of author's life + 50 years. This was a massive leap for most countries.

Even in the US, the people behind the Sonny Bono Act (aka Mickey Mouse Protection Act) proposed indefinite copyright - MPAA's Jack Valenti actually suggested "forever less one day" to avoid the Constitutional restriction! The life + 50 years was the compromise they could reach.

pbhjpbhj4• 10 years ago

The contract of copyright is that you'll make works freely available in return for a time-limited monopoly enforced by the people, the demos, through the state.

A perpetual copyright would not be a copyright, there's no reason for the people to support it. If you could pass such an act I think it would show your regime to be something other than a democracy.

yardie• 10 years ago

They should have done that then made it retroactive. Then the heirs of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Grimm bros. can sue them into the dirt for copyright infringement.

Artoemius• 10 years ago

That's depressing. As I'm becoming older, I'm beginning to suspect that the bright sci-fi future isn't really going to come true after all, and we'll have to live in a sad bleak dystopia.

rocky1138• 10 years ago

Does anyone have a copy of it that we could seed on torrent?

hansen2• 10 years ago

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/

raddad• 10 years ago

https://archive.org/details/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl

Claims it is open source.

The torrent somebody asked for: https://archive.org/download/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl/A...

poizan42• 10 years ago

The Internet Archive is absolutely fearless when it comes to risk of litigation for copyright infringement. One could fear that it will be their dead.

empressplay2• 10 years ago

Apparently they have some sort of exemption (as an extension of the LoC?) but that's never been legally tested.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 10 years ago

They are indeed fearless. They have put up thousands of copyrighted video games, for example.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 10 years ago

The license info there is almost certainly wrong. On whose authority is it Creative Commons?

If it's in the "open source" collection, I think that's just because it hasn't been moved to a different one yet by administrators.

chris_wot• 10 years ago

Wow, that's appalling!

empressplay2• 10 years ago

Available on archive.org (and going nowhere):

http://web.archive.org/web/20160103110123/https://nl.wikisou...

gpvos• 10 years ago

Also at http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_%28Anne_Frank%29 , and just to be sure there is now also a copy at http://archive.is/http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_%...

Houshalter2• 10 years ago

Please read this: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976

And also look at the graphic on this page: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-mi...

Copyright serves a legitimate purpose. I doubt there would be many big budget games or movies produced without some degree of protection. The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to produce creative works. But it also needs to balance the benefits of that with the costs of restricting works from the public.

I believe that copyright should last 10 years. That sounds really short, but hear me out. The vast majority of works are not economically relevant after 10 years. And the ones that are, have usually earned 99% of their money within ten years. It's a power law, the first year gets vastly more money than the second year, than the third year, and so on. This is especially true for games and movies which are fast paced industries. It's also true for books and music, but the power law curve is a bit less steep.

There are exceptions to this, but they are just that - exceptions. The point is to provide an incentive for creators, not to give giant benefits to the outliers at the expense of the public.

Also originally copyright law had some additional measures to keep it from being restrictive. You had to actually register the copyright, not just grant it automatically, and you had to renew it halfway through. Which cost a few thousand dollars.

I also am very much in favor of derivative works. Fanfiction shouldn't be illegal, making a t shirt with your favorite character on it shouldn't be illegal, etc.

With this system you would be able to use old music, photos, software, books, movies, etc. As long as they were made before 2006.

Also trademark could handle some of the remaining issues. E.g. "Star Wars" could be a trademark of george lucas. You could make star wars derivatives, but you couldn't brand them with star wars. Consumers would be able to tell apart ripoffs from works by the original creator. Mickey mouse would still be a trademark of disney, but you could watch steamboat willy cartoons on youtube.

oconnor663• 10 years ago

I doubt there would be many big budget games or movies produced without some degree of protection.

I get where you're coming from, but I worry there's a ton of status quo bias in that doubt. Of all the bajillion ways to incentivize creativity, either with or without laws, how sure can we be that this is the best one?

dclowd9901• 10 years ago

It also presumes big budget movies and games are a net positive culturally, entertainingly or otherwise.

work-on-8282• 10 years ago

We should have a status quo bias when considering tearing down a certain fence, lest we be gored by Chesterton's bull.

kijin• 10 years ago

It doesn't even have to be a strict cutoff. The first 10 years might be free and automatic, but the Copyright Office could charge exponentially increasing fees for renewals afterward.

For example, $1K for the next 10 years, then $10K, then $100K... This means that only works that remain truly profitable in the long term will stay copyrighted. If Disney wants to pay $10B to keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted, they are welcome to do so. The extension fees could be put to good use improving the nation's public schools and libraries.

pitay2• 10 years ago

Another option is to tax intellectual property at the rate of real property in the countries that they want to claim copyright in. The holder of the copyrighted material will have to declare how much the intellectual property is worth, and be forced to put it in the public domain (or maybe transfer ownership) if some entity pays the declared worth of that asset.

pbhjpbhj4• 10 years ago

I think this is a generally sensible proposal that would garner much public support.

However, I would like to see moral rights retained for longer than 10 years - the right to prevent modification of the work, the right to be named as author, for example. Extending these to life+X years (but requiring free-gratis registration) seems fair to me as well.

zackmorris• 10 years ago

I think you are onto something, and the nice thing about this is that it provides a runway to move us to a basic income economy. Eventually (30, 50, 100 years from now) all property will be intellectual because anything will be 3D printable, biological agents will be synthesizable etc etc so this would allow everyone to benefit and still reward innovation.

Also, a flat tax favors the wealthy on a linear scale but is fairer on a logarithmic scale. So for example when income increases by 10 times, the corresponding tax rate could go up by 10% or something to that effect.

the_ancient• 10 years ago

> The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to produce creative works

False, the purpose, and only reason for copy right is to promote the useful sciences, all other reasons are UnConstitutional (from a US Stand point anyway)

The Surprising History of Copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

http://questioncopyright.org/learn

work-on-8282• 10 years ago

The full text of the clause is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

"Creative works" is as reasonable shorthand for "useful arts and sciences" as "privacy" is for "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects"

mindslight5• 10 years ago

If you're looking to strike a balance, there also needs to be a good-faith effort to make the work available to the public domain after the copyright term expires.

For software, the original creative work (source code) should need to be escrowed. And the same for any work obfuscated with DRM.

jdbernard5• 10 years ago

I disagree. I do not think there should be an obligation for a creator to give away their work after the copyright expires. They just no longer get the benefit of having a legal mechanism to prevent others from copying/using it.

jdietrich• 10 years ago

I agree that copyright should be shorter in duration, but I think some of your suggestions would be disproportionately harmful to independent artists.

Many songwriters rely on their back catalogue - a hit song serves as a pension, earning a steady trickle of royalties from radio play and sync usage. I don't see it as morally reasonable that, for example, a decade-old song could be used in a commercial without royalties being paid.

Requirements to register and renew would be trivial for large corporate rightsholders, but could be a substantial burden for independent artists, particularly at the beginning of their career.

The current situation of indefinite renewal serves nobody but the big publishers, but I think that a copyright term of approximately the life of the creator makes a great deal of sense. I'd be open to the idea of a shorter duration for works that have been assigned to a corporation. I'd also be open to the idea of a clearinghouse for orphan works, to ensure that orphan works can be used without unfairly disadvantaging artists.

rwmj• 10 years ago

Why doesn't a pension serve as their pension?

Houshalter2• 10 years ago

Losing 1% of their income from that tiny trickle of royalties is not a big deal. 99% of the income a work will bring is made in the first 10 years or so, after that the royalties are tiny compared to the initial value. Nothing is preventing the artists from investing the income they make so they have something to retire on, as people in all other careers have to do.

I agree the registration/renewal process could be burdensome on small creators. However the process does not need to be difficult, it could be a simple online form. And the renewal fee could be really low, perhaps $100.

The point is just to keep every single photo ever taken from ending up copyrighted. Which usually means unusable, since no one can track down every copyright owner and negotiate licensing fees when they just want to use a photo in their power point demonstration. Instead of being automatic, only things people explicitly want to copyright are protected.

emergentcypher• 10 years ago

I'd like to point out, in support of your arguments, that all artistic works are derivative. Creative works are not created in a vacuum. They copy and derive build upon the cumulative works of the rest of society. Nobody should ever have been entitled to a lifetime copyright.

brooklyndude2• 10 years ago

Ok, I know, first reaction, utter STUPIDITY of the human race. But don't let it down OK? There are some good, smart, people out there that care about it all. They're out there, they really are. Just keep looking. :-)

smhg• 10 years ago

Like the people in the Wikimedia Foundation.

killerpopiller• 10 years ago

but if it entered public domain in NL who can uphold Copyright in US? How can US law overrule dutch if it is of dutch origin?

icebraining2• 10 years ago

It doesn't "overrule" it. NL copyright law applies to NL, not to the US.

laurent123456• 10 years ago

I think the origin of the book doesn't really matter. The copyright was owned by her father Otto Frank, who then transferred it to the Ann Frank foundation, which still owns the copyright and can enforce it worldwide.

phicoh2• 10 years ago

The idea is that the copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author. It's really sad that the Anne Frank Fonds, which now hold the rights, claims that the diary was (partially) written by her father, Otto Frank.

JohnIcare• 10 years ago

Is there other story like the Anne Franck one? Why not boycot the museum in Amsterdam, the books and speak of others stories? That's cynical? Not more than the Anne Franck copyright's holders...

phicoh2• 10 years ago

No need to boycot the museum, that's not the organisation that has the copyrights.

solidangle• 10 years ago

You are mistaking the Anne Frank Foundation (Dutch: Anne Frank Stichting), which maintains the Anne Frank House and monitors racism (specifically anti-semitism) in the Netherlands, with the Swiss Anne Frank Fonds, which holds the copyright to her diary. It is currently under discussion whether or not the Anne Frank Fonds actually holds the copyright, as it has been more than 70 years since the death of Anne Frank copyright should have expired, but the Anne Frank Fonds claims that Otto Frank (Anne's father) was a co-author of the book.

anonymfus• 10 years ago

Why, considering that US copyright laws are ones of the worst, Wikimedia Foundation is still based here? They should move to other jurisdiction.

XJOKOLAT• 10 years ago

immediately downloads a digital copy as a matter of principle

throw99182• 10 years ago

Good to see the activism regarding copyright. On the other hand, when there is a real human who suffers like, say, Anne Frank, half of HN blames the victim.

blueflow• 10 years ago

Then just read "Mein Kampf" instead, its already free.

I could laugh if this wasn't for real.

based2• 10 years ago

Lawrence Lessig: Re-examining the remix

http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed

tome• 10 years ago

Lots of rage here against the US government, little rage against the Anne Frank Fonds that actually asserts the copyright.

If you really feel so strongly then go and rail against the foundation who could transfer the book into the public domain with least a million times (literally) less difficulty than it would take to get US copyright law changed to have the same effect.

http://www.annefrank.ch/qa-en.html

mtgx• 10 years ago

Well you know what they say when it comes to patents, too? "Hate the game, not the player".

But I'm fair, and I think we should hate both.

the8472• 10 years ago

But that would not fix the problem in general. Consider orphan works for example.

r0muald• 10 years ago

So today rally against the Anne Frank Fonds. Tomorrow against Disney. Then what? If the law creates an artificial incentive that damages the public good, are you going to separately criticize each one of those who take advantage of that, or to ask to change the law?

Shivetya• 10 years ago

there can be no public good if you deprive people of their property rights because you somehow take offense at their exercise of those rights.

While there should be some limit on how long you can retain copyright I seriously would not want it to be less than the current and following generation, if not the third.

dredmorbius• 10 years ago

Attacking Fonds is striking at branches. Attacking the law is striking at roots.

Rootstriking is vastly more efficient.

acd• 10 years ago

This relates to Disney and Mickey mouse as follows, everytime the copyright of mickey mouse was about to expire the copyright law has been extended.

"This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

Mickey mouse copyright vs works of Jewish girl killed by the Nazis.

ctingom• 10 years ago

So, who actually owns it?

hartator• 10 years ago

This foundation - http://www.annefrank.ch/ owns the copyright. It's meant for charity, but I don't think they realizes they are doing more damage by holding the copyright than whatever good the foundation is doing.

rajneeshgopalan• 10 years ago

What a shame.. such stories should be spread widely and rapidly!

Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law

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