From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 10:36:37 +0000
As far as making sense is concerned, Mark Twain once wrote that the
only thing impossible for God was to make sense of any copyright law,
so your idea of what makes sense may not be a standard by which to
judge this case. If it were as simple and straightforward as you
suggest, groups of Swiss and Dutch lawyers would not be dedicating
billable hours to fighting over it.
Your first point about the public domain is incorrect on two counts.
As a factual matter, the Diary is not in the public domain. Its
copyright is set to expire this year, 70 years after Anne Frank's
death, and it would enter the public domain on January 1, 2016. So
the case is not about bring it back from the public domain; the
frantic efforts of those lawyers are about preventing it from becoming
public property in a few weeks by extending the copyright term. And,
in any case, it is possible to pull things back from the public
domain, as we know from the Supreme Court, which upheld the law that
restored copyright in foreign works that were PD in the U.S. Due to
failure to follow formalities. This is why the public domain needs to
be carefully guarded.
Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications
Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC 27708
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From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 12:26:52 -0600
If a work is on the public domain, you can't bring it back into
copyright protection again by adding anything to it. The original
diary cannot possibly be a joint work if it was written entirely in
Anne Frank's handwriting. And that was independently created, not
co-created with her father. Your reasoning here makes no sense.
Sandy
> From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 12:45:53 +0000
>
> I disagree that there is no question about the contents of the diary
> rising into the public domain; that is precisely the question
> involved, as Jim points out when he notes the central issue of whether
> Otto's editing qualifies him as a joint author. The unique
> circumstance of joint authorship is that the rights are shared without
> division; the question of who contributed what or how much is not
> raised. Instead, the copyright in the whole work is divided equally
> between the joint authors, and its term is measure by the life of the
> joint author who lives longest. So if a court accepts the claim that
> Otto was a joint author, the entire work, not just his contributions
> to it, would be protected for 70 years from the date of his death.
> That would include all of the content that is also contained in any
> transcript or facsimile.
>
> I am not saying that I believe in the claim of joint authorship in
> this case -- I think it is highly doubtful -- but we should understand
> that the Foundation is not making a small claim here, nor one that
> could be so easily circumvented.
>
> Kevin
>
> Kevin L. Smith
> Director, Copyright & Scholarly Communication
> Duke University Libraries
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 20:16:59 -0600
>
> Whatever the copyright status of the work as "edited" by Otto Frank
> may be, there can be no question that the contents of the diary itself
> will fall into the public domain. After all, Frank cannot claim that
> he did the actual writing of the diary! So the only thing that the
> copyright can possibly continue protecting is the edited version.
>
> Anyone can publish a facsimile or transcript edition of the diary
> itself. And presumably the web version could use that text for what
> it wants to do.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 08:59:16 -0700
>>
>> Some will have seen this in the New York Times:
>>
>> Anne Frank's Diary Gains 'Co-Author' in Copyright Move
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-g
>> ains-co-author-in-legal-move.html
>>
>> The narrow question is whether her father's editorial intervention
>> entitles him to status as co-author and thus extends copyright to 70
>> years past his death (in 1980); otherwise the work would go into the
>> public domain this year. There are other issues, not least the
>> competition between two foundations, one in Basel, one in Amsterdam,
>> the latter of which has been planning a web edition of the diary, open
>> access, to appear when the copyright expires. The father's foundation
>> in Basel that owns the copyright supports work to eradicate prejudice
>> and racism and offers medical support for holocaust survivors and
>> surviving individuals who protected Jews in Nazi times. I can find
>> only a German wikipedia article:
>> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank-Fonds
>>
>> So there conflicting legal and ethical views of this. I would offer a
>> strategic question. For the years 2015-2050 (the extension based on
>> the father's date of death), what advances the beneficial effect to be
>> gotten from this near-miraculous survival of a text that has meant
>> much to many: the dedicated application of the foundation's profits
>> or the extended audience for the book? I am persuaded for the latter,
>> mainly because I worry so much about the disappearance from cultural
>> view of much of the heritage of the 20th century if we do not succeed
>> in making the books of the 40s, 50s, 60s available in networked
>
> digital form. Does an author's estate do the author and his/her work
>>
>> more good by collecting royalties or by making the work more widely
>> known and accessible? Even Anne Frank could be forgotten: what would
>> prevent that most effectively?
>>
>> Jim O'Donnell
>> ASU
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