Anne Frank's Diary... And Hitler's Mein Kampf Hit The Public Domain In Europe - Despite Concerns About Both

from the and-off-we-go dept

Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler both died in 1945 -- with Frank's death being caused by Hitler. European law (for now) says that copyright lasts 70 years "after death" of an author, and that means that the published writings of each of those individuals are now in the public domain in Europe -- though there's serious controversy about both. Even though we won't see any new public domain works here in the US for quite some time, over in Europe, at least some works are able to enter the public domain each January 1st.

As we noted a couple months ago, the Anne Frank Foundation (Anne Frank Fonds) has been lying and telling people that Frank's father, Otto Frank, is a co-author of the diary and therefore the copyright doesn't expire until 70 years after his death. Otto Frank, obviously, did quite a lot to get his daughter's diaries published and spread around the world. And for that, people should be thankful. But the attempt to keep the work under copyright is shameful and pure copyfraud, and it tarnishes the image of the Anne Frank Fonds, which has done much good in the world.

And while the Foundation insists that it will fight any plans to release the book, it appears that many are ignoring such threats. French Parliament member Isabelle Attard, who has been vocal in criticizing the copyfraud attempt, has posted a copy of the text in the original Dutch on her personal website. Meanwhile, the Internet Archive appears to have the full text in English, though it actually appears to be a later edited version of the diaries, which is not in the public domain (though the Archive says it's relying on fair use for the posting).

And now we wait to see if the promised legal action follows...

Meanwhile, over in Germany, Hitler's Mein Kampf is available for the first time in decades. As we've discussed in the past, the copyright story on Mein Kampf is somewhat bizarre. The US government seized it after the end of World War II, and then transferred it to the government of Bavaria, who used it to bar all printing of the book in Germany. There had been some panic that making the book available would increase neo-Nazi sentiment in Germany, but it also might better educate the public on the insanity that was Adolf Hitler. As we noted last year, there was also a bizarre instance back in the 1930s when future Senator Alan Cranston tried to publish Mein Kampf in America to show just how batshit crazy Hitler was (an officially published version in the US had been watered down to hide much of the craziness) -- and Hitler and his publisher sued over the publication, helping to get the original Mein Kampf censored in the US.

The new version being released in Germany is (smartly) an annotated version "with thousands of academic notes, [which] will aim to show that Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive."

Still, German officials claim that they are going to try to "limit public access" to the original text, even though it will be (and, let's face it, already is) widely available on the internet.

Filed Under: adolf hitler, anne frank, copyright, diary of anne frank, europe, germany, mein kampf, public domain
Companies: anne frank fonds

That Time Hitler Used Copyright Law To Block Future Senator Alan Cranston From Publishing Mein Kampf

from the wtf dept

We've written in the past about the somewhat bizarre copyright history of Adolf Hitler's infamous book Mein Kampf. The copyright is currently held by the state of Bavaria (which got it from the US government after the US seized the Nazis' publishing house at the end of World War II). Bavaria has used the copyright to bar the publication of the book in Germany for decades. However, in the past few months, extra attention has been paid to it because the copyright is set to expire at the end of the year, putting the book into the public domain in Germany.

But, apparently, that's not even the most interesting story about copyright and Hitler. David Post has a fascinating post about copyright as censorship, which starts out about the Katz v. Chevaldina case that we've written about in the past. It involved Ranaan Katz, the partial owner of the Miami Heat, who was upset about comments a blogger, Irina Chevaldina, was making about him on her blog. Katz went so far as to acquire the copyright on an "unflattering photo" that Chevaldina had used in a blog post mocking him and then sued Chevaldina (and Google, which hosted the blog on its Blogger platform, but was eventually dropped from the suit) for infringement. This was after Katz had tried and failed to sue Chevaldina for defamation. So, instead, he decided to use copyright law to censor her. It was a perfect example of what Matthew Schruers has shrewdly called copyright "immigration," where people who can't censor people through other laws turn to copyright as a last resort.

The amazing thing was that it actually worked at first. The court sided with Katz and issued a ridiculously broad injunction, raising questions about copyright misuse and (of course) the First Amendment. Eventually, though, the court got it right, noting that the use of the photo was clearly fair use. Katz, not getting the message, appealed his SLAPP suit, and it's now before the 11th Circuit, which will hopefully make quick work of it. If you want to read more about that, I highly recommend the EFF's amicus brief and its related blog post.

So... what the hell does all of that have to do with Hitler?

Well, in that article by David Post, he points out that there's actually a fairly long history of people using copyright for censorship -- and it turns out that none other than Adolf Hitler apparently liked to use copyright this way (yes, this post is pre-Godwin'd -- deal with it). And, to make this even stranger, apparently Hitler used that copyright-as-censorship/copyright immigration plan against then-news reporter/future Senator Alan Cranston. Cranston himself explained what happened in an interview:

While I was doing my foreign correspondence work, I read Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, the book he wrote while he was in prison before he became the dictator, outlining his plans for Germany and the terrible things he intended to do in the world. There was no English language version of it. When I quit journalism and came back to try to get involved in activities in the United States, one day in Macy's bookstore in New York I saw a display of Mein Kampf, an English language version, which I'd never seen before, which hadn't existed. I went over to look at it out of curiosity and as I picked it up, I knew it wasn't the real book. It was much thinner than the long book that I had read, which is about 350,000 words. So I bought it to see how come. And delving into it I found that it was a condensed version, and some of the things that would most upset Americans just weren't there as they were in the version I had read, the original, in German.

So I talked to an editor friend of mine in New York, a Hearst editor named Amster Spiro, and suggested that I write and we publish an anti-Nazi version of Mein Kampf that would be the real book and would awaken Americans to the peril Hitler posed for us and the rest of the world. So we did that. I spent eight days [compiling] my version of Mein Kampf from the English language version that I now had, the original German language version, and another copy that had just appeared. A book was then selling for around three dollars normal price. Hitler was getting forty cents royalty for each copy that somebody bought that wasn't [even] the real thing. We proceeded to print in tabloid the version that I wrote, with a very lurid red cover showing Hitler carving up the world, and we sold it for ten cents on newsstands. It created quite a stir. Some Nazis went around knocking down newsstands that displayed it in St. Louis and the German part of New York and elsewhere in the country. We sold half a million copies in ten days and were immediately sued by Hitler's agents on the grounds we had violated his copyright, which we had done. We had the theory that [though] he had copyrighted Mein Kampf in Austria, he had destroyed Austria with his army, so we said he destroyed his copyright at the same time. Well, that didn't stand up in court, and a Connecticut judge ruled in Hitler's favor. No damages were assessed, but we had to stop selling the book. We got what was called an injunction. But we did wake up a lot of Americans to the Nazi threat.

If you're interested, the case is Houghton Mifflin v. Stackpole Sons, and it's an interesting read. The issues are certainly a bit different, but it does show that Hitler and his publishers looked to actively prevent Americans from knowing the full extent of his views... using copyright law. As Post notes:

It was not copyright law’s finest hour – its Korematsu, one is tempted to say. Hitler gets to continue to receive royalties, and to control publication of his book, 10 weeks before he marches into Poland and war breaks out in Europe. The defendant doesn’t seem to have raised “fair use” as a defense in the case, relying instead entirely on a theory that because Adolf Hitler was a “stateless person”, any assignment of his copyright rights was invalid....

It’s hard to know whether there’s something noble about a US federal court going through the arcana of international copyright jurisprudence in order to give Hitler – even Hitler! – his day in court, or appalling that it would allow copyright law to be mis-used in a matter of such crucial public importance.

So, now, next time you feel like Godwin'ing any conversation on copyright-as-censorship, feel free to just declare "that's like something the Nazis would do!" and point to this story.

Filed Under: adolf hitler, alan cranston, censorship, copyright, fair use, irina chevaldina, mein kampf, ranaan katz

Hey Everyone: Stop Freaking Out That Mein Kampf Sells Well As An eBook

from the know-thy-enemy dept

So, hey, you guys remember that Hitler guy from a while back? You know, the one who occasionally is posed as the KFC colonel, or who can be found ranting about the DMCA process, and is somehow worked into every bad argument about anyone with whom people are in a disagreement? Well, it turns out he was also a guy who, years back, was a real bastard and sometimes enjoyed writing down exactly how and why to be a bastard just like him. Those writings were called Mein Kampf, the manifesto that later became the blueprint for the Nazi party, who, as you know, were organized around the idea that a political party could, in fact, personify evil. Then America, all by themselves, with absolutely no help from Britain or Russia, dismantled Hitler's Germany and restored all that is right and beautiful to the world (history, as I learned it in American public schools...). After that period, reading Mein Kampf, or owning it, became taboo. Efforts were made in Germany, in fact, to ban the book outright. Being seen in public with a copy would be tantamount to accepting its ideals, because we humans apparently don't understand anything at all.

But now, in the era of eBooks, it turns out that Mein Kampf is a hit once more, and it has certain well-meaning advocacy groups chasing enemies that don't exist.

"While the academic study of Mein Kampf is certainly legitimate, the spike in ebook sales likely comes from neo-Nazis and skinheads idolizing the greatest monster in history," World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer told ABC News in an emailed statement. "We think that responsible companies shouldn't profiteer from the sales of hate books, or at least should donate the profits to help the victims of anti-Semitism, racism and other like bigotries," he said.

Put more simply, popularity of the book as recorded by sales numbers means that the Nazi movement is returning and no company should allow the book to be sold. Or, if they do allow it, they should donate all profits to those who fight bigotry. Bigot is an interesting word however, which is in part defined as "a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc." You know, like someone who would label anyone buying a book of bad ideas and immediately decide those same people were deficient enough to not know they're bad ideas. Freedom of speech and thought is most important when it concerns speech and thought that is downright dastardly. After all, how are we to know who the bastards are if we don't allow the bastards to tell us they're bastards? Even more to the point, how are we to learn they're bastards if we don't listen to or read them? The entire phrase "Know thy enemy" apparently eludes Mr. Singer.

Which, as it turns out, is almost certainly besides the point. People aren't buying Mein Kampf on eBooks because they're neo-Nazis. They're interested in one of the most well-known historical figures of our time and they can finally read the book, while disagreeing with it, on the subway without everyone else looking at them like they were the scum you clean out of your bathtub.

"The popularity of the digital Ford translation of Mein Kampf has surged due to academic interest in the subject." Elite Minds President Michael Ford told ABC News in an email. "With digital readers, no one faces the stigma of having a copy of Mein Kampf on their bookshelf or risks it being seen on a table and having visitors make false assumptions about their reasons for owning it. They can read it in the subway without fear of being mistaken for a racist just because they want to learn about history," Ford said.

It's so obvious, I can't believe anyone actually missed that. Because guess what else became hugely popular on eBook platforms? 50 Shades Of Gray, and I'm thinking it's highly unlikely that most folks reading that novel are into that level of kinky sex. It's a controversial book that some might find embarrassing to read in public with a huge book cover broadcasting the undertaking. Just like Mein Kampf.

So quit it with the moral panic. You can't claim to understand the genesis of the Nazi party, or really even World War 2, without reading that book. Yes it's evil, yes it's wrong, and yes it was the ravings of a mass murdering lunatic. But reading it doesn't make you the same and knowing the mind of an enemy is more important than burying hateful speech.

Filed Under: ebooks, hitler, mein kampf