I think you raise a very good point, Jonathan.  Anne Frank's diary is not
just any book.

Paradoxically, the very fact that this is a special book by a special
author is also the reason why many people - especially in the Netherlands -
are uncomfortable about the recent and unexpected introduction of the
possibility that there is a co-author.

Definitely, this is a very sensitive issue and Wikimedia Nederland is
proceeding very, very cautiously.  No-one should play copyright games with
Anne Frank's diary.

(For those interested, ENWP has good information on the copyright issues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl#Copyright_and_ownership_dispute)


Sandra Rientjes
Directeur Wikimedia Nederland
06 31786379

verzonden vanaf mobiel
I may have an unpopular view here, but when an author has been murdered,
especially one so young, I find it distasteful to try to make that a test
case re copyright. If Anne Frank hadn't been murdered she might well still
be alive today, and presumably her work would still be in copyright.

By all means we should be encouraging people to freely license things
openly, and arguing for open licensing against those who claim copyright on
faithful copies of out of copyright work, and for freedom of panorama in
countries less open about such things than Armenia or the UK.

I'm sort of OK about as Michael Maggs put it  using it to "increase
awareness of the excessive length (95 years) of some US copyright terms."
Though I'd hope there are other examples where we don't look like taking
advantage of the murder of a child. I'm also OK with using this as an
example of us taking copyright seriously.

But though it is an important work, is it really one we should be trying to
force into the open against the wishes of a charity set up by her relatives?

Regards

Jonathan/WereSpielChequers



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