Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
fogstorm wrote: So if an Australian puts it on his web site can the German government sue for copyright infringement? Can they prosecute for violation of their anti Nazi laws? If a German citizen views it in Amsterdam can his government prosecute when he returns home? they'll most likely try to, if only to avoid some left-wing magazine headline along the lines of "german government allows nazi propaganda to remain online". there will be NO prosecution for "viewing" it. almost everyone over 60 may have read the damn book, and lots of copies are still around (many people got one for their marriage or other events, and keep them as memoralia(sp?)). this ain't thought-police. you are perfectly free to read this thing. AFAIK you aren't allowed to sell it, but that's it.
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
At 08:02 PM 12/3/00 -0800, Lizard wrote: At 07:49 PM 12/3/2000, Danny Yee wrote: Lizard wrote: Really? Doesn't the Berne convention override national laws? Probably, yes. Does that mean national copyright laws only apply to their own citizens/residents? What happens in the case of dual citizenship? And does place of publication come into it? In most cases, national laws are altered to bring them 'in line' with treaties. (All treaties.) This has been an issue in the US, where the SC has ruled that a treaty cannot violate the constitution...or, rather, that it doesn't matter WHAT Congress agreed to, the Constitution will trump any laws passed to institute it. I don't know if Australia's joined Berne (I assume yes) or how they've implemented it. Copyright laws, like most laws, only apply in whatever jurisdiction the government that writes them can get away with enforcing them. (For most countries, that's their national boundaries, plus occasionally expatriate citizens; for some, it's quite a bit less :-) Traditional Chinese copyright law only applied to civilization, i.e. Chinese-language books written by Chinese; stuff written by barbarians wasn't provided, so lots of my Taiwanese fellow students in college had much lower-cost versions of US-written textbooks, and that tradition was adapted to software on CD-ROMs at least until recently. In the US, that doesn't really affect copyright - the US Constitution doesn't go into any depth on the details of copyright law, so the US Congress was perfectly free to replace the previous details with Berne convention details. The one arguable exception is that the Const. authorizes grants of patents and copyrights for limited periods of time, and the current definitions of "limited" for copyright keep getting stretched; I think it's now "75 years after you're dead, or pretty much forever if you're a corporation". The general comment I've heard from lawyers is that copyright lengths will keep getting extended indefinitely to prevent Mickey Mouse's image from going off copyright. That this might somehow change is a favorite paranoia of a loony right. (And, were it likely to occur, it would be a justifiable paranoia...it would allow the legislature to do an end-run around the Bill of Rights. For example, the US as it stands CANNOT ban 'hate speech' from US-hosted servers, even if Europe pressured them into signing a treaty to do so.) No, but Congress does a pretty good job of passing Unconstitutional laws already :-( The treaty trick that's been going on, at least in the ReaganBushClinton years, is for the administration to haggle other countries into a treaty or lower-status-than-treaty agreement about something obnoxious, like drugs laws or crypto export restrictions, then bully Congress into implementing legislation for it "because we've already negotiated it with our major partners". Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
Lizard wrote: Really? Doesn't the Berne convention override national laws? Probably, yes. Does that mean national copyright laws only apply to their own citizens/residents? What happens in the case of dual citizenship? And does place of publication come into it? Danny.
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
At 07:49 PM 12/3/2000, Danny Yee wrote: Lizard wrote: Really? Doesn't the Berne convention override national laws? Probably, yes. Does that mean national copyright laws only apply to their own citizens/residents? What happens in the case of dual citizenship? And does place of publication come into it? In most cases, national laws are altered to bring them 'in line' with treaties. (All treaties.) This has been an issue in the US, where the SC has ruled that a treaty cannot violate the constitution...or, rather, that it doesn't matter WHAT Congress agreed to, the Constitution will trump any laws passed to institute it. That this might somehow change is a favorite paranoia of a loony right. (And, were it likely to occur, it would be a justifiable paranoia...it would allow the legislature to do an end-run around the Bill of Rights. For example, the US as it stands CANNOT ban 'hate speech' from US-hosted servers, even if Europe pressured them into signing a treaty to do so.)
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
Duncan Frissell wrote: Germany's Kampf Furor Renews by Steve Kettmann actually, contrary to almost all other cases of censorship (not that I say this isn't) the german state of bavaria owns the COPYRIGHT of "mein kampf", and as such actually has some kind of standing in most of the cases. yeah, it's still censorship, but at least they were bright enough to do it in an intelligent way. in essence, only copies printed before 1945 are actually legal, because the copyright owner (bavaria) has not authorized any later printings.
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
At 4:43 PM +0100 12/2/00, Tom Vogt wrote: Duncan Frissell wrote: Germany's Kampf Furor Renews by Steve Kettmann actually, contrary to almost all other cases of censorship (not that I say this isn't) the german state of bavaria owns the COPYRIGHT of "mein kampf", and as such actually has some kind of standing in most of the cases. yeah, it's still censorship, but at least they were bright enough to do it in an intelligent way. in essence, only copies printed before 1945 are actually legal, because the copyright owner (bavaria) has not authorized any later printings. This is misleading. There is much debate about ownership of the copyright, whether it has expired (as would normally be the case after roughly 70 years, whether the licenses sold to other publishers are valid, etc.). And it has been published by several publishing houses, which makes the Yahoo case apropos. For example: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/webedit/001014kampf.htm On the trail of the Mein Kampf royalties More from the government vaults By David Whitman On Oct. 20, 2000, Houghton Mifflin informed U.S.News World Report that it would donate all royalties from the sales of Mein Kampf that the firm has received since 1979 to an as-yet-unspecified charity. Since 1979, Houghton Mifflin has collected about $400,000 in royalties alone from the sale of Mein Kampf. The publishing house will also donate future royalties from Mein Kampf to charity. ... --end of excerpt-- There are many more such reports about royalties, copyright. Quite odd that the publisher Houghton Mifflin would say they are donating all royalties since 1979 if in fact no copies have been published since 1945! Even more odd if some of us have copies in our libraries which were published much more recently than 1945. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
Re: Buying Mein Kampf via the Net
Actually, the *US* copyright was siezed by the US government at the beginning of the war and not returned to Germany until the last decade or so. So there are plenty of US copies that would remain legal. In Australia at least, I think Mein Kampf is now out of copyright (it's still 50 years from death of author here). Danny.
