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.)