Buying Mein Kampf via the Net

[Tim May]

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







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