Anne Frank's Diary Removed From Wikisource

The first edition of Anne Frank’s diary has been removed from Wikisource due to copyright issues.

16:36 15 February 2016

Wikisource has voluntarily removed a digital copy of Het Achterhuis, the first version of Anne Frank’s diary in the belief that the copyright expired in January 2016. However, it is protected until 2042 according to the US law.

 

The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs both Wikipedia and Wikisource, said its action “was unfortunate example of the overreach of the US’ current copyright law.”

 

It added: "In general, the US copyright for works published before 1978 is 95 years from date of publication.”

 

"Foreign works of countries that are treaty partners to the United States are covered as if they were US works."

 

The confusion was due to the varying legislation of different countries. Under European law, books typically leave copyright 70 years after the author’s death. January 2016 marks the 70th anniversary of Anne Frank’s death.

 

"Copyright duration can be tricky to determine because the rules can be different in different countries, it can depend on facts that are very difficult to determine and the law as applied to those facts can be complex," said Adam Rendle, a UK copyright lawyer at Taylor Wessing.

 

"It gets even trickier when different versions have been published and different authors have had different levels of input into those versions, as seems to have happened here."