[ga] [Fwd: [A2k] Nazi propaganda reprints: Copyright as a tool of censorship]

["Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All

  Oh my and mercy sakes!  More Complicity perhaps?  

As yet another interesting FYI:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [A2k] Nazi propaganda reprints: Copyright as a tool of
censorship
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:28:04 í??
From: Pranesh Prakash <pranesh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: NLS IP <nls-ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,Commons Law
<commons-law@xxxxxxxxx>,A2K Discussion List <a2k@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Dear All,
Here's an interesting example of using a copyright claim to prohibit
reprints of Nazi propaganda newspapers (and a German edition of Mein
Kampf) by a bunch of historians.  While discussion of its Nazi past
can be a very sensitive issue in Germany, it is very interesting to
see how it isn't anti-Nazi and hate speech laws that are being used to
suppress the speech but copyright.

- Pranesh

------

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0119/1232059658778_pf.html

Reprints of Nazi newspapers a big hit in Germany

DEREK SCALLY in Berlin

Mon, Jan 19, 2009

FROM CRYSTALS to miniature tractors, every January magazine publishers
try to convince people that now is the time to start collecting
something.

A British publisher has come up with the idea of selling reprints of
Nazi newspapers to German customers.

You can imagine the sales pitch: "Week by week, your collection will
grow into a fascinating overview of the virulent propaganda that
polluted a nation's psyche and started a war that brought Europe to
its knees."

The Zeitungszeugen (Newspaper Witnesses) series, juxtaposing reprints
with modern analysis and comment, has been a huge hit and the first
issue, including pages from Der Angriffâ?? editor Joseph Goebbels â??
has
all but sold out in the German capital.

And so, as the rest of the world reads about the inauguration of US
President-elect Barack Obama this week, tens of thousands of
Zeitungszeugen readers will be catching up with Der Angriff's account
of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in January 1933.

"We want to give people the opportunity to form their own picture not
only of the political events," says series editor, historian Sandra
Paweronschitz, "but also of the era in which these events took place
and the attitudes to life at that time, for example by reading the
classifieds or the film guide."

Historian Wolfgang Benz, who worked on the project, described the
reprints of original material as less harmful than the endless series
of slick documentaries that run on German television every night.

But involving several leading German historians in the project hasn't
placated Germany's Jewish community. Ralph Giordano, one of Germany's
most prominent Holocaust survivors, suggested that the series was an
indication that "Hitler was defeated militarily, but not
intellectually".

On Friday evening, the Bavarian state government slapped a ban on the
project just as publishers readied issue two â?? a reprint of the
vitriolic Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi party paper.

Officials in Munich announced that the publication was a breach of
copyright it has held since absorbing the assets of the main Nazi
publishing house, Eher, in 1945.

The publishers of Zeitungszeugenhave admitted they were aware of the
copyright, but declined to apply for permission for fear of being
refused.

Now the company has vowed to fight a ban they call "an attack on press
freedom".

That could lead to an interesting legal battle, as some legal
observers in Germany have claimed the copyright on the Nazi newspapers
has long since expired.

It is the latest round in a long-running battle in Germany about
whether to keep Nazi documents locked up or to distribute them for
educational purposes.

Last year, leading historians called on the Munich government to
permit a new German-language publication of Hitler's Mein Kampf, to
which it also holds the rights.

They want to see an annotated version on sale before the work enters
the public domain in 2015. Then, 70 years after the dictator's death,
far-right fringe parties in Germany plan to flood the country with
their own cheap copies of the work.

(c) 2009 The Irish Times

--
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society

T: +91 80 40926283
W: http://cis-india.org
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