Ownership Vs The Copyright Law
A case, quoted by Dresen, the general council of Random House, to be a “sad day for Germany” entitles the case of Joseph Goebbels’s book by Peter Longerich, a professor of modern German history at Royal Holloway, University of London. The biography of Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, implements extensive pieces of information and extracts from Goebbels’s own diaries. This provoked the lawyer Cordula Schacht to take legal action and sue Random House Germany for their publication requesting payments for Goebbels family (Alberge, 2015).
To start off, copyright in definition is the exclusive right attributed to the inventor of a creative and unique work that protects forms of literature, video, film, software, art, music, choreography, and architectural works. It is important that it be in a perceptible medium of communication such as image, tape, notation, or any digital form. However, ideas and facts are not themselves entitled under the protection of copyright, but it is the special ways in which they are expressed. (Packard,2013). Copyright comes not only as a mean to protect author’s right to their unique expressions, but also promotes the progress and investments of new information and ideas to build on previous works. In this case, it has always been a debate whether the copyright should be tangible when it comes to historical context. It is true that the author of the creative work has the fair belonging to his own historical documents, however, it is also the right of the public to be well informed about their historical events as part of the educational and cultural profit, and to have the access to quote and refer to previous work without the interference of money as a form of ownership hindering the progression of any creative aspect.
Goebbels Diaries are a great insight revealing the perspective of the Nazis and his role in the death of millions of Jews (Milliken, 2015). He knew that through his diaries he was contributing in an essential part of history, since they were used for microfilms. To avoid propaganda, these microfilms were hidden, but they were later found in Moscow in the year 1992 after the fall of the USSR (Mullin, 2015). According to the law of copyright in Germany, people have the right to cite authors when they publish their work if the purpose of this publication serves a justifiable reason(Germany Copyright, n.d). In this case, the reason is the public’s right to access information which is put at stake because of the inflexibility of the copy right law. However, the Goebbels case is different from any other case for example, the secretive billionaire Howard Hughes that took the copyright in a magazine article about his life and tried to use it to stop publication of an unauthorized biography. The court instead refused the effort to use this copyright to perform an act of private censorship by finding that the biographer had made fair use of the article (Sameulson, 2002). In this case, courts have raised fair use to prevent the exercise of copyright as a way of censoring content of which the copyright owner disapproved. So, the question here is Why would it be considered an offense to cite a war criminal if he had important diaries? Is there a protection for copyright violation or is it just a matter of selfishness?
The publisher’s intention was not to change Goebbels’ work, but to highlight and comment on the Nazi party’s actions and his political views instead. This was made for the benefit of the public as they become educated about their own history. Moreover, when creators do not allow other people to freely cite from their work, they are exploiting the right of people to access and information and thus implementing power by demanding money and obviously taking advantage of the situation Nevertheless, the people who got injured and traumatized by the war are to be concerned about more than the extent to which a copyright functions in a situation of historical context.
Nonetheless, to try to resolve the controversial issue around copyright and its limitless cases, it is important to look at the purpose each case aims at. In the Goebbels’ issue, the purpose being an educational one, Random House should be held the right to cite and extract freely from Goebbels’ Diaries. Second, if any money should be paid for disrespecting the copyright law, then the charities taking care of the destruction are the most legitimate to donate to. Finally, the events happening at that time during the Nazi regime were of great importance in the German history. Yet, basing the access of information on the afford of money restricts the ideas only to a certain social class and thus, is a disregard for important historical events.
References:
Alberge, D. (2015, July 09). Joseph Goebbels’ family win legal battle to be paid royalties for diary extracts. Retrieved April 17, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/09/joseph-goebbels-family-royalties-diaries-nazi-propaganda-minister
Alberge, D. (2015, April 17). Random House told it should pay to quote Joseph Goebbels in biography. Retrieved April 17, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/18/random-house-told-it-should-pay-to-quote-joseph-goebbels-in-biography
Germany Copyright — Getting The Deal Through — GTDT. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2018, from https://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/6/jurisdiction/11/copyright-germany/
Milliken, A. (2015, July 10). Goebbels estate wins lawsuit over diaries’ copyright. Retrieved from News Week: http://europe.newsweek.com/goebbels-estate-wins-lawsuit-over-diaries-copyright-330113
Mullin, J. (2015, July 13). Top Nazi’s estate owed copyright royalties by biographer, German court rules. Retrieved from ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/biography-publisher-ordered-to-pay-copyright-fees-to-goebbels-estate/
Packard, A. (2013). Invasion of Privacy. In Digital Media Law (p. 179). New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken.
Samuelson, P. (2002). Copyright and Freedom of Expression in HistoricalPerspective. Retrieved from https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=facpubs
