Project:Why are some of Wittgenstein’s texts missing from this website?: Difference between revisions

<div style="border: 1px solid silver; border-radius: 3px; padding: 20px;">''This essay in a nutshell: Most of Wittgenstein’s works we are used to refer to by a book title were published posthumously, in some cases with little intervention by his literary executors, in some other cases after undergoing extensive editing. This poses a copyright issue, because the editor’s work might add a further “layer” of intellectual property protection. The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is determined to treat copyright issues with the greatest care and will only publish texts the copyright status of which is beyond reasonable doubt. This article should be considered a Ludwig Wittgenstein Project policy statement as of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}.''</div>

Copyright protects the output of all intellectual activity that has a creative nature, as opposed to the result of mere sweat-of-the-brow work. Of course, case law varies country by country, but there is a general, worldwide convergence toward the concept that a “threshold of originality” must be met in order for a work to be copyrighted. For example a verbatim transcription, just like the scan of a sheet of paper, does not generate new intellectual property rights, because it is purely mechanical in nature: if the transcribed text, or the scanned picture, are in the public domain, so are the transcription and the scan. A translation, on the other hand, requires an amount of thought and choice that makes it a creative work in its own right, so that even if the original-language edition of a book is out of copyright all new translations of that text are, by default, copyrighted.

Anne Frank was murdered in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Her diary was expected to enter the public domain in Holland, as well as in other countries with a 70-years copyright term, on 1 January 2016. In 2015, however, representatives of the Anne Fank Fonds, the foundation that inherited the rights to the diary after the death of Anne Frank’s father, Otto, released an announcement claiming that, because the diary was co-authored by Otto Frank himself, the text would only enter the public domain after the expiration of the 70-years term after ''his'' death, which occurred in 1980.<ref>Dwyer, C. (31 December 2015). <span class="plainlinks">[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/31/461606275/mein-kampf-enters-public-domain-arguably-anne-franks-diary-may-too "'Mein Kampf' Enters Public Domain; Arguably, Anne Frank's Diary May, Too"]</span>. ''National Public Radio''. Retrieved 14 December 2021; Carvajal, D. (13 November 2015). <span class="plainlinks">[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-gains-co-author-in-legal-move.html "Anne Frank's Diary Gains 'Co-Author' in Copyright Move"]</span>. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved 14 December 2021.</ref> Otto Frank indeed played a meaningful role in preparing the original 1947 edition of the diary by collating and editing his daughter’s original handwritten notes. The claim that he was a “co-author”, however, was never made before 2015, and when it was made it was regarded by many as a move to ensure the foundation’s income for another generation at the expense of humanity’s right to freely access one of the most important books documenting the horrors of its recent history.