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Originally Posted by Phogg
Why would families of similar figures not destroy such documents if copyright is abrogated?
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In my country, the United States, we have a "fair use" doctrine protecting biographers from having to worry about copyrights on the quotations they use. And yet, our archives are filled with diaries of famous people.
Authors and publishers in Germany don't normally pay for quotations. But because the law there isn't as clearly in favor of serious nonfiction, there's more opening for the child of a cabinet member, Nazi or otherwise, to seek compensation.
I'm not rah-rah US, in general. But on this one issue, we have it right, as explained here:
[Link with affiliate tag deleted - MODERATOR]
EDITED: Sorry about that. To give credit where due, the author of the following quotation is Mike Masnick, and the website I found it on is TechDirt.com.
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Tragically for both Germany and the UK, neither have fair use. The UK does have a narrowly targeted "fair dealing" concept that likely does not cover this kind of scholarly publication.
Yet, this seems to show just why fair use is such an important concept. Being able to have academic experts properly quote historical source material in writing up biographies and other analyses of historical events and people seems like a no brainer for anyone hoping to properly study and record history. Using copyright to try to lock up such information (or to put a tollbooth on it) only serves to massively limit the ability of our society to accurately study and learn from history -- especially history as tragic as Nazi Germany.
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