Simon Waldman, the director of digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers in Britain, obtained a 1938 article about Hitler’s home from Better Homes & Gardens and posted scans of it on his personal website. The magazine asked him to take it down, for violation of copyright. Should Waldman’s actions constitute copyright violation, or does it fall within a fair use?
Wired News: Old Hitler Article Stirs Debate
American law recognizes a “fair use” exception to copyright, which permits limited reproduction for critical, satirical or educational use, where copying would not affect the market for the original work. U.K. copyright, however, recognizes a related concept called “fair dealing,” which Jaszi said tends to be interpreted much more narrowly than its American cousin. He added that the “public interest” exception is more of a theory than a reality in current U.K. law, and probably would not apply to this case.
NY Times: Hitler at Home on the Internet
The episode is an object lesson in the topsy-turvy world of copyright and “fair use” — an area made far murkier by the distributive power of the Internet and the subsequent crisscrossing of international legal codes. In the United States, the posting would most likely be considered fair use, said Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “Reprinting the article now, 65 years after its original publication, strikes me as more like reporting or commenting on a news story, or fair use, than photocopying a current scientific article to save the cost of buying more magazines,” she said.
