Breach of copyright! - photographs

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, all.

Franek - you are certain that this EPA act is relevant for everything created under german copyright law? For which timespan? 1933 - May 1945? September 1939 - May 1945? Dec 1941 - May 1945?

If this is so, I will then be able to set up my print shop and print for example novels by a german author published during the NSDAP era, and this is no problem? I kind of doubt this, taking all precautions that I very well might be wrong, and suspect that the EPA really was a law made effective for items under US control, taken from archives and persons during and after the campaign in Europe, and relevant for the eventual war criminals trials or other processes after the war.


Also - I always get confused when you refer to BA-MA or Bundesarchiv - Militärarchiv with regards to photographs - they have very few of these, the few and far between photographs usually being part of either a document such as a technical description of a kind of equipment, for example an aircraft, or as part of a Nachlass - the personal papers and or photographs of a person that have deposited these at the archive. The photographic archive is a separate entity, located in Koblenz, and it would be fair to the people at BA-MA, which in my opinion do a great job in order to get the relevant items in their collection to me at least, to discern between these units. That we all should wish for the possibility to roam the BA-MA's shelves looking for hidden treasure is an entirely other issue ;-) and you should really try to get ANYTHING out of the Norwegian National Archives, that are related to the occupational period, now that is an institution were their self-presented tasks (check their website www.riksarkivet.no and see second bullet point under the about us heading) and what really happens do not exactly match. And as far as I have been told, the captured documents that are kept by russian authorities (ex-soviet) are not exactly easy to access. In the Norwegian National Archives they do this by simply saying that the files concerning the remnants of archives of the Wehrmacht in Norway is restricted, and then you just cannot get anything...

Then there is another issue, namely the publication fee issue. What give the IWM, the BA-MA or other institutions the right to claim such fees? I do not know and this would in my opinion be a second issue for our research into these issues. There is a fact that when you sign the order form for copies of a file in the BA-MA, you agree not to publish these coipes or to pass on duplicates of these to other persons. Of course a lot of you guys out there doesn't give a damn about this.... and some of you do. But the key question is: What right does these institutions have to make you sign these documents? The answers would be interesting to know.

Well, now I have to go buy a few presents. Wish you all a merry christmas!

Regards,
Andreas B

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by Andreas Brekken

Hi, all.
Then there is another issue, namely the publication fee issue. What give the IWM, the BA-MA or other institutions the right to claim such fees? I do not know and this would in my opinion be a second issue for our research into these issues. There is a fact that when you sign the order form for copies of a file in the BA-MA, you agree not to publish these coipes or to pass on duplicates of these to other persons. Of course a lot of you guys out there doesn't give a damn about this.... and some of you do. But the key question is: What right does these institutions have to make you sign these documents? The answers would be interesting to know.

The right of ownership. You don't have to sign their documents - but then they won't sell you the copies. That's their privilege.