Sorry. The law says that Moral rights die with the author.
(oops. Apparently I was misinformed. Alas)
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Cory also says that piracy is an unmitigated good and that pirates are actually better customers than non-pirates.
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If itās not 100% by Anne, I say we sue them for 70 years of fraudā¦
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Not really. Warner/Chappellās copyright of āHappy Birthdayā had the Sumy in-house arrangerās name on the registration, which, however, didnāt make it any less a derivative work.
Otto Frank might have been the executor of Anneās estate, and could grant himself the right to make an amended edition (presumably with his own additions, corrections and deletions), and he surely owned the rightsā¦ to that edition, but it doesnāt stop being a derivative work, and, if the Anne Frank House does come out with an Urtext edition or a critical edition based on the Urtext, then the Frank estate and the Anne Frank Foundation are SOL. The rights and term of a derivative work do not extend back to the original text.
To put this into perspective, assume I wrote a chorale prelude based on, say, the Martin Luther (Walther?) setting of āAus tiefer Not schreiā ich zu dirā. That would clearly be a derivative work of the Luther original. Would I be free to assert my copyright to prevent another composer from publishing his own prelude on the piece?
I think not.
As it happens, I have written such a work, but Iām not so naughty as to pretend that my rights supersede the public domain rights on the original.
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Actually, it turns out my link was irrelevant. The original registration for the original Dutch-language diary listed Anne Frank as the author.
I goofed.
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No worries. I think the Foundation is goofing too. 
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Which version are they referring to specifically?
When I worked in a bookshop many years ago, I recall there being at least two editions in print - the one originally printed and an āauthorās cutā, with the parts Otto omitted. Iād presume the latter is no longer copyrighted?
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See, thatās what sets you apart from Warner Chappell: in your position, theyād be sending takedown notices to Bach.
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Huh! I am, I think, justifiably proud of my work, but Bachās 6-part prelude on this chorale is mind-blowing.
Thatās probably why Iām not rich, though: I lack the dishonesty and sheer effrontery of operators like Warner/Chappell.
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And done, and shared.
I know as a historical document and a cultural history the diary is incredibly powerful piece of our history, which is why Iām sorry for thisā¦
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Maybe not that, but could we get Diary of a Young Girl and Zombies?
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āOur argument is circularā¦ the circle is a perfect shapeā¦ there for our argument is perfectā¦ Thatāll be $5 for the kiddies and $95 in administration charges.ā
No, but thatās no reason to deny them the same right to modify public-domain works that everyone else enjoys.
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But āThe Evil the men do lives onā, right? I mean, I want to leave SOMETHING to posterity.
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A loan? I always heard that money is a means of exchange for goods or services.
Reminds me of the whole Peter Pan thing in the UK where the copyright (or some rights anyway) are held indefinitely by the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children after the author gave them to it in 1929- there is a specific law extending the copyright.
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You could still do a parody of it. The book itself will go into the Black Hole of copyright, probably forever. I think it is just to attribute the book to her father since it is my understanding that he (or someone) rewrote it and made up a good part of it, and of course edited out a good deal that Anne Frank put in her diary which didnāt fit the idealized image. Itās more or less a work of personal fiction embedded in real history.
As for the charities, there is nothing more vicious than a struggle between charities for the resources they need to keep running and expanding their businesses.
Sure, but people need to get it from somewhere before they exchange it. USians getting their dollar from the Federal Reserve to exchange is itself a loan. Except instead of paying interest to them as it is āpaid backā, they get their interest as it is used.
Anne herself started to rewrite the diary, as she evidently saw a novel in its future, so there are two forms of manuscript from her alone. Her father used both versions because she had set aside the first manuscript for a year and there were gaps. He also added his own emendations to, as you suggest, impose his own narrative on the work. Thatās a third manuscript.
Otto Frankās estate is certainly within its rights to claim copyright on his ms; it is completely out-of-line to lay claim to Anneās original manuscripts. Rights attached to derivative works do not extend to cover the works from which they are derived.
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