About an e-mail

 Yesterday I received a surprising e-mail, it was about copyright which wasn't surprising half my inbox is taken up with that. The odd thing was that the e-mail wasn't accusatory, it was asking for my help. I won't share the e-mail because I think it's bad practice to publicize private correspondence but I'll summarize its contents here.

1. The sender represented an established educational institution
2. That institution is located in Germany
3. They were having trouble contacting the rights owners of a film they wished to use.
4. Said film was L'Atalante by Jean Vigo (a personal favourite)
5. Did I know who the rights holders were or if the rights had expired?

That's the gist of the conversation. If you're wondering why I'd get randomly contacted about L'Atalante, it's because my channel has uploaded a cut of the film with English subtitles, and it's done pretty well if you'll permit the light bragging. The curious thing though is that they found my e-mail address through my Esperanto translation blog. Still in the dark on how that happened. Anyway, I immediately understood the confusion, the reason this person couldn't find the rights holders to negotiate for usage is because they do not exist. 

L'Atalante was written and directed by Jean Vigo and the music was composed by Maurice Chaubert. Jean Vigo passed away shortly before the film was released in 1934 from tuberculosis, and Maurice Chaubert died in combat in 1940 defending France from the German invasion. These facts are tragic, they were both very talented people, and it gets even sadder when you factor in that Vigo and his wife lived in poverty as none of his four films were financially successful in his lifetime. I remember reading an account of Vigo's work that described a situation so bleak that he was forced to sell his camera to raise funds for him and his wife.

This tragedy does mean that all of Vigo's four movies, Apropos de Nice, Zero for Conduct, Jean Taris, Swimming Champion, and L'Atalante are in the public domain in his home country of France and in mine. They also fell into the public domain in the United States of America, since their financial failures in France killed any chance they had of being distributed and thus registered in the United States. I conveyed this information to my new correspondent, so problem solved, right? Well, there is a problem, or more accurately a potential problem. The correspondent and the institute are German, the reason why that matters is that German law has done something very strange in regard to copyright law, well it's done many strange things on that front, I've been meaning to write something up about Germany's situation for a while, so consider the rest of this blogpost a sneak peek. 

The German state, like most European nations, is a signatory to the Berne Convention, and has a term of 70 years after death of the principal authors. So, under that record, L'Atalante should be good to use there as well. However, anyone who uploads public domain material online can tell you getting angry letters or content blocks by companies with GMBH in their letterheads is a frequent occurrence. Why? Well to be blunt copyfraud, at best these companies have licensed a German language version of a foreign film or just made one without authorization and then used that as a pretext to lobby and bully international entities and individuals to remove their "competition".  

The reason for why Germany is so notorious for this behaviour is because there are many loopholes in Germany IP legislation that creates just enough ambiguity for a cottage industry of copyfraud abuses to thrive. This legal grey area isn't helped by the way German law handles international property. If you read German copyright law, you'll notice some very strange and vague passages about international treaties forming the basis of protection in law.

In all other cases, foreign nationals or enterprises whose principal place of business is
not located within the territory to which this Act applies enjoy protection under international treaties. Section 121 (4) sentence 2 and sections 122 and 123 apply accordingly.

 What this passage and the other references are saying is that intellectual property not created by German citizens in Germany is to be handled by nation to nation treaties. To explain further why this is an incredibly dangerous standing, most nations give precedence to their own copyright system for domestic works and apply concepts of country of origin and of shorter term to foreign works, in short if the laws of your country say book X is public domain it is public domain, and if the laws of the country of origin of book X say it is public domain, but your country does not, then it becomes public domain in your nation as well. It's a bit tricky, but all you have to do is consult your own nation's copyright standards and those of the original country. 

What Germany has done here is forced its citizens to become experts on international relations between the German republic and every other nation it has relations with. If the German republic has signed a treaty with another nation that covers intellectual property, and you wish to make use of an IP from that country, you better contact a lawyer to read through the provisions for you. There are treaties between the United States and Germany and German's have been legally censured for using material that should be public domain in Germany but is still under copyright in the US, and many German companies use their business relations with American ones as excuses to try and enforce their contracts globally. 

I have no idea if there is a similar treaty between Germany and France. Annoyingly, German copyright legislation doesn't specify or list which treaties have an impact and are enforced, it just says international treaties can be applied and left it up to the courts. So, I informed the representative of this possibility and recommended that they consult their legal department for advice. 

And that was pretty much it. One thing I'd take away from this experience is don't worry too much if you find IP law extremely confusing, apparently the people in charge of important cultural institutions who have access to legal departments also can't make sense of it.