1 - Introduction: understanding media rights
from Part One - Theoretical issues in media rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
In May 2003, a chance sighting of a feature article on Adolf Hitler in an edition of the ‘middlebrow’ magazine Homes and Gardens published in 1938 led to a global dispute over the ownership of a set of longforgotten photographs of the Führer. Simon Waldman, the director of digital publishing at The Guardian newspaper, was intrigued by the ‘Hello!-style’ article that appeared to celebrate the dictator's country lifestyle (Waldman, 2003). Wanting to share the revelation with a wider audience, Waldman scanned the article and posted it on his personal weblog (online diary). As news spread of the feature, the weblog saw a dramatic rise in traffic, with many readers worldwide posting messages with comments on the finding. Waldman decided to highlight the massive interest in the article to the publisher of Homes and Gardens, IPC Media, one of the UK's leading magazine publishers, with a view to finding out more about the feature and its origins. Waldman received a prompt response from the magazine editor citing copyright regulations and requesting the immediate removal of the scanned article from his website. Surprised by this tactic to suppress the article, Waldman removed the article but posted the correspondence with IPC on his weblog. Suddenly, the episode became the centre of a lively debate on international copyright laws and whether IPC had a right to prevent an article of such historical curiosity from being circulated on the Internet.
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- Media Rights and Intellectual Property , pp. 3 - 11Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2005