2009/11/28 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
Out of curiosity, would this include if you made the Communist Manifesto available on your website?
I guess it depends for what purpose you will do this. If from the context of the page seems that your goal is to organise a real revolutionary movement which is going to establish a communist regime in Poland again it might be prosecuted. But if it is just a historical page about communist movement in Poland it is OK under par. 3 of p. 256. The same apply if you would publish a Main Kampf (although in case of Main Kampf it is still under copyright - Hitler died in 1945 so Main Kampf will go to public domain in 2016).
That, itself, is quite different from the totalitarianism of Stalinism or Maoism.
Yes. Sure - depending on context again. In fact there is Polish Communist Party which is quite legal and formally registered organisation. It has its own website:
although the website is located outside Poland (I guess - just in case) :-) This party in their bylaws claims that it is going to establish "democratic communist system" not by force-revolution but by election. The party publish their newspaper which is legally printed in Poland:
http://www.kompol.org/brzask/index.html
On the other hand we have extreme-right wing tiny parties which are quite close to be fascists although they also claim officially that they are not. See for example:
http://www.polskapartianarodowa.org/
Anyway - this party is actually under prosecution - because their leader was accused for open, aggressive antisemitism, and as you can see their website is also located outside Poland...
If you ask me if the current change of law is silly - I can agree with you :-) But I don't think if the results is going to be mass prosecution of foreign tourist parading in Che T-shirts on Polish streets, although some silly policeman may warn you to undress it and if you say no - it may end up in court when you can claim that wearing Che T-shirt do not fulfill the conditions of promoting any communist regime. I guess soon after the formal publishing of this law there will be left-wing guys who especially wear T-shirts with Che go to the street in order to be prosecuted and prove at the court that they can still do it legally :-)