A French academic who published Anne Frank’s diary online on 1 January despite the strenuous objections of the Anne Frank Fonds has said that the page on which he launched the text has now been viewed more than 50,000 times.

On 1 January, University of Nantes lecturer Olivier Ertzscheid and French MP Isabelle Attard separately published online the Dutch text of Frank’s account of her family’s time in hiding during the second world war. They argue that because 70 years have elapsed since Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and because across much of Europe copyright expires 70 years after an author’s death, the work has now entered the public domain.

But the Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation established by Anne’s father Otto Frank, has vigorously denied this. It claims that while Anne was the sole author of the original diaries, “Otto Frank and children’s author and translator, Mirjam Pressler, were inter alia responsible for the various edited versions of fragments of the diary”, published in 1947 and 1991, respectively, and “the copyrights to these adaptations have been vested in Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler, who in effect created readable books from Anne Frank’s original writings”. Otto Frank died in 1980, while Pressler is still alive. So the foundation, which gives all its income to charitable causes, argues that the diary is still protected by European copyright laws.

In a letter to Ertzscheid sent in late December, the foundation asks him to “cease and desist” from making The Diary of a Young Girl available online, to “immediately” announce he was “misinformed” about the copyright in the diary, to compensate damages, and to pay €1,000 each day he does not comply with the instructions, or risk court proceedings.

Ertzscheid went ahead, however, describing it as a “gift”. “This first of January 2016, 70 years after the death of Anne Frank, because this is enough time and because it is legal, this diary, her diary, enters the public domain. It belongs to everyone. And it is up to each of us to weigh its importance,” he wrote.

Ertzscheid said that since 1 January, the article in which he provides the file has been viewed more than 50,000 times, receiving 30,000 hits on the day it was published. The diary remains online on his website, and Ertzscheid says that he will “wait and see” what the Anne Frank Fonds does next.

Attard also released a download of the diary on 1 January on her website, writing “long live Anne Frank, long live the public domain”. “Despite the legal findings of the Anne Frank Fund to slow down as much as possible this long-awaited moment, we can, as Olivier Ertzscheid said, collectively ‘after these years of the cellar, of darkness, this darkness which weighs so heavily in your diary, dear Anne Frank, have the intelligence to offer you at last the light which you deserve, that which your diary deserves, that of the public space. Welcome to the light, dear Anne’,” she wrote.

A spokesman for Attard said the MP had “no commercial goals” in her release of the diary, so was not aware of how many times it had been downloaded. “The question has been very popular though, with a coverage Isabelle never had before. Please believe this wasn’t a goal at all, it’s a by-product of the interest of the subject,” he said.

Attard also received a lawyer’s letter in December, the spokesman added, but has not heard from the Anne Frank Fonds since, other than through “insults” made to a Swiss paper, in which member of the foundation’s board of trustees Yves Kugelmann said the fact that the diary was being “expropriated and subjected to attacks by populists continues a long list of egoistic vagabonds, which began with attacks by Holocaust deniers and forgeries of the diary”.

This week, the French librarians’ association added its support to Ertzscheid and Attard, issuing a statement protesting “against the recent interpretations designed to limit the spread of the diary of Anne Frank, a work belonging to our collective memory”.

The Anne Frank Fonds also put out a new statement this week, saying that the “public discussion about the applicable duration of copyright for Anne Frank’s diaries has resulted in widespread confusion”, and reiterating its point that “the different versions of the diary of Anne Frank will remain protected for many years after 2015”, so cannot be used without its permission.

Outside Europe, the circumstances of Frank’s diary are much clearer: in the US, works first published between the 1920s and 1970s are protected for 95 years from the date of their first publication, meaning Frank’s diary, first published in the US in the 1950s, will remain protected there until the 2040s.

According to the Fonds, Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into 67 different languages, and has sold upwards of 30m copies.