i have received yet another reply in the saga of my quest to determine the copyright status of the book by Karinthy :
Quote:
Dear Ms. K,
the name "István Farkas" is rather common in Hungary. In order to find the correct one in our database, we would need some more personal data (like date of birth, pseudonyms, etc.), or otherwise unfortunately we cannot help you in your query.
Best Regards,
Péter Tóth
--
Dr. Péter Benjamin TÓTH
legal counsel
Society Artisjus Hungarian Bureau
for the Protection of Authors' Rights
H-1016 Budapest, Mészáros u. 15-17.
HUNGARY
Tel: (+36-1) 488 2636
Fax: (+36-1) 212 1544
web: www.artisjus.hu
e-mail: ptoth@artisjus.com
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and my reply :
Quote:
Dear Péter Toth,
I thank you for your kind reply. Unfortunately, the information you request from me is exactly the information I was hoping to obtain from you, so it seems we are at an impass. I don't know anything about this István Farkas except that he translated Frigyes Karinthy's novel "Please, Sir !" into english, and I would like to know whether this book is in the public domain or not (which depends on the date of death of the translator).
If any information about this particular book comes to your attention, I would be very grateful if you could communicate it to me.
Best regards, and thank you again for your time,
A K
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it would seem my quest has arrived at its profoundly frustrating end, and no doubt legally, since the doubt remains complete, i should abstain from creating an ebook and uploading it here. after all, better that a brilliant work / author should fall into complete obscurity, within a century of their death, than to risk infringing the highly dubious but nonetheles possible but absolutely unverifiable copyright of the translation. right ?
again, i say that if ever there were an argumant in favor of reforming copyright / orphan works laws, this case is it.