[Foundation-l] Stroop report

[Yann Forget]

Robert Rohde wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 5:54 AM, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am talking about cases where no actual copyright holder can claim
>> anything, not about other cases.
>>
>> I see at least two cases where this occurs:
>>
>> 1. As Ray mentioned, the copyright holder was a corporation which is
>> bankrupt, and no entity has acquired the rights. This can be determined
>> fairly accurately.
> 
> Maybe, though it is not uncommon for creditors to acquire copyright holdings
> from defunct companies, especially if publishing was part of the business of
> the company.

Agreed, but as I mentioned above, this can be known fairly accurately.

>> 2. If the death date of the author is not recorded anywhere, especially
>> not in any national databases, such as the Library of Congress, how
>> could you claim any copyright? This is fairly common for translators of
>> minor works before WW2. If this date is not known, no copyright holder
>> can claims anything, as the burden of the proof is on the accusation.
>> Again I don't talk about the fact that the heirs are certainly not aware
>> of their rights if the date of author's death is not known.
> 
> This case I don't understand at all.  Either A) you have no reason to
> believe the author is dead, in which case the point seems moot since you
> ought to be acting on the assumption the author is still alive up to quite
> substantial ages.  Or B) you somehow have confidence that the author is
> dead, even though it wasn't formally recorded, in which case one ought to
> assume that the author's heirs could easily demonstrate this in court.
> There is a world of difference between "the death date is not publicly
> known" and "the death date is not known".  The former can happen for a
> variety of reasons (e.g. publication under a pseudonym, change of country of
> residence, etc.) and yet the rights holder or his heirs may still be
> entirely aware of the relevant information and able to provide it in court.

I am talking about cases when the work was published long ago, and the 
author is certainly dead, but the exact fate is not known.

A concrete example can explain that most precisely: the book "La Jeune 
Inde" is a translation of Mohandas K. Gandhi writings published in 
France in 1924. The original texts are from 1919 to 1922, and are 
already in the public domain in USA, and will be in India by 1st January 
2009, 60 years after Gandhi's death. The translator is Hélène Hart, she 
never wrote nor translated anything else beside this book, and her date 
of death is not known, even to the French National Library (BNF). I 
personaly called the BNF to ask for details. The book was published only 
once in 1924, and is out of print since then. If even the BNF does not 
know anything about Hélène Hart, I doubt anybody else knows it.

> -Robert A. Rohde

Regards,

Yann
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