Tolkien Estate blocks new Tolkien book

[Mithalwen]

Oh it was a general point - though of course as Literary executor he is of course highly significant. There is a net wide tendancy to rather cast him as a pantomime villain and blame him for everything.

Yes there have been authorised stuff - I wasn't aware of the Chronology (RL has prevented me keeping up) but whether this matter crossed a line it is hard to tell from the outside. It is fair to say that the works mentioned are fairly concentrated on his work rather than private life - I suppose the exception would be the Tolkien Family Album. However on the whole they haven't cashed in as they might have done (wouldn't we all want to read Christopher's autobiography?). However I think this would have been a fairly niche market I don't think I have paid so much for a book myself.. £25 I think is my record for The road goes ever on and Artist and Illustrator.

[davem]

I think the interesting point here is that the Family (who effectively are the Estate) have released a great deal of 'personal' information in the years since Tolkien died - Carpenter's Bio, the Letters, the Chronology & Garth's bio of Tolkien's WWI service &, of course, the Family Album - all 'authorised'. We even had Christopher. Priscilla & Father John taking part in the documentary JRRT: A Film Portrait discussing their father's work & reminiscing about their childhoods. Given that they have agreed to the relase of so much 'personal information it would be difficult for them to argue that they have a 'right' to keep information about their father 'private'. If they had never released any personal info about him & adopted the approach they did with the movies, then they would have a stronger position. As it is, it looks like they are attempting to control what is revealed about him - in effect to 'create' a JRR Tolkien in their own image.

Using copyright in this kind of way begs a larger question - they may have a legal right to letters & documents created by JRRT, but do they 'own the man, the 'artist'? This, to me, is a vital question - does the Estate own JRR Tolkien to the extent that they have a right to stop information about him being made public? As far as I'm aware, facts aren't copyright, or copyrightable. One could argue that quoting, or even paraphrasing, a letter from JRRT telling Hilary that he went into Birmingham for tea one Sunday in September 1935 was protected by copyright, but the FACT that JRRT went into Birmingham for tea one Sunday in September 1935 is not copyrightable.

[Mithalwen]

Hmm then maybe it is a question of exploitation of the copyrighted material? Intellectual property may not be tangible but it doesn't mean it is a free for all and that makes the fact that the family has used it irrelevant. If you run a bed and breakfast are you supposed to tolerate squatters? If I gave someone a bag of my secret recipe fudge as a gift I would be pretty narked if they copied it and marketed it for their own benefit.

Catherine Zeta Jones' Hello v Okay law suit established rights to privacy I think even when in that case photo rights had been sold.

[davem]

Well, as I stated earlier - we may just be dealing with the Estate putting its foot down over letters that are the equivalent of 'Dear Hilary, went into Brum for a cuppa & forgot me brolly - Doh!, Yours Ronald'. But if its the alternative, & its facts about Tolkien they are attempting to prevent getting out then I think at the very least that morally questionable, even if its legally shiny. Either say nothing, or tell the truth, warts & all.

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by davem

Well, as I stated earlier - we may just be dealing with the Estate putting its foot down over letters that are the equivalent of 'Dear Hilary, went into Brum for a cuppa & forgot me brolly - Doh!, Yours Ronald'. But if its the alternative, & its facts about Tolkien they are attempting to prevent getting out then I think at the very least that morally questionable, even if its legally shiny. Either say nothing, or tell the truth, warts & all.

Well no disputing that morality and legality are very different things ... but I don't think it is moral for example to take a yard when an inch has been given - which may also be the case.. I think saw somewhere that the earlier book breached copyright in which case it is hardly suprising the Estate clamped down.

Also there is a distinction between private and secret. If you have read Douglas Adams as well as Tolkien you will know that people telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ends up with learning more than anyone really wants to know about frogs . Speaking for myself I have few scandalous secrets but there are plenty of things I wouldn't want broadcast to the nation. Privacy may be a disappearing concept in an era when people seem happy to bleat the most intimate details of their lives into their mobile phones on trains, but the older Tolkiens are certainly of a generation that did not believe in washing linen in public even if not very dirty. I don't see that saying something places a moral obligation to tell everything and that not doing so make you dishonest de facto.

Children may have a more relaxed view than grand children even as regards what is private to the family and may feel they want to keep it that way for their lifetimes at least. I don't think that is an immoral choice if it were the case. One thing is fairly certain that whatever their private feeling, the Tolkiens as a family of scholars are unlikely to have destroyed anything no matter how personal any "facts" are unlikely to disappear if they are held only in these letter - which frankly seems unlikely in the light of the Estate's statement . Seems to be much more "a boundary dispute" and a matter of principle.

[Nerwen]

Since we have little idea what this was really about, it's hard to know the rights and wrongs of the case. It seems very harsh, though, that the authors were, for whatever reason, forced to withdraw their book at the eleventh hour. From Angela Gardner's own statement, it looks like they went to considerable lengths to accommodate the estate, and it still wasn't enough. It's a bitter and frustrating thing to have one's hard work end up being for nothing.

However, leaving aside the question of whether the Estate has acted like a bully in this case, I'd also like to say that I agree with Mithalwen on the general principle that there's nothing unethical per se in withholding information of that kind. I mean, there are times when you could argue that it is in the public interest for some dead person's private journal (or whatever) to be made public, and that this must override the wishes and rights of that person's heirs. But I think that only applies in certain, very extreme cases.

Mind you, I say this from the perspective of someone who is herself intensely private– or perhaps "secretive" would be a better word. Or perhaps even "paranoid", if you're feeling really uncharitable. I mean, I'd hate to think of people dissecting my personal life after I was dead. *shudders* I understand that not everyone feels that way, but anyway, I also find that the petty day-to-day details of a writer's or artist's life (including much of the "dirty laundry") tend to be both fairly uninteresting in themselves, and very limited in the amount of light they cast on his or her work. But then, maybe I'm just jaded from having known too many artists...

Originally Posted by davem

But if its the alternative, & its facts about Tolkien they are attempting to prevent getting out then I think at the very least that morally questionable, even if its legally shiny. Either say nothing, or tell the truth, warts & all.

Well, that's one of those things you can't really argue about. You either hold that second statement as a principle, or you don't; I don't. (A difficult maxim to life your life by, anyway... but then I'm sure you don't mean it quite like that )

[davem]

I want to clarify:

What we're talking about here is the use/abuse of copyright. Let's go back a bit

"The coming into force of the Statute of Anne in April 1710 marked a historic moment in the development of copyright law. As the world's first copyright statute it granted publishers of a book legal protection of 14 years with the commencement of the statute. It also granted 21 years of protection for any book already in print. Unlike the monopoly granted to the Stationers' Company previously, the Statute of Anne was concerned with the reading public, the continued production of useful literature, and the advancement and spread of education. To encourage "learned men to compose and write useful books" the statute guaranteed the finite right to print and reprint those works. It established a pragmatic bargain involving authors, the booksellers and the public. The Statute of Anne ended the old system whereby only literature that met the censorship standards administers by the booksellers could appear in print. The statute furthermore created a public domain for literature, as previously all literature belonged to the booksellers forever.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

the Statute of Anne was concerned with the reading public, the continued production of useful literature, and the advancement and spread of education. That's the point, & the only real justification for copyright - to enable artists to continue creating & to promote the arts - obviously, if an artist spends years creating a work & then as soon as its made public people copy it & sell it on without giving anything back to the artist then the artist will either find a different means of making a living, or starve. So, the purpose of copyright is to promote creativity - for example the writing of books. One cannot argue that the publication of these letters or the contents thereof are going to prevent JRR Tolkien writing any more letters to Hilary Tolkien.

Copyright was never intended to be used as cheap & easy means of protecting one's privacy - there are other laws intended for that purpose. Of course, one problem is that one cannot libel the dead, so to expand Morthoron's comment about J.R.R. parading about in women's clothing in a foxhole in France and being referred to as Jane Tolkien by his comrades one could actually state that he did without fear of prosecution -whether its true or not, because JRRT is dead. On the other hand one could not state that Christopher Tolkien got up to similar shenanigans in the RAF, because he's not dead. One could not, either, state that JRRT paraded about in women's clothing at home & traumatised his children by these antics, because his children are still alive & even though the statement concerns JRRT principally, it also makes reference to them.

Therefore, while the Estate's action in this case is certainly 'legal' in its use of copyright law I still say its against the spirit of the law of copyright, & is effectively doing the opposite of what Copyright is intended to do, by actually preventing a book being published, even though there is not a single suggestion from the Estate that the material in question was false in any way. Preventing facts being made public, is not, & never was, the purpose of Copyright.