Tolkien Estate blocks new Tolkien book

[LadyBrooke]

Well now that I’m properly paranoid about writing my paper about LotR and Tolkien for European History, here’s my thoughts:

First about copyright:

Originally Posted by Boromir88

I believe the UK laws are virtually identical. In the US, anything created after 1978 the copyright lasts during the duration of the author's life + 70 years. Same goes for anything created, but unpublished before 1978.

So, it does appear like we'll have a while yet to wait.

To my very limited understanding it is the same. Which means that it will be some time in 2043 before copyright expires if the current laws are kept. As time goes on I think we’ll probably see more pressure being put on the government to extend copyright’s far past the time they currently are which will anger many people but the corporations are the ones that have the lobbying money.

The primary thing of interest to me is the fact that its not even scandalous. Why should it matter then that the authors want to portray two brothers’ relationship? I am fairly certain that nothing in that book could be any worse then what my classmates and I wrote in our papers last term. In fact, my peers would probably prefer me to find something scandalous about Tolkien - the joys of having AP classes with teenage boys whose idea of history is unsubstantiated rumors about Catherine the Great. Of course those were written about people and events prior to 1800.

So, why is our culture so accepting of people long dead being remembered primarily for their scandals, but we are accepting of certain public figures who died just a short time ago having their reputations protected by their families. And why are we so willing to allow the Tolkien estate in particular to protect J.R.R. Tolkien’s memory? I have a strong disliking of historical figures being white washed. I don’t want to hear about somebody who was perfect. I want to hear about the real human being.

And now I’m going to go freak out about copyright laws and my paper.