Heh, more of this shit.
Remember, the only reason we can still watch the highly influential 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu today is because some people didn’t destroy all their copies despite a court saying they had to.
DISOBEY DESTRUCTION ORDERS.
COPY ALL THE THINGS.
The author in question here was pretty shitty. He wrote his own sequel to called “Fellowship of the King”, and then sued Amazon and the Tolkien estate saying they stole elements from his book. He lost, and the Tolkien estate countersued.
The guy played stupid games and won stupid prizes.
Yeah, I read. I don’t have much sympathy for him. He sounds like a jerk.
IMO preserving the content is more important than honoring him (or, for that matter, humiliating him).
Some older dutch movies were released as rentals to the theaters that had to be returned after they stopped playing the movie. These copies were all destroyed and re-releases on DVD now look worse than what it looked like in movie theatres.
The good news is that some theatres hung on to some movies.
Thank goodness. Have those copies resurfaced and gone into the possession of proper archivists and/or research collections?
I don’t know how many might be still be around, but I know for a couple of movies where they are. I don’t think they have been properly archived and/or converted to digital media yet. I would like to see if there are people in The Netherlands that can do these things and if the current owners of the rolls of film are willing to.
In my opinion LotR should’ve already entered the public domain but thanks to Disney well have to wait until 2044 for that.
Can’t have the already well-off children go without their steady income that they didn’t have to work for…
Well how else are we supposed to encourage people to be related to people who develop intellectual property? It makes sense from a neponomic standpoint.
Believe it or not, some people do work extra hard in order to ensure their descendants have an easy life. I’m not weighing in on whether that is wise or not but it is definitely a thing.
Yeah, and that’s why white people are richer than black people today, even though slavery ostensibly ended 200 years ago. It’s time that we outlaw this behaviour.
you’re gonna get downvoted but no amount of downvotes will change the fact that black people weren’t allowed to own things in america until most things were already owned by white people.
Embracer is gonna be the next one to beg for an extension.
It may as well be, they’re endorsing all sorts of shit content lately (like the Golem game, or the ring of power)
The books go into public domain in 20 years. Now that Christopher Tolkien is out of the way (who tended to block a lot of stuff, for better or worse) , the current heirs want as much out of it as they can.
20 years might sound like a lot, but that’s about as much time as between the Peter Jackson movies and now.
LotR should’ve already entered the public domain
Where is the petition to sign up for?
Reasonable takes like this hurt daddy’s profits… is u a domestic terrorist?
Worse, a foreign one
Obama coming out of retirement to authorize this drone strike!
“We will not stand by while our national security interests are being assaulted by the axis of evil”
“Axis of evil” was a GWB and Cheney thing. I don’t think Obama ever used the term.
i threw that in to keep satire level headed… this aint about Obama but rather the US government behavior overall.
Apparently it did for a short while in the US, but not anymore.
Such optimism that it wont be extended again.
You can’t just extend copyright indefinitely. It’s not like a patent, where you can make minute changes and claim it’s a new product. The original works have a copyright limit of 95 years after the first date of publish (thanks Disney and other corporate lobbyists).
If we go by The Return of the King, it was published in 1955. That means the words, the story, the settings, and the characters will be public domain in 2050. Steamboat Willie, on the other hand, was published in 1928. That means it expires at the end of this year. Unless Disney can convince Congress to change copyright law again, these copyrights all have hard expiration dates.
Works made for hire are 95 years from publication. LotR is not a work for hire, so it goes by life of the author plus 75 years. It goes public domain in 2044.
They already do. Winnie the Pooh is public domain but not Disneys version the one everyone thinks of.
Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, will become public domain in literally 13 days.
Only because it’s not as important for them to keep it, they make a lot of money from other properties
It’s not just about money, but their image. Nintendo does the exact same thing with fan games that make $0.
No, they can’t extend any further. The copyright has a hard expiration at the end of 2023.
I remember thinking that in 1998 too. It is too late to extend copyright for Steamboat Willie before it expires but that does not mean that corps like Disney won be fighting tooth and nail to extend it again in a few years when things they actually care about are expiring.
Yeah, Mickey is definitely going to be something they’ll fight for in the future.
I don’t find it probable they’ll succeed in convincing Congress that copyright life should be significantly greater than a century, since that’s nice and round and excessive, but we live in a corporation-first capitalist hellscape, so who knows?
They’ve lobbied before
They have, but they didn’t. And it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’d succeed. The longest copyright lifespan is currently 105 years from what I read, and I wonder if they could grease enough palms to convince people it should be longer than a century.
We’re already in “excessively long” territory, and Congress still has a few reasonable people left, so I’m not convinced it would happen.
Demand reform.
30 years from publication, no exceptions.
I think an argument could be made to set it to the date of death of the author. I agree with the other guy that it should only apply to commercial works though.
I also don’t think that the copyright should be transferable. The trading of ideas is an absurd concept to me. But then us humans do a lot of absurd things so I guess it’s just par for the course.
People have a right to culture. If you grew up with a story, it’s yours now, no matter how dead the author isn’t. Past works are the foundation for everything you can make.
And if the purpose of copyright is not to encourage new works, burn it to the ground.
That’s an oversimplification. All works are derivative to some extent. There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from something, to taking the characters and setting from something. Particularly if you’re intending to make a profit.
If an author makes something that a large number of people enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to make money off it for the rest of their life? Why exactly should an individual give up the rights to their creation simply so that someone else can use their characters and their worlds?
To be clear, I’m talking solely on an individual level. I think the system we have where a corporation can own an idea is very broken. I’m also talking about this from a perspective of the world we currently live in. In an ideal world where money wasn’t the endgame for survival, ideas would flow more freely and nobody would need to care. But that’s not the world we live in.
You can’t sell something to a million people and still own it.
Copyright is a gift, from us to them, to encourage new works, for us. Why would that mean some old fart gets to stop people making new stories for the characters they grew up with? They’re our characters, now. We bought them. That’s what the money was for.
And if thirty years of revenue with zero additional labor required somehow isn’t enough - oh well.
Can you imagine making your argument for any other industry? Why in the name of god would art be the place where doing real good one time is a ticket to retirement? Not farming, not medicine, not engineering. Homeboy wrote a song once, so he gets to ride the gravy train until he fuckin’ dies.
Your buying the stories not the ownership of all the ideas.
Word salad.
Again: the explicit purpose of copyright is to provide the public with new works. After a fixed limited time, all works belong in the public domain. If you want copyright to be anything but that, I would rather not do copyright at all.
It’s not a right. That name is a lie. It’s a monetary incentive. And once someone’s made their money, that’s that. It’s ours now. The deal worked.
And for commercial purposes only. If you’re not making money off of it, you should be able to use it however you want.
Don’t worry, they’ll manage to get it extended again before 2044.
Should copyright for works that old be expired? Yes!
In the actual world we live in, was this guy ever going to avoid being sued so hard that his grandchildren will be embarrassed for him? No!
You’ve got to admire the lemming-like devotion to the legal cliff he threw himself off though. Writing a sequel to not only a copyright work, but one that is still in the cultural zeitgeist thanks to a 20-year old wildly successful series of films? Ballsy. Subsequently suing one of the largest companies in the world and the estate that produced the original works as infringing his copyright?
Chutzpa, I believe the term is.
Ballsy? He’s an outright copyright troll and anyone celebrating him here in the comments should read the article…
He wrote a knockoff book and then tried to claim Tolkien’s characters as his own and sue his estate? Does nobody remember the days of BS software patent trolls trying to claim they invented “the app” or “method for clicking on things with the mouse cursor?” Do we remember how mad we were at those shysters?
This guy deserves whatever he gets.
Speaking of Chutzpah…
“The Fellowship of the King” title is a combination of the titles of the first book in the LOTR trilogy “The Fellowship of the Ring” and the third book “The Return of the King”.
“The Two Trees” title is similar to the second book in the LOTR trilogy “The Two Towers”
Yeah, this guy didn’t have a leg to stand on. There’s an independently owned cafe opposite sarhole mill (inspiration for “the shire”) on the street JRR Tolkien grew up on called “the hungry hobbit”. It’s been called that since 2005 - before the release of the hobbit film. A production company sued this tiny sandwich shop, sitting on a roundabout 3 miles south of Birmingham for the unauthorised use of the word “hobbit”. That was completely egregious imo. It’s now called “the hungry hobb” - they just took down the last two letters on the sign. I really should grab a sandwich from them one day.
deleted by creator
People say shit like this and then turn around and bitch that AI is being training on their internet comments. We own our thoughts or we don’t.
I get your point but in this case it’s not JRR Tolkiens estate who’s claiming copyright infringement, it’s a random production company in Sweden or something. A production company in an entirely different country with no real ties to JRRT has decided an independent cafe built on the same street as Tolkien grew up on, opposite the mill he used as inspiration, is harming their asset somehow by calling themselves the hungry hobbit.
A word isn’t a thought. Thoughts are unique, but a word can be arrived at independently in several different ways by the sea spelled with a C, you see.
Look, I agree his works shouldn’t be destroyed, just not monetizable.
But the dude poked a bear with a sharp stick… Suing the creators of the story/characters you’ve built your content on for copyright infringement? Brilliant move…
Suing the creators
JRR Tolkein has been dead for fifty years.
He explicitly sued Tolkiens estate. Effectively the same.
Your semantics aren’t appreciated.
‘The artist, the artist, the artist! And whoever owns their corpse. Same difference, right? Just semantics.’
Every fucking thread with you cultists. Do you listen to yourself?
Lmao, I don’t even like Tolkiens work…
Nor do I agree with copyright law.
However; simply disagreeing with reality doesn’t change it.
But; go ahead and continue to personally attack strangers on the internet instead of actually working towards the change you want to see. I’m sure it’ll be effective.
You don’t think that for the copyright laws to change we also need to change how we view it? How could you be properly critical of the copyright law if you refuse to make the distinction necessary for a certain type of criticism?
I get the “that’s not how the world is” argument, but you can’t talk about how the world could/should be by using only the word that describe the current state of the world. If you want to be critical of the existing system you need to develop a vocabulary that allows for such criticism.
For instance if you don’t make the distinction between the creator and copyright holder you can’t make criticism such as “you shouldn’t be able to copyright works that you haven’t created”. You can’t tell the difference between copyright owned by the creator and copyright owned by copyright owner because those two people are indistinguishable, so the entire criticism becomes nonsense.
If the estate had gone after the author, this would be a very different conversation; but that’s not what happened. The author chose to involve Tolkiens estate, knowing the current climate around copyright.
I struggle to find sympathy for that.
Then you add on direct personal insults instead of constructive conversation and I completely check out. It’s not worth my energy to have a discussion with such people.
You’ve clearly already checked out considering I’m not even the person who insulted you. Here’s an idea, maybe don’t partake in conversations you’re not going to bother to even pay attention. I guarantee you’ll automatically come across as less of an asshole.
Working toward change, but not making normative statements or highlighting problems in rationale. Obviously a real copyright reformist goes around tutting at those “semantics” while parroting the status quo.
Troll harder.
This is more like smacking a warhead with a hammer until it blows like in Loony Tunes. It is a shockingly suicidal decision with predictable results. He’ll be in debt for the rest of his life and should be thankful the Tolkien estate didn’t have him flayed for his impudence. Learning about how out of touch with reality the author is does make me curious how unhinged his book might be, though. If it turns out to be “The Room” of lotr fanficfiction I’d like to see it fan canonized just to spite the most litigious family in literature.
Tolkien Estate? What’s that? People profiting off of the work of an author who has been dead for 50 years?
Copyright law is fucked up.
I dunno, if I build a house, I can leave it to my family for generations. Indeed, barring something interfering with that ownership, it will be passed along. Maybe they’ll sell it, or take out a loan against it and default, or a disaster could strike, or whatever.
Why would any other creation be less portable to my heirs?
Mind you, I’m definitely of the belief that artistic creations like books should eventually go public domain. I’m fine with any number of possible restrictions on that duration. But it is strange that one of the only things that automatically gets removed from a family are things like writing. Ideas, if you want to break it down. We treat them different than other things we create.
Again, I’m fine with there’s being limits on holding ideas restricted. That’s necessary to prevent loss of such things, that are harder to preserve than something like a piece of jewelry, or a statue, or a house. That’s why patents and copyrights need to expire, but I can’t agree that the limits as they exist are fucked up/bad/wrong.
Seriously, I’m a published author, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about such things.
Now, I would love to see the laws change so that any copyright held by a publicly traded company, or that has been sold/abandoned by the actual heirs of the author is shorter than when held by the heirs of the author.
And, any popular work is going to have the issue of who gets to decide what is and isn’t done to the works before or after public domain. You can end up with something wonderful being shat on by asshats. So it isn’t like copyrights expiring is without drawbacks. When what’s at stake is only keeping the works published and available, that’s a clear cut thing that benefits everyone.
But adaptations, expansions, “fanfic”? I would definitely prefer someone that at least has some chance of the author’s intent being known than some shitty company looking to milk the work for every possible dime.
Why shouldn’t authors be able to build generational wealth the way a business can? You’re talking about people profiting off a dead man, but that’s what investments and properties and such are. It’s future generations profiting off a dead person’s work. There’s billionaires out there that are sitting on wealth that was amassed not just decades ago, but sometimes centuries. Why do authors not have that possibility?
A house exists, in order to remove ownership of that hous you would need to physically expell the family living there. A story is fictional, it does not exist and removing the copy protection from it does not require actively harming the inheritors of the person who wrote it.
A house is also not so much generational wealth as it is generational ownership. You don’t get active revenue from a single house if ypu are living in it. And generational wealth is pretty fucked up and should not happen.
Besides if an author really wants to make sure their children are taken care of, teach them to continue the story, the family name will ensure they get more sales than anyone else writing stories in the same universe as the original.
Shouldn’t you be paying the people who built your house royalties then?
I understand that at a personal level you would want to share wealth with your children and their children, but that is not what copyright is about. The intention is that the creator gets to make their earnings out of their original product for a limited time only. So that they can continue to make original products and make a living. It is not intended to provide for your family for generations. While this may be what it has become with the help of corporations, in my opinion this is not it’s intended use.
Aside from that I think your works should become public domain after a limited time, prefferedly during your lifetime. So that as much as possible people get to enjoy your original works of art.
You make a good point about generational wealth in business and I think there should be limits to that as well. It doesn’t help the world at all if wealth just stagnates like that and in my opinion it should be shared with those doing the actual work, instead of a select few who were born in it, were extremely lucky, or gained money in immoral ways.
I’ll leave it at that since I am not the right person to go into a discussion with you about all of these things. I do want to thank you for your work and for gifting us with your books entertaining us and giving us an escape of daily problems, expanding our knowledge with educational content or whatever else. Know that you are valued and there are people out there being touched by your work.
While this is piracy adjacent, good on Amazon and Tolkien’s estate for shutting down that trash lol
lol, Amazon’s LOTR was trash.
I don’t even like Tolkien (find his writing to be just excessive, I don’t need to know the color of the buttons on the shirt of the dead character with no name), and even I have to agree, lol.
Too many re-interpretations of authors’ works. Tolkien is highly detailed - not reflecting that (or worse, substituting your own details) in a movie or show is just hubris. If you’re so damn good why don’t you write your own shit. Oh, your name doesn’t sell instantly is why.
We’ve seen this with the Witcher, we’ve seen it with GoT, we’ve seen it with LOTR: super artistic production teams which have their heads so deep up their own arses and are entrenched so deeply inside that weird removed-from-reality Hollywood bubble that they legitimately think they know better how to interpret the lore some world renowned author made than the author himself. Always ends in mediocre showsand hilarious interviews with said production teams where
a) everybody is wrong but them
b) bUt OuR vIsIoNOh God The Witcher. The production team was handed an incredibly strong female lead character who was smarter, more politically astute, and more feared/respected than almost any other character in the series. And they immediately tore her down and made her a petty whining brat while claiming it was about female empowerment. A pox on Netflix and the entire production team.
I quite liked it, personally.
I imagine saying that is going to be treated as an admission of heresy here though.
The story lines they fabricated were (mostly) formulaic, the effects were (mostly) poor, and the characters were (mostly) unlikable. Apart from that I liked it! :P
It had a few moments that I enjoyed but overall it fell flat because the characters where flat.
To me, it just seemed … dull. Like, the conversations characters were having weren’t interesting. What was happening on screen wasn’t interesting. I felt myself suddenly snapping back to reality several times each episode after my mind aimlessly drifted away from what I was watching. And I’m someone who doesn’t need Michael Bay explosions and constant action to enjoy a tv show. Really hope they turn it around and do something interesting with it. Absolute snooze fest.
This guy was just deluded to think he was in the right or could win.
What was this guy thinking? He was clearly violating copyright.
Is he just soft in the head, or is he up to something us not crazy people can’t see?
First two books in the series were “Fellowship of the King” and “The Two Trees” so…I’m not entirely convinced they were even very original stories…
I’m not a Tolkien fan and even I recognized that, haha.
Wtf.
His motivations are beyond our understanding
When your plan to get some sweet settlement money doesn’t quite work out.
All in all, not the best get-rich-quick scheme I’ve seen.
Demetrious Polychron
holy shit what an incredible name, don’t even care what’s this about, I’m with him. President Polychron 2024.
IDK what Demetrious means, but polychronic means multiple fatal diagnoses, like when you have multiple stage 4 cancers.
Could only be made better with some Mountain Dew.
I’m Demetrious Polychron –
– and you just got cyberpunk’d
Purchased paper books will survive too.
Not if the author finds and destroys it.
More to the point, who’s got a link so we can judge this fanfic for ourselves?
I’ve heard it is utter fucking trash
Well in that case I do believe Rings of Power plagiarised it, because ROP is trash too
Amazon LoR just sucks, is nothing of what Tolkien wrote
JRR wrote four LotR stories.
Everything else is a fanfiction. Even the Silmarillion. By far the most obnoxious reaction to the show is from “Tolkien purists” who got their entire Tolkien knowledge base from Peter Jackson.
The show is a perfectly Tolkienish story, despite the gratuitous lack of random singing, it’s just not a good one. Like, okay, you need to compress the timeline for the show, fair enough, just do a good job of that.
Wrong Durins to fight both the War of the Rings and the Balrog?
Then don’t tease the fucking Moria Balrog. If you want to use a Balrog, because Balrogs are fucking sweet, there was more than one…
Honestly, the weirdest part of the show is that they’ll follow a lore deep cut with something that could only possibly fool someone that missed the deep cut, but also doesn’t know or care who Gandalf or Isildur is, so what’s the payoff for the reveal?
“Perfectly” except for all the descriptions Tolkien does on his books vs what Amazon did.
Descriving elves as one thing and having elves as oposite for the Amazon stories. So no, not a tolkienish stories.
I understand he didnt write anything that Amazon is doing, but what Amazon did is nothing like what he descrived on the books.
No wonder the rating is so low and none of the LoR fans liked it.
Wow that guy died first. How deluded
Going after the copyright holder for infringing on your work, which by merely existing commercially infringes on their copyright, is one hell of a way to get sued out the arse…
Having said that, it is a crime that LOTR still hasn’t entered the public domain yet.
Yeah, I’m not sure what this idiot thought would happen…
