5 ms·
Why having Lord of the Rings in public domain is so important?
by griftah 16y ago
Why having Lord of the Rings in public domain is so important?
- wtallis 16y agoI think the point is more that continued copyright protections don't serve any purpose, and thus are unconstitutional.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- wtallis 16y agoRight. But a copyright law that doesn't have the purpose and effect of promoting that progress is unconstitutional. Congress can't just hand out intellectual property rights on a whim, nor can they be used to stand in the way of progress.
- FluidDjango 16y agoLet them defend the current policies as promoting, "the progress of science and useful arts..." - as opposed to promoting corporate wealth. Then let's also define "for limited times..." in terms of decades not centuries.
- slantyyz 16y agoMaybe for the same reason that having Romeo & Juliet and King Lear in the public domain is so important. Would West Side Story or Ran have been made if they weren't?
- griftah 16y agoCopyright didn't seem to stop authors of D&D or many derivative fantasy novels that have more in common with Lord of the Rings than West Side Story with Shakespeare.
- patio11 16y agoThis is a good question. LOTR is being actively commercially exploited and the commercial exploitations are darn good. Meanwhile, it's cultural impact hasn't been noticeably blunted by copyright -- that novel launched at least one industry, to say nothing of being repurposed by virtually every book in adjacent genres.
- chc 16y agoI don't see what that has to do with anything. Public domain works can still be commercially exploited. The only difference is that LOTR wouldn't have sat in preproduction hell for years because of squabbles over the rights. Peter Jackson could have gone ahead and made his very fine movies — instead, copyright almost got him forced out of The Hobbit.
- MessagePad2100 16y agoAnother possibility: Instead of squabbling with the publisher/Tolkien Trust, Michael Bay could have simultaneously made a movie as well to compete with Jackson's vision of the movie.
- davidcuddeback 16y agoNothing wrong with competition. Let the makers of the better movie prosper.
- chc 16y agoI don't understand your point. If you mean he could have made a LOTR movie, I still don't see how that's relevant, given that: 1. That wouldn't happen, for a large number of reasons. 2. That happens even in the current system (see "The Exorcist: The Beginning" for an example in the movie world). 3. Michael Bay already had movies in competition with the LOTR franchise — copyright does nothing to prevent that. It just requires that some people distantly related to people who paid some money to Tolkien get paid if you want to use the LOTR names and characters.
- crystalis 16y ago