It's interesting to see such a long discussion of the value of a peice of art without any real attempt to wrestle with what the actual value of the art is. The

It's interesting to see such a long discussion of the value of a peice of art without any real attempt to wrestle with what the actual value of the art is. The copyright of Tolkien's work isn't just an amorphous blob of future cash flows. His estate is as much interested in protecting the artistic integrity of his work as it is managing the finances. To put another way, should you be forced to sell your home if your neighbour offers the government to pay more property taxes on it than you would? I think fundamentally this article seems to be asking "There are these guys right, and they have created this fantastic stuff and it's protected by copyright, but they're not choosing the most economically productive way to use their stuff, so we should find a way to take it off them". And I'm not sure that premise is correct. If you want to create economic value from a copyrighted material please... go create some copyrighted material with economic value.