Fanfiction illegalized in USA!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Abolish copyright law, it does nothing but stymie creativity
Naaah, that’s not true.
I promise you that if the stuff I’ve written and published could be used by anyone, however they wanted, it would not have been published. I would have kept that shit to myself.
If anything, copyright laws encourage creativity because the person knows they can take their time to build things up. You don’t have to worry about fifteen sequels to your book being spammed by hacks trying to profit from your work
