Book People Archive

RE: Status of LoTR. Public Domain?

>This post claims that the text of Lord of The Rings is public domain in
>the U.S. - could someone more familiar with U.S. copyright law weigh in?
>Because if it is, I am going to scan it in at first opportunity.
>http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55585#post1056112

Although I'm not sure, I do not believe that the three books that make up
LoTR are in the public domain. As one of the recent postings at the
mentioned board states:

The Hobbit was published in 1937. Copyright protection for pre-1978 works is
for 28 years plus an optional renewal term of 67 years. I'll assume the
copyright was renewed, so that's a total of 95 years from 1937. So The
Hobbit will enter the public domain in 2032. The Lord of the Rings was
published in 1955 or so, so it will enter the public domain in 2050. 
It's interesting that under the copyright law at the time The Hobbit was
published, it would have been public domain in 1993. But the Copyright Act
of 1976 extended that retroactively another 39 years. Bummer. 

Of course, (badly typed or scanned) copies of the books abound on the
internet, for example at
http://www.kulichki.com:8102/~moshkow/book/TOLKIEN/ , 
which site is crammed with works which are legally unavailable to US readers
and others.
             
Casper hulshof
University of Twente

[Moderator: They're not legal in Russia either, as far as I can tell.
 Russia has a life+50 years copyright term as well, with further
 extended terms for authors who worked during WW2 or who were "repressed
 and rehabilitated posthumously".  Tolkien's estate has already sent them
 at least one notice to take it down, which can be viewed at
 http://www.kulichki.com:8102/~moshkow/book/TOLKIEN/copyright1.txt
 (though I can't read the Russian part at the top).  I don't know how
 long it would take Russia's currently weakened government to enforce
 its laws, though.

 Generally speaking, I ask that people *not* download texts from or to
 countries where the copyright would be infringed.  While the citation of
 one bootleg site in this post does serve as an illustrative example of
 international copyright disputes, I don't intend this list to become
 a publicity channel for bootlegged texts, and reserve the right not to
 forward posts that would largely serve as such publicity. - JMO]