In the United States, the copyright on The Hobbit will last until 2033, 95 years after publication—but only the first edition. The second edition with the revised Gollum story was published in 1951, so it will remain copyrighted until 2047. Interestingly, this is still earlier than the first editions of The Lord of the Rings (which will expire in 2050 and 2051).
Tolkien died in 1973, so in life+50 countries, all of his works will expire in the same year, 2024—that is, unless the country chooses to extend by twenty years to life+70, as both Canada and New Zealand are doing next year.
Extending copyright seems antithetical to the whole purpose. If copyright is supposed to incentivize creative works, how does extending it after the fact do that? Doesn’t it have the opposite effect?
At this point, "incentivize creative works" is 99% ideological gloss. The long-running payments from copyrighted works are golden Rings of Power from the POV of the financial and legal industries - and those guys are far less neglectful and benevolent than Gollum was, to ever let go if they can possibly avoid it.
Life + 50 just doesn’t make any sense. A creative work doesn’t need to provide for your grandchildren in retirement quibbling in an estate trust about how to squeeze every last drop of blood from the stone.
If it was really so successful then save up some profits from when it was reasonably in your control and make a trust fund with that.
Can't wait to see multiple new media adaptions of LOTR when this happens. Though, I doubt it will. New Zealand's tourism industry, film industry, Amazon, etc will lobby pretty hard for an indefinite copyright.
This actually raises an interesting dilema, where the original books copyright ends earlier than the copyright of a film. Does this mean that new LOTR films are still in breach of New Line Cineams copyright over the films, despite them only buying the rights from the Tolkien estate? I wonder if there are any precedents here for movies derived from creative book fiction.
Tolkien died in 1973, so in life+50 countries, all of his works will expire in the same year, 2024—that is, unless the country chooses to extend by twenty years to life+70, as both Canada and New Zealand are doing next year.