I want to clarify:
What we're talking about here is the use/abuse of copyright. Let's go back a bit
Quote:
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"The coming into force of the Statute of Anne in April 1710 marked a historic moment in the development of copyright law. As the world's first copyright statute it granted publishers of a book legal protection of 14 years with the commencement of the statute. It also granted 21 years of protection for any book already in print. Unlike the monopoly granted to the Stationers' Company previously, the Statute of Anne was concerned with the reading public, the continued production of useful literature, and the advancement and spread of education. To encourage "learned men to compose and write useful books" the statute guaranteed the finite right to print and reprint those works. It established a pragmatic bargain involving authors, the booksellers and the public. The Statute of Anne ended the old system whereby only literature that met the censorship standards administers by the booksellers could appear in print. The statute furthermore created a public domain for literature, as previously all literature belonged to the booksellers forever.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
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the Statute of Anne was concerned with the reading public, the continued production of useful literature, and the advancement and spread of education. That's the point, & the only real justification for copyright - to enable artists to continue creating & to promote the arts - obviously, if an artist spends years creating a work & then as soon as its made public people copy it & sell it on without giving anything back to the artist then the artist will either find a different means of making a living, or starve. So, the purpose of copyright is to promote creativity - for example the writing of books. One cannot argue that the publication of these letters or the contents thereof are going to prevent JRR Tolkien writing any more letters to Hilary Tolkien.
Copyright was never intended to be used as cheap & easy means of protecting one's privacy - there are other laws intended for that purpose. Of course, one problem is that one cannot libel the dead, so to expand Morthoron's comment about J.R.R. parading about in women's clothing in a foxhole in France and being referred to as Jane Tolkien by his comrades one could actually state that he
did without fear of prosecution -whether its true or not, because JRRT is dead. On the other hand one could not state that Christopher Tolkien got up to similar shenanigans in the RAF, because he's not dead. One could not, either, state that JRRT paraded about in women's clothing at home & traumatised his children by these antics, because his children are still alive & even though the statement concerns JRRT principally, it also makes reference to them.
Therefore, while the Estate's action in this case is certainly 'legal' in its use of copyright law I still say its against the spirit of the law of copyright, & is effectively doing the opposite of what Copyright is intended to do, by actually preventing a book being published, even though there is not a single suggestion from the Estate that the material in question was false in any way. Preventing facts being made public, is not, & never was, the purpose of Copyright.