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Originally Posted by Nerwen
[ Again, I know this wasn't the original purpose of copyright law. What I'm saying is that I don't think it's wrong to use a law for another purpose than what it was meant for, if that purpose is not in itself wrong.
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And I think that's what's gotten us all a long way down a very slippery slope with lots of nasty sharp rocks waiting at the bottom.
There are constant attempts to extend the term & nature of 'Copyright' - some are demanding that copyright to be up for sale to the highest bidder & extended indefinitely, so that companies could purchase copyrighted material & keep it out of the public domain forever. That would be be concerning enough if we were dealing only with works of art, but when it includes personal letters & documents, then the danger to society is immense. Copyright is a bit of a bugbear with me (I check out Techdirt at least once everyday!) & my hackles rise at the casual use & abuse of it.
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All the above, though, relates to your own hypothesis that the Estate's real motivation is to suppress some juicy bit of scandal... which remains just an hypothesis, anyway.
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Well, I could be flip & say - 'Who's fault's that? The Estate are not offering up any real explanation of what they don't want 'out there' - they are simply saying 'We own the copyright & we are not allowing this material out'. If this wasn't the Tolkien Estate, but Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation I don't think my reastion would be uncommon. In other words, there's a sense of 'Its the TOLKIEN Estate, therefore their behaviour can only be good & wise & done entirely for the best reasons. My response - yes, very probably. I don't think they're trying to cover up some terrible scandal that would shock the Tolkien community to the core & lead to public burnings of his books & himself in effigy. I suspect its more just a bit of mildly embarrassing stuff about Father Francis' prediliction for juggling stoats or some such.
Actually, no, it must be something beyond the range of silly but a bit embarrassing, because I doubt the authors & publishers of this book would have any issue leaving out material like that. Let's remember they have spent years researching & writing a scholarly work about Tolkien's brother & brought it right to the point of publication & clearly feel that the story cannot be told without the inclusion of this material. The Estate are making out this is just 20-odd pages out of 300 & its no big deal to remove it. The authors, after all their hard work feel that without it the book is missing an element so vital that there is no point publishing it. If I step back from an attitude of 'Oh, its the TOLKIEN Estate so there can't possibly be anything bad in what they're doing here' & look at this objectively, I see very big. very rich organisation preventing the publication of a serious work of scholarship because it contains information said very big, very rich organisation does not want in the public domain. That may just be material which is a bit embarrassing rather than deeply scandalous, but stopping this book going ahead for that reason is a bit of a scandal in itself (IMHO)