Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
A large percentage of movies are based on books....like the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. The authors/rights holders were paid by the movie makers for the privilege.
Why should the movie makers get to make money on stories and characters that an author wrote without compensation?
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Harry Potter: no discussion here. The author is alive and kicking and of course must be paid.
LOTR: Under the current Life+70 regulation, Tolkien's works will enter the public domain in 2044, so of course his heirs had to be paid. Under Life+20, which, as I mentioned in an earlier post, German author Arno Schmidt said was plenty, they wouldn't. I think that would have been absolutely fine. Tolkien drew so extensively on older mythologies that it would be a good thing if his contribution went back to the whole of humanity rather sooner than later.
It is also interesting that people always bring up the examples where an idea brought in the real big bucks, "franchises" whose creators (the franchise creators, not necessarily the original authors) are only interested in creating a money machine, not in contributing anything to humanity. (Well, Rowling seems to be a decent person; does anyone know her views on posthumous copyright terms?)
Anyway, if it only concerned the chocolate frosted sugar bombs of culture, like Disney or the Marvel cinematic frigging universe, I wouldn't mind them keeping the rights to their shite for eternity - but they are spoiling it for everybody.