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LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective
Hugh Pickens writes writes "It's been said that history is written by the winners but Laura Miller writes in Salon about a counterexample as she reviews a new version of Lord of the Rings. The Last Ring-bearer was published to acclaim in Russia by Kirill Yeskov, a paleontologist whose job is reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life. Yeskov performs essentially the same feat in his book. The Last Ring-bearer is set during and after the end of the War of the Ring and told from the perspective of the losers. In Yeskov's retelling, available in translation as a free download, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science 'destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men' and Aragorn is depicted by Yeskov as a ruthless Machiavellian schemer who is ultimately the puppet of his wife, the elf Arwen. Sauron's citadel Barad-dur is, by contrast, described as 'that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic.'"
Okay... I'll tell you again. If there was no copyright, then everyone could simply copy the works of authors and they may not end up being paid for their work. If authors might not be paid for their work, there would be fewer authors. Copyright and patent law are all about making sure the people who did the work are compensated for their work and not ripped off. This helps ensure they will do the work.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Shakespear was published under a regime of perpetual copyright.
This sig all sigs devours
Shakespeare had copy rights for his work!
From the The Oxford companion to Shakespeare
:
The acting companies for which Shakespeare wrote held the legal copy rights to his manuscripts. Theater historians have traditionally maintained that players were reluctant to allow their plays to be printed, either because they feared losing exclusive acting rights to another company or because they believed that the sale of printed texts might reduce the demand for performances.
I don't know about Mozart.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Quoting Wikipedia: "fear of the vigilant and litigious Tolkien estate has heretofore prevented its publication in English". Tell me again, how exactly copyright encourages creation of new works?
It enables authors to profit, by actually having a market, which encourages publishers to pay authors and authors to write books, without banning any technology -- especially now; without copyright, there'd be not enough profit in publishing books.
After limited times, meaning a short amount of time, the duration of the copyright expires, and new works can be made based on the old work. This is how copyright avoids stifling new works -- old works' copyright expires. This promotes progress in the arts and sciences because there is now not much (if any) profit in rehashing old works.
Promoting progress means encouraging new works, and since copyright protections only apply to new works (that is: works that are so new, that they are still subject to copyright), new works are encouraged.
You basically have 3 choices... (A) Have copyright, (B) Ban sale/possession of electronic/mechanic devices capable of copying or rendering books except by 'licensed publishers' (essentially -- personal computers would be banned), or (C) Have few/no books, because there's no profit un publishing to be made making and selling large books. The few books that could exist would be advertising supported.
Shakespear was published under a regime of perpetual copyright.
Which is why Hamlet and King Lear, among other plays, are thought to be reworkings of older plays.
At the time England didn't have copyright laws. They did have the Stationer's Company, which was the printers' guild. In theory once a printer entered a work into the Stationer's Company Register, other printers weren't able to print a copy of that work. In practice, this wasn't well enforced, and publishers often printed works registered to other printers. The first actual copyright law didn't come until the 18th century.
You're about to be modded troll for this bit:
throwing minority Americans into death camps for the crime of having german/japanese grandparents.
It's untrue as it is offensive. My grandfather, an off the boat German immigrant from the early 30's, joined the US Marines and fought during the war. His family was not rounded up into camps.
And death camps? Seriously? While the Japanese internment camps were indeed an atrocious violation of basic civil rights, they were limited to the West coast, and had living conditions a fair sight better than some other contemporary 'death' camps.
I get your point, soldiers on both sides did some pretty horrible things. But implying that we were not better than governments engaged in active genocide is inflammatory. And as an American, incredibly offensive.
>Shakespear was published under a regime of perpetual copyright.
Well, I'm no expert, but this guy from Duke says Shakespeare was written before the "Statute of Anne" or any other copyright law:
http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2011/02/18/shakespeare-and-copyright/
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Also, don't forget to check out Mary Gentle's Grunts, which is told from the point of view of the orcs... and who are definitely the bad guys. Oh yes.
Hilarious and in incredibly bad taste.
England is a common-law regime. Most laws at that time were just writing down what the accepted common law (tradition) was, not creating new legal concepts. "Law" preceeds "statute" in just about every culture.
There was effectively perpetual copyright in common law, but enforced IIRC through the printer's guild. That was only true copyright, however: the right to print a copy. It wasn't performance rights, derivative works, or other modern concepts under the copyright umbrella.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.