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JRR Tolkien: 'I Never Expected a Money Success'

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday October 28 2015, @10:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-ring-to-rule-them-all dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

"I never expected a money success," said Tolkien, pacing the room, as he does constantly when he speaks. "In fact, I never even thought of commercial publication when I wrote The Hobbit back in the Thirties.

"It all began when I was reading exam papers to earn a bit of extra money. That was agony. One of the tragedies of the underpaid professor is that he has to do menial jobs. He is expected to maintain a certain position and to send his children to good schools. Well, one day I came to a blank page in an exam book and I scribbled on it. 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

The piece is a pleasant read about the greatest fantasy writer of all time.

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  • (Score: 2) by romlok on Thursday October 29 2015, @09:27AM

    by romlok (1241) on Thursday October 29 2015, @09:27AM (#255944)

    That's the real question you should be asking. How much art, great or otherwise, are we missing out on that people would have created, for profit or just the love of creating it, had they not been stymied in their efforts because some asshole threatened to sic the MAFIAA on them?

    If you're creating original works, then the MAFIAA have no legal recourse against you even today. If you're creating works based on existing MAFIAA-controlled works (such as your "write the next episode yourself" example), then even without copyright you'd still have trademarks and (in some jurisdictions) moral rights to contend with.

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