Cultural embarrassment

[matrixmann]

The next episode in the category "youth is as fucked up and has as much bad taste as the previous generation":

When the eldest school kids, about 14 to 16 years old, of a nearby 10-classes-school meet in their niche before the building, start to entertain the whole surrounding area with their music and among it you recognize some kind of newer, 2015-updated-like version of Eiffel 65's "Blue".

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

You know like the Tolkien estate could have tried to sue every fantasy writer after him and probably could have won a number of the cases. The beginning of the Sword of Shannara is a lot like the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, but it would also make less people want to read books of fantasy if the whole field was a bunch of writers suing each other. I bet Science Fiction novels are a lot alike too.

[matrixmann]

With Tolkien you had it that he's dead long enough. If someone's over the limit that law sets for it, and as long as no-one has an acting copyright to it (seems like a copyright no-one acquirted through later purchasing), then it's something they can't do anything about.
In my country it's 70 years after an author's death it becomes like outlawed. The last one which had the copyright, it expires.
And I think you can only keep having grip of it, if you do a sequel. But in a lot of cases this surely is unprobable, either no-one is interested or it's downright unrealistic to find someone to be able to write one.

I'm not that familar with the details of the copyright, but sure you could hear a bit about it since this year Free State of Bavaria's copyright on Hitler's "Mein Kampf" expires and for that it becomes reprintable legally for the first time in Germany. Since that is a controversial book, there is talking "what to do about it to maybe keep preventing this?"