Comment by aidenn0

> Authors weren't just "made more comfortable" by this as a fringe benefit, as you say, but really, they were able to make a living from their creative work

By "made more comfortable" I was not referring to the existence of copyright at all, but rather the multiple extensions that were made from 1976 to 1998, where copyright terms went from 56 years to over 95 years[1].

If the Ace paperback edition of LoTR was piracy, then I question the meaning of the term, since the original US publisher imported British editions which lacked the (then required) US copyright notice. Note also that Ace ceased publishing this edition (and paid Tolkein) due to public pressure, not any legal threats.

(Also lest I misrepresent myself, there were many good changes to copyright in 1976, including removing the notice requirement that caused Tolkein so much trouble).

1: Prior to 1976 the lifetime of the author did not involve in the calculation, and literature is one place where works-for-hire are still rare this is more complicated than just 39 years longer; nevertheless 70 years from the (last in the case of multiple) author's death is always more protection than 56 years, and may be considerably more for a young author. This also reinforces my point that media corporations (where work-for-hire is the norm) benefited from this rather more than authors.