Perhaps so but why?

Tolkien was educated at mainly public expense and his wherewithal and worldliness that enabled him to write his novels came from the society in which he lived.

That is, he was intimately coupled to his society without which he would not have been able to write his books. He owes society some payback for what it gave him.

Tolkien has rights that need protection but they are not exclusive morally speaking. That the law gives him full and exclusive rights is an unfortunate product of history when Victor Hugo and cronies forced the Berne Convention in the days before the reading public had any idea that it was about to be shafted.

That unfair treaty has to be made fair despite protestations from greedy publishers. If not, they will eventually lose out because every new computer technology only makes it easier to copy works. Even now it's a cinch, in 20 years it'll be so easy that if any text or video has any public exposure it'll be copied by consumers as a matter of course—copyright holders bedamed. (Think Google Glass—like tech that captures everything a human sees in high definition. If a human sees it then it will be copied automatically. Right, copyright is on the wall without major reform.)

What we are witnessing from these greedy publishing bastards are the last gasps of the old elitist copyright order. If they were smart they would realize that they need to be much more reasonable and consolatory to even survive.