Tolkien in General

Some interesting comments at the bottom.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110226/19564813296/tolkien-estate-says-just-mentioning-tolkien-infringes-tolkien-censorwear-appears-response.shtml?threaded=true

Chrome is telling me that site has 'insecure content' but screw it I just don't care anymore go ahead and load it chrome

Tolkien Estate Says Just Mentioning Tolkien Infringes; Tolkien Censorwear Appears In Response
from the that's-not-how-this-works dept
We've been mentioning a bit about how the estate of JRR Tolkien has been overaggressive in trying to enforce (sometimes non-existent) intellectual property rights related to Tolkien. The estate has been like that for a while, but in the last few weeks it's seemed like the number of such stories have been ramping up. The latest one is particularly ridiculous. Boing Boing points us to the news that the Tolkien Estate has threatened a guy for having a button that merely mentions Tolkien:

If you can't see the image, the button reads: "While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion." That's not infringing in any way, shape or form. Yet, the Tolkien Estate sent Zazzle (where the button was being sold) a cease and desist. Ridiculously, Zazzle simply complied. That's disappointing as well. In cases of obvious overreach, Zazzle should stand up for the rights of its users.

Of course, where Zazzle fails to stand up for its users, its users seem to be more than willing to stand up for themselves. A bunch of protest merchandise has suddenly been showing up on Zazzle, such as the following two shirts, which joke about Christopher Tolkien's desire to censor any mention of his father that he hasn't approved or been paid for:

Are there still cases about this going on? I remember this news breaking over a year ago but I thought it had died down.

...Tolkien...does this mean I get a free holiday in America now

Money making and Tolkien seem such contrary subjects. He wrote stories he liked to read, and the wealth he generated was a pleasant surprise to him, no doubt, but he never had money making as his focus when he wrote. All this money wrangling is pretty off.

Tolkien & old Norse

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tolkien-old-norse/id511718662

Tolkien's Icelandic trolls

http://nancymariebrown.blogspot.de/2012/08/tolkiens-icelandic-trolls.html

The trolls always struck me as if not directly Icelandic then certainly northern European traditions. Similar old Celtic tales ect in Scotand and right across the northern countries in Europe you will find a lot of shared commonality in folklore creatures. Trolls among them.
There was so much coming and going of ideas going back at least to the time of Skara Brae (about 3000bc) and probably much, much earlier (as Skara Brae ect is probably all that is left on the edge of the land that is now under the North Sea and once linked Scotland by land to the rest of mainland and northern Europe).

Tolkien's Icelandic trolls (...)

As this person is also the author of a book somehow called 'A Good Horse Has No Color' I cannot recommend this article.

Ah Grani, there are some who don't forget you, great foal of Sleipnir: behoofed, beloved, begreyed.

Wise Elthir- what kind of preposterous statement is that for her to make when Forumshire has at least 10 pages of quality arguing to the contrary!

Not the horse debate again!

Trolls are very much alive in Scandinavia through fairytales. The trolls in the Hobbit are just like the ones we grown up hearing about.

In Iceland they still avoid building roads or buildings in certain areas known for belonging to the elfs.

I too noticed the 'A Good Horse Has No Color' thing. I had a feeling it would be mentioned. (And yey for the Grani reference! )

I hope we can all agree that Grani was grey.

is there any room behind the sofa Eldo? budge up. OW! thats my foot.

The whole subject is grey, methinks!

And so am I

Tolkien and Lewis

The Skyrim Merp mod possibly received some C&D letters from Warner Bros (bastards!). I think they're pursuing legal options to keep the mod up though. Here's to hoping they pull through.

Typical- did everything they could to weedle out of paying the Tolkien estate a penny and come down like a ton of bricks on some fans making a game mod.
Theres a wonderful British word for folks like that- wankers!

Yeah I know. But they have no problem publishing that sub-par trash," The Guardians of Middle Earth" though !

Integrity versus money. Money always wins these days, sadly.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:these days

I just think it's sad actually. The Merp team worked on this mod for years back in Oblivion. There were so many speed bumps, but they stuck with it. Now when they port to Skyrim and find the Creation Kit makes it 1000x easier to mod and have already made so much progress doing in months what previously took years, (Rohan is almost finished) they receive a C&D letter.