from WCH - (who should know better)
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Your restated argument is no stronger. You're claiming that UA somehow bought everything to do with Numenor? No. First off, JRRT and thus his estate explicitly retained plenary rights over the written word. A claim based on derivative film rights doesn't affect that in any way, shape or form.
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Its an unfortunate given in some debates that each side or one side will ignore the actual truth in the others arguement and instead attempt to restate the opposing sides points in language that is far more favorable to themselves and then argue against that. And that is what you have done here.
I never claimed that UA SOMEHOW BOUGHT EVERYTHING TO DO WITH NUMENOR. If I did, please reproduce that section so I can see it with my own two eyes. You are a smart man who should know better. And we have gone round on other issues before and you should know I will not fall for this tactic.
I brought up an issue that many here do not even want to think about, let alone tackle and look at the implications. It is a legal one and not a literary one.
JRRT sold film rights to every single thing in LOTR and HOBBIT to UA before he died. Included in those rights is every word in the Appendicies. Then he died not having published the actual book version of THE SILMARALLION.
Do you agree with those facts?
My point is a simple one that people have not looked at before this - at least I have not seen it discussed. The current rights holders to both LOTR and HOBBIT own a wealth of material from previous Middle-earth history. They own the film rights to that. They do not own the film rights to the published book THE SILMARALLION edited by CT after his fathers death.
The fact is this: the publishing and copyrighting of SIL causes many legal questions to arise since much of what is in there was first published and included in LOTR and to a lesser extent in HOBBIT. If it was me, and I owned those film rights to that material, I would be very concerned that my rights have been severely diminished by CT causing to be published SIL.
Here is the position the rights holders are now in.
1- they can go ahead and include things from the Appendicies in a film and invent all the dialogue, place designs, character designs, and transitional scenes from scratch.
2- they can utilize the fuller descriptions of these things as found in the published SIL without actually filming the book as a movie in much the same way that Jackson used afew things outside of the actual LOTR.
3- they can film something like SIL using anything they want to use claiming that they owned the story first.
If they do any of these things, here is what can happen with each of those actions.
option 1 - critics here and elsewhere - the Print Purist community for lack of a better term - rip on that approach saying over and over again for years and years and years that the films are not authentic, made too much up out of their own heads, were creatures of invention, are NOT the Middle-Earth of JRRT, show no respect for the actual world of JRRT and Middle-earth and are, in short, a bunch of crap.
option 2 - risk being sued by the Estate
option 3 - risk a stonger chance of lawsuit by the Estate
Sounds like lose, lose , lose to me.
So the rights holders own rights which have been rendered problematic in the least and impossible in the extreme.
The diminishment of rights is a practical matter that renders those same rights in great jeapordy.
Some here may not want to look at it that way but I think it is very clear.
The published SIL makes the holders of those film rights sold free and clear by JRRT damned if they do and damned if they do not.