Beyond the Tolkien Estate

[Child of the 7th Age]

Regarding the controversy over the term "shire", it is my understanding that this is not coming from the Estate but from the movie folk.

On this, see the following anouncement that appeared in the Forbes website:

The backers of the Lord of the Rings movies are threatening legal action against the fledgling British Web site www.shiremail.com. A lawyer for Hollywood's Warner Bros., New Line Productions and Saul Zaentz Co. wrote owner Tarrant Costelloe, claiming the use of "shire" deceives the public into thinking there is an official Rings connection. Nonsense, says Costelloe, who posted online the written demand that he hand over the domain. He points out that "shire"--which has been used for a millennium in England--forms part of the name of dozens of towns and counties. --Dirk Smillie

The controversy apparently hinges around the question of domain names. I'm not sure how this would affect someone who had a website that incorporated the term "shire" as part of a legitimate placename or in reference to a "Shire" horse which is a registered breed.

It is also my understanding that the Tolkien estate has threatened to sue a number of websites that have poems and maps available for download. As a result, most of the map websites have been shut down while other general sites have removed the material that was under objection.

One of the websites that has been in the forefont of both controversies was Planet Tolkien, the main fan based Tolkien website in the UK. It is similar to the Downs, although larger. They are legally registered under a number of domain names including www.tolkien.org.uk. The estate approached them and stated:

Our client believes that you have registered the domain name in "bad faith", with an intention to use its name for your own financial gain (either directly or via advertising revenue) or in the hope of selling it to our client for more than the administrative costs incurred by you. It is, therefore, an abusive registration within the meaning set out in the Nominet DRS.

n addition, this is a well known mark and we cannot see how you could hope to show that any use you might put the domain name to could be a "good faith" use.

Planet Tolkien was also threatened with a lawsuit by the movie folk (the ones described above) because they have an affiliation with www.shiremail.com.

The problems with the Tolkien estate were apparently settled; as far as I know, those with the movie people were not. For a full account, from the perspective of Planet Tolkien, see this link: What is it about domain-name ownership?

So now we have the situation where some rights are tied up in the Estate, and others are tied up with the movie folk. And the whole question of domain names is being raised. I find the whole thing immeasurably sad, and personally do not understand what domain names have to do with preserving the literary heritage of Tolkien. But I guess it can only be expected when so much money is involved.
As we know, Tolkien's original agreement with Unwin stipulated that he would get 50% of the profits, since the publishers were afraid the book would not make any money. T. S. Shippey estimates that, over the years, the publisher Stanley Unwin has made about a billion pounds and the Tolkien estate another billion pounds on the Lord of the Rings. That's a heap of money! And this is to say nothing of the profits that have gone to the movie folk.