Christopher Tolkien at it again....

[davem]

When people love something they want to make it part of their lives - whether that's kids playing at being at Hogwarts, or being Elves or Hobbits with their friends, or adults naming their house Rivendell or Bag End, or their pets Sam or Bilbo - or their children (Terry Pratchett wrote of girls being named Galadriel or Arwen beck in the 60's.)

It happens - though it seems the Estate would prefer children's active participation in the world of Middle-earth to be limited to sitting in front of a screen & hacking up Orcs via their PS3, rather than being out in the countryside with their friends.

I'm inclined not to excuse the Estate & place all the blame on the lawyers for this one - if you let your dog run loose & it savages an innocent person then you are responsible - if you claim you didn't know what Rover was doing then you would rightly be asked 'Why not?' - & I wouldn't be surprised to hear an announcement in the next few years about a 'Middle-earth World' in Orlando, Florida (they all seem to be built there for some reason.

I'm afraid that once a story enters into the public consciousness the writer loses a certain amount of control - & when lawyers get involved, threatening to punish people for expressing their love of a particular story which has moved them & brought them joy, then something is very wrong. Plus - as I quoted a few posts back:

Extending control over the identity of important people to their estates after death is, I think, to mistake how culture and art work and to elevate property rights to an importance that does us very little good. The identities of famous people as varied as Einstein, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe become part of our culture’s language. That cultural meaning then becomes part of the language of our cultural conversations, and as a part of that language it then has meaning that can be used in the sorts of compressed and symbolic ways that culture and art thrive on. To remove the identities of dead people from this language in the absence of payment for their use would substantially damage our culture.

& that applies even more to stories- which also "become part of the language of our cultural conversations, and as a part of that language it then has meaning that can be used in the sorts of compressed and symbolic ways that culture and art thrive on." And therefore to 'remove the stories from this language in the absence of payment for their use would substantially damage our culture' infinitely more.