Peter Jackson 'stretched' the film license?
 

Now, we know that New Line only has the rights to film the Hobbit and LOTR, not the Silmarillion and the HoMe books. But still there is some material from those books that can be seen in the movies. A while ago I was checking out a site containing translations of various inscriptions in the LOTR movies and I found a passage from the tale of Turin Turambar titled 'Imladris Book Inscription' and another passage describing the Ring of Barahir titled 'The Ring of Barahir Inscription'.

Here's the link. http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie_otherinscr.htm

What I want to ask is was the inclusion of these lines illegal(since they come from the Silmarillion) and can the Tolkien Estate sue New Line over them(if they found out)?

A lot of this is murky territory that nobody can give a 100% legally rock solid answer about. Because JRRT put so many references and names so much in the Appendices about earlier events described more fully in SIL and HOME, its hard to say exactly with any legal certainty what can and what cannot be used without fear of legal action. I would be willing to bet that the Tolkien Estate has several written lawyers opinion on this as does both Saul Zaentz and New Line Cinema. And I would wager a years salary that they DO NOT all come to the same conclusions about what can be used and what cannot. Maybe somebody has to push that envelope to test those waters?

What it boils down to is that

a) technically an ultra-wonk could probably prove that the depiction/description of the Ring of Barahir, and Gil-Galad's and Elrond's coats of arms, and the account (given to Saruman) of the origin of Orcs, and use of Sindarin vocabulary derived from Silmarillion/HME/Parma Eldalamberon, and a few other trivial details constitue infringement of Tolkien works outside the film licence.

And b) any rational jury would award him about five bucks in damages. Not to mention c) a rational judge calling him a poopoohead.

There's more. An entire page from the Akallabeth(although this didn't make it into the final cut of the movies).

http://www.danielreeve.co.nz/LOTR/Ca...s/Collage2.jpg

I'm talking about the one on the top right.

That photo of the scrolls...

:eek:

...and to think that people say they ignored the books.



I really doubt there'd be any possible court case here...what's this over, a few names in a movie?

And there's been worse. The Warcraft universe had a dwarven kingdom called Khaz-Modan...sound vaguely familiar? Seems like there's a far more real court case there.

The 'possible court case' is over entire passages from books which New Line didn't have rights to appearing in the LOTR films. Here are more scrolls...in Tengwar. There's supposed to be a scroll depicting Akallabeth somewhere here, but I can't read Tengwar.:(

http://www.danielreeve.co.nz/LOTR/Ca...s/Collage1.jpg

It's a great pity most of this material never made into the final cut of the film.

zxcvbn ... where did you get those pages from? I do not remember seeing them before.

I do think that WCH is right - little violations like this would cost mucho bucks to take to court and the return would be rather small.

Good blazes, I think this is like beating a dead horse. What's the point? Did Jackson taint the material from the Silm? He left it fairly alone. All he did was quote a little history, and Saruman would know history.

Why argue about it?

I honestly think this is going out of the way to find another reason to criticize Jackson, and in this case - it's ridiculous.

There's also a doctrine of 'incidental infringement': the classic case is where a news photograper happens to catch a painting or a newspaper in a shop window in the background. Not that these 'scrolls' are exactly the same, since of course they're not accidental, and in theory even making them is an infringement: but they are similar in that hardly anyone would even notice them, even fewer of those could read Tengwar, and the bit of Akallabeth visible is only a fragment any way.

All pretty de damn minimis.

At any rate, the movie tie-in books got permission from the Estate; necessarily so, since Zaentz' rights do not extend to books.

from WCH -

How do you think this fact impacts the often heard tale that the Estate had nothing to do with the films and simply took a very no-comment, no participation, no involvement in any way position?

Aha! I thought you might take that line. The copyright statement in each of them reads "Published with permission but not approval of the Tolkien Estate."

WCH - a tip of my hat to you for being able to predict my Pavlovian response. But how about it? Permisssion, even without direct product or content approval, is still involvement is it not? And it does seem to fly in the face of the loud protestations that the Estate simply stood there while others exercised their rights accordingly and they have no comment or involvement of any kind. You may not know this for fact..... BUT ... do you think that permission came with any kind of royalty paid to the Estate?

As for royalties, I haven't the slightest idea. Personally I doubt it but that's based merely on a gut feeling, not evidence.


Actually I think that unusual copyright statement represents walking a tightrope, avoiding the Scylla of actual approval, which would imply 'endorsement' or 'involvement', and the Charybdis of simply refusing and looking like obstructionist buttheads (not that it worked, since the PJ camp was happy to falsely accuse CT of just that in other contexts).

It's a very distinctive form of statement, suggesting "We're not going to stop you, but we won't have anything to do with it." In other words, completely consistent.

William - I do not think I would characterize it quite the way you did in your closing words , but thanks for your opinion.

I got these pictures from the website of Daniel Reeve(the movie calligraphist). I'm not trying to bash Peter Jackson or anything. I love his movies. I was simply curious about this because if PJ was allowed to overstep rights restrictions in this manner, then it may be possible to incorporate material from Silmarillion and UT in future Middle Earth films(eg.'The Quest for Erebor' in the Hobbit).

That would be a bridge too far. The Estate can't be bothered to make a stink over tiny visual elements in the background which only True Geeks would ever notice, but lifting entire narratives is a whole 'nother story. It's sort of like fanfic: the Estate is aware of it, but is perfectly willing to ignore it so long as nobody tries to sell the stuff. But put up a Tolkien e-text (or map) and you will recieve Manches LLC's loving attentions.