[davem]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

This is now starting to sound to me like a bit of a storm in a teacup.

Well, unless you've spent the last few years researching & writing a book...

Actually, I've been looking into the Estate's attitude a bit more, & I'm still not sure whether this is about privacy or pettiness:

Christopher Tolkien owns all copyrights to his father's works and the Tolkien Estate has an official editorial team that sifts through Tolkien’s paperwork and releases new sets of words from time to time.

Lúthien say she must tread carefully though when it comes to the words they publish and worries about legal issues should she include them in her dictionary because the Tolkien estate are very strict about their use.

The Tolkien estate has taken people to court in the past, most notably author Michael Perry for his book Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings. Wired magazine reported back in 2001 how "Elfconners", the name given to those involved with Tolkien's unpublished writings, had acted as "informal copyright police" and attempted to prevent publications by other linguistic scholars.http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/1...eks/page6.html

Still, the Elvish scene is riven by all-too-human controversy. In 1999, Fauskanger received an email from an associate that included scans of two Quenya texts by J.R.R. Tolkien: unpublished translations of the Lord's Prayer and "Ave Maria." After writing a dense analysis of the texts, which are some of the longest Quenya writings by Tolkien known to exist, Fauskanger sent his 60-page manuscript to Christopher Tolkien for feedback. He also asked if he could publish a facsimile of Tolkien's original handwritten texts along with his own work. In return he got a curt letter from Cathleen Blackburn, the lawyer for the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited, which continues to manage Tolkien's literary properties. Blackburn told Fauskanger that he could not legally disseminate his analysis, let alone a facsimile. Old flame wars on the TolkLang list were rekindled: Can you copyright an invented language or just particular texts in that language? Fauskanger believes he was well within the boundaries of fair use, but the Norwegian has no desire to alienate the estate. He just wants to publish an exceptionally obscure text in a tiny journal for no money.#The issue is compounded by the fact that a tremendous amount of Tolkien's linguistic material remains unpublished and in the hands of a fan cabal. In the early 1990s, the estate made thousands of pages of Tolkien's notes available to a handpicked crew of linguists known loosely as the Elfconners. The group includes a NASA scientist named Carl Hostetter and a Berkeley record store clerk named Arden Smith. After promising not to share the material with others, the Elfconners were supposed to prepare and publish at least a portion of these writings. But a full decade after the Elfconners first received copies from Christopher Tolkien, the clique has published only a few early lexicons in their increasingly irregular journals - a situation that recalls nothing so much as the Dead Sea Scrolls controversy. To make matters worse, the Elfconners have behaved as informal copyright police, pressuring other linguists not to publish their dictionaries and grammars. "It's against all principles of scholarship and decency for one scholar to try to use the law to prevent another scholar from publishing," says David Salo, who has yet to publish his 366-page analysis of Sindarin for fear of an estate suit. Unfortunately, all the Elfconners approached by Wired turned down requests for interviews. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9...ic=&topic_set=

As has been pointed out previously this isn't the first time the Estate has prevented publication of a book which has gotten a very long way towards publication before suddenly deciding they don;t want it to go ahead (Michael Drout was about to publish Tolkien's translation of Beowulf originally working with the Estate's permission - which was then withdrawn.)

I'm not saying the Estate is behaving any better or worse than other copyright holders who regularly use copyright in a heavy-handed way, either to protect their privacy (a -mis-use of the spirit if not the letter of that law) or just to assert their rights over the material - even when it would make absolutely zero difference to them if the material was made available. Probably they aren't. But that doesn't make it right, it only makes it legal.