Beyond the Tolkien Estate

[Child of the 7th Age]

The other day I ran into this listing on e-bay, and my jaw dropped open: sale of planet-tolkien.com

Apparently, the largest Tolkien website in the United Kingdom is now "for sale". As the e-bay listing indicates, Planet Tolkien has over 5,000 members and thousands of hits per day. I had a membership there a number of years ago, so I suppose I am included somewhere in that 5,000. They are asking for at least 3,000 pounds, which would be about $5,700. So far there are no takers.

This is also the same website that I linked to in a former post on this thread. At that point I noted that the site had been contacted by lawyers of the Tolkien Estate in July 2004 who made this charge aganst the owner:

.....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.

Are there some legal eagles or knowledgable fans out there who can explain to me what is going on? Can a person "sell" a website complete with 5,000 members, of which I am one? Is it an infringement of the Tolkien Estate to benefit financially from such a deal, or is this the legitimate workings of the market? I was once a librarian responsible for acquiring all the materials for a large public library system so I have some inkling how copyright works, but this website and domain name "stuff" is a complete mystery to me.