(no subject)

[ramtops]

oh FFS - how I hate corporate greed.

"The Tolkien estate and Warners have sent out a lawyergram to the owner of shiremail.com, arguing that the word "Shire" belongs to them. The Register traces over 1,000 years of usage of the word "Shire" in England, and enumerates many towns with the word "shire" in their names across the English countryside."

from El Reg. And do read this wonderful letter from Groucho Marx to Warner Bros while you're at it.

Comments

[timill]

But, following a link from your Register article, we find:

Elsewhere, Planet-Tolkien.com - the UK-based community focused on Lord of the Rings and other works by JRR Tolkien - has launched its own email service.

For £3.50 a month, shiremail.com offers users a "stress free" email service complete with virus and spam protection plus 1 gigabyte of email storage.

So they're certainly trading off the Tolkein Estate, if not Warner Bros. This is not just someone chasing usage of the word "Shire".

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

then it's up to the Tolkien Estate to stop him.

[lovingboth]

They probably sold the copyrights (or lost them - didn't JRR manage to lose his US copyright?) in a similar manner to the way Harry Potter et al are (tm) Warner Bros rather than (tm) JK Rowling.

In any case, get lost to the idea that 'shire' is (tm) anyone.