In response to the responses, I'd say that the Tolkien Estate as such should
realize that this "Tolkien thing" is far bigger than your average corporate
intellectual property rights issue, and that trying to manage Tolkien and all
his works with strict legal methods is doomed to fail. It's the proverbial
herding cats. I myself am a fantasy writer (as of yet only a few of my
non-fantasy poems have been published), but I realize that once a work is out to
the public, the public owns it, no longer me. Sure, I can "retain the rights"
blah-blah-blah in some niggling legal sense, but in reality I've lost my work
inside the brain of each reader. And how and when it comes out of each mind into
the collective mind ... is totally out of my control ... and I could only make a
fool of myself trying to control and shape it with legal rules and regulations.

In general, I'm sad about how possessive people have become over Tolkien. To me,
part of the problem stems from how his work speaks to us so much at an intuitive
level. One musician once said this about music: music that you really love, that
really strikes you and moves you is like a homesickness for a place you've never
been to, nor ever will find. That sums up Tolkien for me. It also means people
are going to behave irrationally due to the general uncontrollability of the
lost, modern human trying to find that mysterious home Tolkien so wonderfully
played on our heartstrings.