#y'know if some racist dudebro fanclub made a page full of tolkien quotes and maps and the te took that down

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

Shocked when copyright holders are tightening the language around their copyright so suddenly everyone understands just how many things that copyright includes. Absolutely shocked and completely surprised. Oh wait, actually none of this is new. It’s just being made more explicit so people don’t build a whole website around selling Elvish translations and then are surprised when the TE drags them to court about it. So folks don’t put Tolkien’s art, maps or entire books on the web so people can download them. So companies don’t buy Tolkien-related domains for the sole purpose of selling them on to the highest bidder, hoping to cash in on the latest adaptation. (And I honestly can’t believe that people here on Tumblr think that some sort of shady business wouldn’t open a “Tolkienworld” theme park in a blink if they didn’t have to fear the TE slapping their fingers. Y’all know this would happen and you’d hate it.)

The point is not that they’re planning to crack down on every single fanficcer cheerfully sharing their fanfic anymore than they previously did. It’s not about dragging everyone who translates a line into Quenya or transcribes someone’s name in Tengwar to Angband and back. It’s specifically about having worded it in such a way that it is plain, easily understood without having studied Legalese(TM), and pretty much covers their base whenever they decide that they need to crack down on something. (Which might as well be some white supremacist assholes trying to use Tolkien quotes for their purposes. Just saying.)

You have always had to ask permission for public live readings. You’ve always needed to stay within certain limits concerning quotation, even in a scholarly context, and in a commercial context you’ve always needed permission. None of this is new. Stop monster-shouting and chill down. (And stop asking money for your fanart or translations or, good grief, fanfic.)

The TE haven’t “gone crazy”. They haven’t “lost their minds”. They have decades of experience with people disregarding their copyright, either because these people didn’t give a damn or - and this is the relevant bit - because they thought they’d found a loophole. The TE are trying to make the language on their website as painfully self-explanatory as they can so they can avoid some of these lawsuits in the future.