Re: Melbourne House games now free for distribution

[Fredrik Ekman <ekman@lysator.liu.se>]

yeo@pigeon.qut.edu.au (Willie Yeo) writes:

> 	I wrote to Beam International regarding the softwares.. this is 
> the reply given to me. Anyone else wants to suggest another move ?
>
>      [...]
> 
>      With regard to the Apple II, the only title involved (and the only one 
>      we ever did) is 'The Hobbit'. Since the Tolkien Estate holds all the 
>      rights to the Tolkien works, their permission should be sought before 
>      distributing this title.
>      
>      Regards,
>      
>      Philip Mitchell.

First of all, I would like to point out that Mr. Mitchell's memory
fails him. After all, I own a copy of Shadows of Mordor for Apple II.
(Shadows of Mordor for Apple II was distributed by Addison-Wesley
rather than Melbourne House, but the same is true for The Hobbit.) I
also have conclusive evidence that The Fellowship of the Ring and
Crack of Doom were released for Apple II.

All these, however, suffer from the same obvious problem as The
Hobbit, namely that their plots and characters are (c) The Tolkien
Estate for yet a very large number of years.

For various reasons, I believe that The Tolkien Estate is not overly
willing to release these games to the public. If anyone wants to
contact them, the person to try is Mary Butler. I have her address
somewhere (request by email if you want it) and her fax number is
+44-813074440. To the best of my knowledge, the Estate does not
currently have email but they will respond by snailmail if you send
a fax through some email-to-fax gateway.

  /F