Middle-earth [formerly LotR] in New Media

[Frelga]

The media doesn't get much newer than this.

One cryptocurrency to rule them all! They launch the JRR Token inspired by 'The Lord of the Rings'

[Inanna]

Omg!

[narya]

I looked into it, just for fun. (Yeah, it'll be fun, I said. I could spend a few bucks and pretend I'd spent it on going out to eat, which I'm not doing, thanks to COVID. The website said it was as easy as 1-2-3.) But in reality, they don't make it easy to buy. I had to download the Trust Wallet app, then purchase Etherium through another app, Moonpay, which my credit card bank refused to honor, so then I tried to purchase it thru Simplex, a Lithuanian company, that seemed legit, right?, though the amount in my wallet was minus the 12% exchange fee that was mentioned nowhere in the transaction. Then I had to connect my Trust Wallet to PancakeSwap, and find out that contrary to previous information on that website, it couldn't take Etherium, just BNB which is a kind of meta crypto from Binance Smart Chain. I could then go to another app to convert the ETH into BNB, for a modest fee. But instead, I just purchased a minimum amount of BNB from Simplex and put it in my Trust Wallet app. Oh but wait, I also need some BEP20 tokens to "pay gas" which I can get thru SafePal. And this is yet another type of crypto wallet. This is where I ground to a halt.

If I had succeeded in adding the right kind of crypto to my wallet, and if I had succeeded in connecting my wallet to PancakeSwap, which I was repeatedly unable to do, I could then change some of the BNB and BEP 20 to JRRtokens. And if all of this sounds like a foreign language, it is. Even after lots of research on the web, I still clearly don't know what I'm doing. And now four companies have my financial info, and I can't trust or use any of them. I should have just gone to a restaurant. The odds of coming out unharmed were probably higher.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Looking at their website, I have to believe that they are violating trademarks and copyrights of the Tolkien Estate and/or Tolkien Enterprises. It possible that they have received permission to do so, but I strongly doubt it.

[Frelga]

Are they? They are not using the name, or the monogram, and I don't think you can copyright a quote, at least not so it can't be paraphrased into a different quote.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

They are absolutely using the name, and the monogram, even though neither are exactly the same. The are profiting from the recognizability of both. I'm not an intellectual property expert, but I certainly don't believe that you can take a trademarked symbol and change it just a little bit and claim it for your own, if it is undeniable that it is based on the trademarked symbol. As for whether a quote is covered by copyright laws, the question is whether it is being put to a fair use. Using it so blatantly for profit would have a much higher bar to have to pass than using it for parody or satire of educational purposes, or something like that.

ETA: And whether or not it is illegal it is certainly, at least in my book, immoral and just plain wrong. And completely contrary to the ethics that Tolkien stood for.

[Frelga]

There being only one lawyer in this conversation, I shall defer to him.

[Túrin Turambar]

I have to say it brings to mind Tolkien's (quite legitimate) complaint someone had named a high-speed ferry 'Shadowfax' "without so much as a by-your-leave".

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I moved the posts in this thread about the Russian version of LOTR to a new thread in the Tolkien movies forum.

[kzer_za]

[Inanna]

Rofl. That is SO true.

[RoseMorninStar]

Tolkien definitely had the Bible in mind when he wrote the Silmarillion. Pentateuch/Old testament sort of stuff. Lord of the Rings perhaps the crusades?

[Alatar]

They get a bit confused between language and writing system, but this is pretty cool. I love that the translation for Caps Lock is "Speak Louder"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11 ... s-keycaps/

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The media doesn't get much newer than this.

One cryptocurrency to rule them all! They launch the JRR Token inspired by 'The Lord of the Rings'

Another candidate for least surprising headline:

J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Squashes ‘J.R.R. Token’ Cryptocurrency

[Maria]

[elengil]

Ooh there's a hop across the mountains! I think I've seen this one before but I forgot it was so close!

[Maria]

I'm not exactly sure if this is the right thread for this... but here goes:

[kzer_za]

So this is several years old now, but I've been watching On Cinema at the Cinema. It's sort of a comic parody of film buffs, Siskel/Ebert, and Youtuber/podcaster/fandom culture all at once. It's not for everyone, but if you have the right sense of humor it can be hysterically funny at times. And this segment, where they cluelessly fumble around discussing the movies that could be made from The Silmarillion, was fun:



"These characters will all get their own movies over the next 50 years...just as Bilbo had his own story to tell so does Halmir, so does Handir"

[RoseMorninStar]

Hobbit-heads?
That interview was weird.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oh my god, I'm dying here.