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I have a problem with fan clubs and sites that don't ask permission as well, but I'm not involved in their world like I am in the mud world. As for ISPs, they're common carriers and bear no responsibility for what goes on over their network. On the other hand, Topmudsites has expressly decided to ban Medievia for IP violation. Why not all the other IP violators as well?
A private, at-home table-top game doesn't violate anyone's IP rights, so I can't imagine why I'd have a problem with that. A publically available game most certainly does, which is why I have a problem with it.
Anyway, if your moral standard depends on whether an action hurts the copyright holder financially, I assume you've also got no problem with Medievia as it's not hurting anyone financially. But similarly, neither of us are in a position to judge whether a free game takes money away from or indirectly contributes money to Tolkien Enterprises by slightly altering the overall public perception of the license. Taken to an extreme, imagine a popular free game in which Gandalf was a child molestor. Surely you can imagine why, in that particular circumstance, Tolkien Enterprises might want to shut such a game down? Now consider the reality, which is that a licenseholder has a MUCH easier time simply banning the use of their property than it does monitoring everything that goes on in, say, a mud based on that property.
There are certainly arguments for why a licenseholder wouldn't care. I've read, for instance, that Jim Rigney (pen name Robert Jordan) has posted that he doesn't mind people creating free muds based on WoT. I don't know if that's true, but assuming it is, I can understand the motivation behind him doing that. Why **** off your fans? On the other hand, he risks that material entering the public domain due to willful lack of enforcement regarding his copyrighted material (I believe so at least. I am not a lawyer.) Raymond Feist strictly enforces any violation of his copyright partially for that very reason, for instance.
--matt
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