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You know, something just occured to me. I'm currently in the process of negotiating for exclusive license to a particular piece of IP (yeah, I know, imagine actually obtaining permission. Crazy concept.) and it occured to me that I were I dealing with Tolkien Enterprises, the mere existence of rip-off games like Shadows of Isildur would decrease the amount I'd be willing to pay for the right to do legal commercial text muds based on Tolkien IP as I'd either have to go to the hassle and expense of shutting them down or put up with illegally free competition. Take that for what it's worth but any business looking to license is going to feel the same way. You can bet that were there free huge-scale graphical muds (or mmogs or whatever acronym you prefer) based on Tolkien's IP, the Tolkien Estate would have gotten less money from Vivendi because of it.
--matt
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