# The Atlas of Middle-Earth, in pdf-format



## Deleted member 12094 (Aug 22, 2019)

I am surprised - not to say startled - that the electronic version of Karen Wynn Fonstad's (excellent!) Atlas of Middle-Earth is offered for free downloading here. No registration, just a few clicks and then it is there, before you could say rocks and blocks, even before you could say tinder and flint.

Just wondering what they did about the copyrights...!? If it is legal (word intentionally underlined) then they certainly bring a *big* present to all Tolkien-lovers like us all.

_Honi soit qui mal y pense. _


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## Alcuin (Aug 22, 2019)

Merroe said:


> Just wondering what they did about the copyrights...!? If it is legal (word intentionally underlined) then they certainly bring a *big* present to all Tolkien-lovers like us all.


Woo! I can’t see how that remains on line.


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## Halasían (Aug 23, 2019)

Wow... Being I already own two editions of this fine work, I wouldn't feel bad downloading the PDF, but that site looks like a huge copyright infringement case just waiting to happen.


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## user16578 (Aug 23, 2019)

Indeed! Everything you can download for free on those sites is NOT copyrightfree material!!


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## Erestor Arcamen (Aug 23, 2019)

Yeah, I stumbled on a Ukrainian site yesterday with all of Tolkien's texts free for the taking. I used it to get some quotes since I don't have my books with me but it's definitely not legal...


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## Olorgando (Aug 23, 2019)

Just checked my paperback copy: I have an edition published by Grafton (an Imprint of HarperCollins) in 1992, making it the second edition © 1991 by Karen Wynn Fonstad (who died 2005 at age only 59), the first edition being 1981 by Houghton Mifflin (and as per Wikipedia, there's a 2001 reissue edition).
Now I'm light-years away from being a legal professional on such matters, but 38 years (from the H-M date) or even 27 years (from the G / HC date) seem extremely short for anything to go Public Domain. A vague memory would put even the H-M date at just over half the legal time to expiry of 70 years!
But then, I've found that some sectors of the Internet are a black hole that care squat about the "niceties" of civilized behavior (something leaking out of current politics worldwide at the rate of a demolished Hoover Dam).


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