Copyright Material issue no2

If it were just you using it, you could probobly sleep at night. But someone else did alot of work and went to a great deal of expense to produce that item that you are copying. If it were just you I wouldn't have a problem with it, but you are sharing it and trading it. Thats piracy. Harsh yes, but there is no soft way to put it in my book. I do not wish to offend you Dewa, so please just take it as my offense at the practice not the individual.
In the art market, the chance (especially if you do something well) that it will be knocked off is pretty high. Rather than many artists considering it being a case of flattery, they adopt the attitude that they have to make their money up front, because ultimately they will lose money from people copying their work. Sort of a "make your money while you can" attitude. This only serves to inflate prices and keep them high.

Secondly, it is a copy of a copy. So there will be a degradation of detail. Not to mention a little distortion in proportions. Think of it as a page of text that you copy on a xerox machine and then make a copy of that copy, and then a copy of the copy....etc. Each generation is a little less than the previous. Same here. The guy that did the original made his master. From that he cast a working master or production master. (So that if something happens he does not lose the original piece but only the more durable copy). You copying it just takes it one more step away. So why not just save the money and buy one closer to the original. I think if you look at it it will be cheaper in the long run. Especially if you take into account the time and materials you will spend to make a mold, cast it, clean it up as opposed to someone that has a production facility that does it full time.

Better yet, pool your resources and make your own master that you can all spend the time copying, then you are only copying yourself and you will have more detail to copy from. No foul there.

Mike

Dewa,
Eric is right. If you copy something for your own personal use, then it's sort of okay. It's a real gray area, but it's not an offense.
When you copy something and give it away, even if you only recover the cost of materials, it's technically a copyright breach as the recipient is gaining virtually the same product for next to nothing and the owner of the copyright is getting nothing. Prosecution could result.
How would you feel if the original artwork was yours (blood, sweat and tears), and someone was copying it and passing around copies of your work? Not too happy? Probably not.
I had many discusstions with the folks at the Britten Motorcycle Company in New Zealand. They make an incredible motorcycle (the Britten V-1000) and they also make an amazing lost wax cast pewter kit of their motorcycle. It's beautiful. I bought one of their 1/12 scale kits ($300 AUD - hell's bells!!!) and couldn't bring myself to damage the pristine kit by building it, but I had to have one in my collection. Dilemma!!
So I asked them if I could copy their model for myself.
The marketing manager at that time told me that as long as I made the copy for myself and would never sell, give away, or profit from the copy (including selling the assembled model) then he was happy for me to go ahead.
We just have to respect the property of others, really. Just use common sense.
Cheers,
LeeTree

Dewa, This is similar to the issues with the music industry right now. They're essentially saying if you want to make a "backup" copy for your own use it's not illegal. (ie you could make a copy of a part you think might break during the build so you'll have a backup just in case)

However if you're copying the whole set and giving it away you are esentially taking profit from the company because they don't make money off your set even when you give it away.

It's an ethics issue that you have to think about and decide if what you're doing is right. I'm not trying to sound judgemental and hope it come across that way, just think about what you're doing and you decide if it's right.

Eric