Attention: BANDAI will stop selling kits outside Japan

I'm sure that is Lucas lawyers view on everything. George created everything by himself, and can do whatever he pleases with it and anyone else can be shot on sight!

I can tell you one thing, I sure as anything am glad I don't live in Germany, where the government has nothing better to do then to enforce GL wishes!
 
edge10 said:
I'm sure that is Lucas lawyers view on everything. George created everything by himself, and can do whatever he pleases with it and anyone else can be shot on sight!

I can tell you one thing, I sure as anything am glad I don't live in Germany, where the government has nothing better to do then to enforce GL wishes!
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Just to be clear, George Lucas has nothing to do with this. Lucasfilm is no longer his company. I'm sure he's happy building his museum and enjoying his new kid.
 
That is true, but his tradition of suing and intimidating anyone who disagrees with him lives on through the Mouse.
 
But that's not very realistic. I feel the Bandai models are in fact aimed at the same group as the Revell kits, but not only. B's kits CAN be snapped together just like the R kits, but R kits can not be built as a professional model with high accuracy and level of detail as can B kits. So I think that B has absolutely no need to make its own products competitors by selling also the inferior R kits.

So in fact I think B has already the best of both worlds.

I may sound a bit harsh towards R, but in those small two Bandai models I have I see more and better detail than I ever saw on any Revell model. And believe me, I bought a lot Revell models, just because they are almost a monopoly here in Germany. But looking at those Bandai kits makes me feel that Revell missed some decades of technological progress, or is just building on its monopoly status here. If there was just some competition...
 
edge10 said:
That is true, but his tradition of suing and intimidating anyone who disagrees with him lives on through the Mouse.
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I've heard people throw around this accusation toward him for years, but never any actual evidence. Who are all these poor souls who got sued by mean old George Lucas? What were the cases? Aside from his early lawsuit in the 70s over Battlestar Galactica (which he lost), what fans have ever been legally tormented by him?
 
Well for starters there have been a considerable number or garage kit manufacturers hit with cease and desist orders from L**** ***ms as they tried to fill the void from M*C/E**L
 
"Considerable" is a vague number. Personally, I've never seen anyone post a scan of these infamous C&D letters. Not that there haven't been some, but the characterization of Lucas as some sue-happy monster gleefully going after any fan he doesn't like, IMHO, is an exaggeration -- and I think born mostly out of the frustration that he made prequel films some didn't like and made changes to the films they did.

But even if he were, copyright holders HAVE to defend their property. Yeah, it's easy to scoff at companies like Disney ordering daycares to paint over unauthorized Disney illustrations off their walls, but one of my best friends is a copyright attorney and he says companies have to take such actions because if they don't then others can make the claim that they're not enforcing their copyright and therefore it's up for grabs. In other words, enforce it or lose it. To be honest, given how open Lucas was to allow fan films -- even allowing dudes on YouTube post their own versions of the films -- I think if anything he showed enormous restraint.

But it really doesn't matter any more. He rode off into the sunset.
 
Galactican said:
Well, that contradicts the principle of equal treatment. Either all ways of importing are allowed or none. There must be no exceptions, IMO. :rolleyes
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I see it the same way. It contradicts the principle of equal treatment.
Unfortunately very often principle rights are limited by individual laws. In our case laws dealing with licenses. There is a juristic expression: "principle of exhaustion" (in German "Erschöpfungsgrundsatz"). Simplified the meaning of the "principle of exhaustion" is:
The owner of the license (Disney) has the rights on the goods (incl. to control the distribution of the products, incl. the right to prevent altering / modifying the product etc.) as long as the product is available to the public (aka offered on the free market). Once the product is bought by a private person with no commercial interest these rights are "exhausted". Then he looses most rights on the product and the buyer has them as long as the product is used in private. As long as you do it within your private space, you can do what you want. It is no problem to sell the product to a person you know. And now the unpleasant information: If you now want to re-sell your product to someone you do not know (e.g. on ebay) in a market the product has not been licensed for, you are not allowed to do it. The reason is, because you make it available again to the public market.

I am well aware that it is hard to believe that such crazy laws exists. Fortunately where there is no prosecutor, there is also no judge. In addition, when it comes to private persons (in Germany) the legal situation is a little bit more complex. Usually, if there is a penalty payment from a private person to the license holder it is low. So companies often have no interest or do not care. Therefor most people are never harassed by these laws and do not know about them.

Btw.: In Germany we currently have an insane situation. Small companies authorize law firms to look after their license rights. These law firms scan the internet for any abuse. If they find something, they write a "call to order paper" and demand penalty payments and lawyer's fees. Those firms often just want to get the lawyer's fees which normally starts at about US$700 and go up to US$3000. This is the money they make for putting an address on a standard letter and send it. Easy money. If you are a commercial dealer, you have a big problem. If you are a private person, often those demands are (partially) without justice cause. So you can get yourself a lawyer. Sometime you win, sometimes you loose, but you always have to pay your lawyer. Therefor very often people just pay or it ends with a compromise settlement. In Germany, many private people re-selling clothes from designer brands (which they have purchased in the US much cheaper) had to learn this the hard way.
As said before, I know this is insane and fortunately we kit builders are rarely affected.
 
So let me get this straight. I can't as an individual, sell some of my collection of unbuilt kits (including B's SW kits) on eBay just because lets say, I don't want to continue the hobby. That is messed up man. In this scenario, doesn't Disney get their money from the initial purchase of the seller that I bought it from? When does the ownership trump (no pun intended) licensing? *BTW this is just an example. I am not selling any kits, specially Bs SW**
 
You can always sell your kits to someone you know. In Europe (and to my knowledge in the US too) you have no right to offer them to the public (e.g. ebay or on model shows) outside Japan. Fortunately almost all companies do not care. If you would offer your kits to the public chances to get problems are next to 0. Even in case someone tries to sue you, chances are good that you do not have to pay, except your own expenses (lawyer). So there is a huge gap between the written law and what is widely done and accepted.
In Germany doing the same with some designer cloth brands will most likely cause you problems.
 
hugescale is correct. The situation in Germany is very complex and sometimes insane. It is not allowed to take pictures from the web and post it on ebay, amazon or a forum without having the written permission from the rights owner. Even if you do so for comparison or technical purposes, it is not allowed. That's why I don't do it. Time will show how customs deals with the situation.

I'd rather say that we should approach Disney as they hold the key to the license. We should stress our demand for detailed kits like the ones made by Bandai and Fine Molds. Revell has its place (and I don't wanna miss them because I grew up with their models) which they may keep but it is clear that the advaced modelers are severely disadvantaged and even discriminated by the current situation because there is absolutely NOTHING here to satisfy their needs. They should go and make a new deal with B or make sure that the B kits are distributed by an official Western retailer, if not by Disney themselves through the Disney store (hell, they have great minis made of metal available, why not detailed model kits at reasonable prices?). There MUST be a solution satisfying both sides.
 
The idea of lawsuits is probably an oversimplification and exaggeration. It's almost entirely about the C&D letters. And just because we haven't seen any doesn't mean they don't happen--especially when hear about them. If you google it, you can find some actual, real world examples that have been posted--not necessarily about modeling. (I was curious to see if there was language directing people not to post them publicly, but didn't see it anywhere.) They are full of very intimidating language, and directions that go beyond, "hey, stop it." One example gives a guy just two days to contact anyone who accessed the copyrighted material on his website, give proof of that, and give up all of the contact info for those people. They come with the threat of a lawsuit, and you usually are confident you will lose, and even if you think you got a case, you know they have much deeper pockets for legal representation. And, a lot of people who engage in these activities have other interests. I can think of at least one retailer with an actual website for his stuff got a C&D from Lucas's peeps but still continues to sell products that violate other copyrights. He certainly had a reason to not make any more of a stink than it already was. So just because we don't see those letters doesn't mean they don't exist. I wouldn't expect lawsuits, though. Companies know that a competent lawyer can spit out a C&D letter in under an hour of billable minutes. But a lawsuit will cost more and they are unlikely to get anything out of it because most of these people live on the edge of a small paycheck. So just the threat is usually enough for both sides. The bootlegger gets off feeling lucky even.
 
If other people are trying to make a buck off your creation, I don't begrudge you the effort to make them stop or pay you compensation. Enforce your copyright or lose it. And any article that begins by referring to GL as "George guy-who-accidentally-fell-into-making-a-movie-that-changed-everything Lucas" I don't exactly trust to be even-handed or tell the whole story. Anyway, I don't want to make this a thing here.
 
Subzero121 said:
So let me get this straight. I can't as an individual, sell some of my collection of unbuilt kits (including B's SW kits) on eBay just because lets say, I don't want to continue the hobby. That is messed up man. In this scenario, doesn't Disney get their money from the initial purchase of the seller that I bought it from? When does the ownership trump (no pun intended) licensing? *BTW this is just an example. I am not selling any kits, specially Bs SW**
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You can. That is the part that hugescale is getting wrong. If for some reason I wanted to suddenly get out of modelling and wanted to empty my office and other hideholes ;) of all my model kits I have every right to. Now whether or not I could ship them to another country would be determined by that respective country... And it sounds like Germany is all kinds of insane with this kind of stuff, but I have shipped SW model kits personally and professionally all over the world without any issues including pieces that were not produced here in the US and a LOT of garage kits. The key here is what hugescale keeps referring to as "commercial interest". A private sale from individual to individual that entails one to two items whether on ebay or the market here or simply through IMs is not considered a commercial interest. It's a private sale. There IS a fine line however, and that's where the things hugescale is talking about DO come into play. If I went into a shop and bought a dozen of the same kit for the sole purpose of reselling them at a much higher cost I would be more worried about the IRS than Customs, as that DOES fall into the "Commercial Interest" category, and you better pay the taxes due ;). If that's one's aim then I would recommend getting an LLC set up and doing it through that so all the proper paperwork for the government is done.

Here's a little snippet from the US SBA office:
"If you’re selling on eBay, for example, you can claim this activity as a hobby and deductions against it as long as you’re not buying and selling goods with the intention of making a profit."

I highlighted the important word in that sentence. If you make a profit on it that's not the issue. It's all about intent.
Hehe God knows that I haven't made any money on a LOT of my sales in the end.... And it sounds like I need to add Germany to the list of countries I won't ship to any more as well hehe!
 
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Aegis159 said:
A private sale from individual to individual that entails one to two items whether on ebay or the market here or simply through IMs is not considered a commercial interest. It's a private sale. There IS a fine line however, and that's where the things hugescale is talking about DO come into play.
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Another note from Germany, just FYI to depict how difficult German law is: If you are selling many items in a short time or a lot of items of the same kind over and over again over a long period of time on ebay the principle of sustainability is fulfilled, meaning that you automatically switch from a private seller to a commercial seller. The intention to make profit is irrelevant, only the number of offers and sells in a distinct time period counts. Mentioning, "it is my hobby" does not count any longer then. If you do not change your terms and services offered at ebay from "private" to "commercial" you may get a C&D letter from other ebay participants. :)
 
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