not to get people to buy them? Really?
So why do you link to your junkyard thread in the pm's?
Yes, really. I wanted to know if others were aware the thread existed because I found it strange that there was no activity at all in my thread which was talking about a completed prop and there was a lot of activity in a thread where the same prop had still been in progress for over a year. Both threads have been there since at least last summer and I didn't know why I've had 2 posts total from other people. It just seemed really weird to me and I wanted to know why. If I was trying to promote sales, I would have said "hey buy this" in the PM. Instead, I sent the two PMs with questions saying, "hey how come people are waiting for Megatron's? Am I missing something?" I just wanted to know why. If was promoting, I'da sent a message to everyone, or posted in the thread.
as for 100's of hours of research and working on the computer..um anyone that is going to make a replica does that.
But then I also spend hours sculpting, casting and finishing the effort is seen in the final piece.
The ease of production of new items is irrelevant to this topic. On this note, I'm not sure why you hold CNC produced items at a higher regard over 3d printed items. In both cases you program a computer to build the objects for you. I've created objects through sand casting, silicon casting, cnc turning, cnc routing, laser cutting, and several 3d printing methods. In all the forms of digital fabrication, which include CNC, laser cutting, and 3d printing, you do the modeling work, and program a machine to make it.
If there is a prop with unknown details which one member makes up and then you copy those made up details, yes you are undertaking a form of recasting. You are no longer doing your own work, research or extrapolation to recreate a screen seen prop, you are just copying another members ideas. If an area of a prop is unknown, why on earth would you replicate another members ideas? I would say its very bad form and smacks of being too lazy to do your own research on said item. You admit it's bad form and looked down upon, but did it anyway????
Copying ideas and copying others expressions of those ideas are not the same thing. An idea is not protected by copyright; only the expression of that idea. You're not allowed to make a music player by taking the electronics out from inside of an iPod, put it in a different case, and sell it as a zenixPod. that's infringing on copyright because it is flat out taking the expression of the idea of a music player and selling it. You can't copy someone else's programming code, and paste it into your program and sell that program. I can't take the file that Bimmer used for his GL ring and upload it to Shapeways, order a print, and sell that part. That's infringing on copyright since I'm actually taking the expression of the idea of a music player, actual lines of code, actual data from the CAD object and copying that. Copying an idea would be like Microsoft seeing the iPod and saying hey I can make a music player too, programming it themselves, and creating their own electronics and case and everything, and selling that. They're not stealing Apple's iPod; they're stealing the idea of hey I want a small box that plays music.
Check out
this cool article about the popular board game, Settlers of Catan;
3D Printing Settlers of Catan is Probably Not Illegal: Is This a Problem? | Public Knowledge
In summary, the reason anyone is allowed to recreate this game or any other game for that matter, is simply because the rules are not copyrighted; they're ideas. You can't copy and paste the text of the rules as they're written, but you can make the same rules. You can't take the pictures from the tiles, but you can make your own tiles and make your own pictures. It's the expression... the' here's a box of stuff i have that you can't take and say is yours' not the idea that when a 7 is rolled then this piece moves, and when you have 4 woods you can trade them for an ore, or that it takes a wood and a brick to make a road. That's the
idea.
In this case, I'm not taking Megatron's object and selling copies of it as my own. I'm taking the idea that hey wouldn't it be cool if there's circles on the back that look like this and are connected like this, and I'm drawing those circles myself. It's not recasting. It's me doing the same thing. Doing the same thing as someone else on the rpf is certainly not against the rules of this forum. At the time it wasn't known at all what was on the back of this particular key, but on the back of a different key there are circles and lines.
Why would I create the detail the same way? Because I
like it that way.
Are you changing the details only because you've been called out? Fine line your treading here.
No, let me be clear. I'm changing the details because... they're innacurate. New photos have come to light detailing the front section, as well as new information regarding the back section. I've currently stopped accepting orders for the key and I've set my model on Shapeways to not allow further sales until this topic is resolved. Regarding the original post about tagging Shapeways objects, items which are available on Shapeways and linked from here already show that they're from shapeways. The links say something like Awesome Ring by baltimore on Shapeways, right in the link description. They are tagged as 'being from shapeways.'
If this style of copying is not allowed on the rpf, then we need policies in place detailing this.