Usurper said:
Like It or lump it I don't do not care. For me it boils down to morals.
This subject will go around and around as people will ALWAYS try to find angles so they can justify it.
But for me, this is precisely why I agree with Savage that it is not a black and white issue--it IS a matter of morals, and its morality can only be considered on a case-by-case basis.
I get that copying someone else's work to sell for profit is morally bad. I don't think many people here would argue with that. But the moral issue gets more cloudy if we consider other circumstances. Hence my example of the ceramic aquarium skull that I use as a neck ornament. It's very heavy, and I've often thought of casting a resin copy that would be lighter and easier to wear. Technically, that is "re-casting"---I would be taking an object that was made by someone else, and casting a copy of it. But it fits none of the criteria that you have specified for banning: "to any member who knowingly buys other members recasts . . .if you try to sell it on via the lair or anywhere and the staff are informed, your ass is gone." My "re-cast" would not be of another member's work, and it would not be sold here or anywhere else. The person who made the original skull isn't losing a dime through my re-cast, because I already bought the original, and I cannot buy a resin copy from him because none exists. I, on the other hand, am not making a profit or indeed a single penny from my re-cast--it is not being sold anywhere to anyone, and is only to be used by me as part of my costume.
Another example: suppose I have a scene in a fan film where a Jedi dies in a volcanic pit and we see a sequence where his lightsaber melts and is destroyed. I have a prop lightsaber that I spent a ton of money to buy, and I decide to re-cast it in wax or maybe resin so I can melt it in my movie scene without destroying an original prop. Technically, I am again "re-casting". But again, I am not making it for the money, no one loses a single nickel, and indeed no money at all changes hands anywhere. There is no "angle" here to "justify"--no one is making or losing a single nickel, and in the end there isn't even a new prop that still exists.
So the question becomes--is recasting an item simply to make it better suited for private noncommercial use or even to destroy it completely, the moral equivalent of re-casting that same item and selling it for profit on eBay, deserving the same response of banning? If I recast my aquarium ornament to make it lighter, or recast my lightsaber to make a meltable copy, then tell everyone here I did that, do I deserve, morally, to be banned for "re-casting", under the blanket policy of "no re-casting, period", in the same manner as someone who re-casts someone's bio mask and then sells dozens of them for profit? I certainly cannot see how the two actions are morally equivalent, nor can I see how the two can be treated with the same blanket response. Others, on the other hand, may see them as indeed morally equivalent. And therein lies the argument. Morals are always a grey area.
In this entire thread, everyone keeps bringing it back to the example of Joe Blow counterfeiting someone's props to sell them, and I think it's clear to everyone that THIS practice is morally wrong and worthy of a blanket ban. But we must also realize that there are other circumstances to be considered, such as the examples I have given, where a re-casting is done NOT simply to make money off someone else's work. And those other cases are NOT the moral equivalent of counterfeiting or stealing, and cannot be blanketly treated in the same way. They must be considered on a case-by-case basis under their own circumstances. That was Savage's point, and I agree with it completely.