Re: Custom Miniatures

On Tue, 3 Mar 1998 Doug_Evans/CSN/UNEBR@UNebMail.UNeb.EDU wrote:

> There may be more comments coming, but if anybody else tries to with
in the
> next six months, I shall challenge that they have NOT bothered to read
all
> the above, and have failed to give us the courtesy of avoiding ground
> covered by others. There's THAT much that's been posted.

Why is this such a sore point? The law's the law, and if that hurts
your business, tough. I'm a software professional so I have to live with

it too.

To put this shortly: The likelihood of miniature molds that have fallen 
into public domain for one reason or another is extremely small (unless 
you want to play SGII with turn-of-the-century tin soldiers). Work from 
the assumption that someone out there holds a valid copyright to any 
figure you might want to copy.

BUT: Finnish copyright law makes specific exception with copying for 
*personal* use, and yes, Finland is a signatory to the Berne convention.

Your local copyright law may also have this exception. It is *not*
the "fair use" exception, it is a specific exception for *personal use*
(Finnish law is a lot clearer than the ambiguous US one -- which does
not 
mean it is crystal clear, either).

Thus, if I were to buy a book, I could legally make copies of 
it, as long as I never gave one to anyone outside my immediate family.
Software firms in particular used to hate this, until they got an 
exception passed.

However, Finnish law has an exception to this exception for, among a few

other things, sculptures.

***************The Bottom Line*************:
Thus, I can xerox my FT rulebook and legally give my wife a copy. But I
can 
not make a mold of my NAC CV and cast copies of it.
*******************************************

Personally, I don't see the point of copying a miniature in production. 
I'll gladly pay the price for the professional casting work. I wouldn't 
even bother with out of production ones -- for that much trouble I'd 
rather scratch-build and have something entirely my own.

In the end, it boils down to how law-abiding you are. We all know taping

a friend's CD is technically illegal... but how many of us does that 
knowledge stop doing it?

And the final caveat: In certain countries it doesn't matter who's right

and who's wrong -- what matters is who can afford the legal bill. Most 
likely it's not you.

Jukka Korpela has written an excellent piece on copyright to be found at
http://ww.hut.fi/~jkorpela/tekoik/  -- for those of you who can read 
Finnish. 

-- 
maxxon@swob.dna.fi (Mikko Kurki-Suonio) 	   | A pig who doesn't
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