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My 2 cents: For old and long OOP models I find recasting to be a good way to spread lost beauty. Unfortunately, that case is so rare, it might as well be hypothetical. Most recasters of course will only recast what is in demand by lots of people which is not normally the case with old gak.

For new / available miniatures, it just damages the maker, disrespects him, and is against the law.

 General Kroll wrote:
You're not entitled to cheap model kits.....

If you want cheaper models from a recaster you can easily get them.

You don't have to feel entitled to be able to do so as the option is already there and fairly easily achievable.

 General Kroll wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Ah yes, YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR.

If someone stole my car, but I still had my car, that would be okay.

Not if you made your living making cars to sell for, you know, money, it wouldn't.

Wel, if I made a game while working for a big company, then I most likely made a salary, and probably not an adequate one, and then kept no rights to the game, saw little or no return from the sales, I'd probably be happy that a lot of people want to play it so badly. That will help me command a larger salary when I leave the big corporation to freelance for the smaller, feistier competition.

Really, GW is not the artist. GW is the company that shafted the artist and then tried to trick him into signing away his rights. GW then used profits made off of someone else's work and a kitchen sink of not-quite-IP theft homagery to squash competition, intimidate wrongfans, and harass legitimate, non-recasting bits sellers. 'Stealing' is wrong, but feels less wrong when you steal from a thief and bully.


If we are talking about some small studio or one man store, the harm is more demonstrable.

Case in point right here. You're not Robin Hood just because you like to think of GW as a big bad evil corporation. You're not entitled to cheap model kits or bits just because GW decided to protect their own intellectual property.

I've never bought recasts. I stopped buying FW because it wasn't worth the price, but never really considered recasts. I might for an OOP mini that is hard to find, but that's much greyer. However, I can certainly understand the justifications. I have a lot of problems with the way big companies like Disney have expanded IP and copyright laws far beyond what they originally protected. Legality is not always indicative of the morality. I find recasts are a minor and context-dependent wrong, which make hardline positions on the matter problematic to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the have getting angry at the have nots for finding their own solutions is just such a funny thing.

JamesY wrote:I had an interesting conversation with a former colleague recently, and for all the talk of fw propping up other arms of the business, it seems that the opposite is far more likely. I'm obviously not going to share figures (and I also don't expect anyone to accept my words without proof), but fw's turnover is far lower than you would expect, less even than bl ytd.

If they have quite an unimpressive turnover after the exhorbitant prices they charge for their products, then they must be doing something terribly wrong. If they can't adjust their profit margins properly, for one reason or another, it's their fault alone.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Do you actually see that many recasts of the newer expensive plastic characters? I haven't checked to see, when I last looked at recasters it was almost all resin stuff they were doing, and mostly FW. I buy almost no FW stuff either, mainly some 6mm scale Aeronautica Imperialis stuff before it was dropped and I started a DKOK force but only got a couple of kits before I gave up on them.

Recasters nowadays are making resin replicas of many new 40k plastic models, specially big ones and vehicles. They are more reluctant to recast infantry kits, specially if their official prices are somewhat reasonable. The general exception are spess mehreens, recasters will even sell concrete body parts of those, as it seems everybody always needs moar mehreens.

I'd have more respect for it if people just said "I buy it because I want it" instead of making up hollow excuses like how GW is evil but in their evilness produce kits you like so much you aren't willing to put your money where your mouth is and buy a product from another company.

I can agree with this one. It's as easy as taking advantage of law loopholes (which everyone does, specially big companies like GW) and the opportunities the market has to offer. The choice was between official product and counterfeit, you consider the pros and cons of each one and go for the counterfeit as you find it more suitable to your needs. No need to dress it up as some moral vengeance against evil corporations.

It should be said however, that the "entitlement" you speak about many times comes up as a result of being harassed by the "holier than thou" crowd, always eager to bemoan bad consumers who buy counterfeit/replica items, and always willing to turn a blind eye to their favourite corporations' amoral and/or outright repulsive deeds.

And even if people are bitter that they paid $100 when you paid $50.... I think they have a right to be bitter. You're showing them you care about the product just enough to be muster the selfishness to buy it without supporting the people who actually made it.

You're playing a game of toy soldiers. You get bitter because other guy got his/her models cheaper than yours. That's not "entitlement" as well? What about second hand products then? Let's say I buy some brand new models from the store at 30 gold coins, then you see a bargain at evilBay and get the same models for 10 gold coins. Would I be entitled to bitterness too in such a case? Because at the end someone has spend less than the official price, and the producer has not seen a coin.

Of course a recaster can make resin stuff cheaper. Unless you expect GW to move their entire operation to China, close their stores and shut down the distribution chain that gets products on to the shelves of independents.

GW might be able to sell stuff cheaper than they currently do, but not as cheap as a recaster and frankly we have no idea how cheap they could sell it before the business becomes unprofitable, you are just making wild guesses.

That's because those kits were bulk plastic kits. Large set up costs, large run, cheap per unit. It's not practical to recast that sort of stuff. You could set up a recasting business to make them cheaper than GW but the risk would be much larger than recasting resin kits.

No, it's because those kits are priced in such a way that leaves little room for recasters to make a profit out of them.

It's simple, really. 10 Dark Elf Corsairs at 21€, 10 Executioners/Black Guards at 40€. All of them plastic models, produced in bulk. The first ones never feature among recasters' catalogues, the others do. I don't think it's really difficult to see where the difference lies.

By the way, GW has already moved a portion of their operations to China. They currently produce all their printed stuff there. Some of their big kits (stompa) were rumored to have been offloaded to China as well. Forgeworld, for a while, offshored part of their production to China. When they took it all back to England, amusingly, the quality dropped.

I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Most resins are fine once they're fully cured because the volatile fumes have cooked off in the curing process or reacted in to solid polymer chains. unless you cut it and inhale the dust in which case most resins are going to be bad for you.... but with the Chinese resin kits I've handled, it smells when you open the box and it smells when you cut it. It's unlikely that small amounts of it are going to be harmful

Well I must be a fortunate man then. I've handled kits from several Chinese recasters, some of them metal and some of them resin (OOP stuff mostly). Never had an issue with strange smells.

It would also be nice to see some solid evidence backing up claims that resin from chinese recasters is actually harmful. Because it's common to see people demanding evidence of the contrary but never providing any to back up their own claims.

Anecdotally, Chinese law prevents you from removing the means of production from the country. So all the FW moulds got left behind when they shifted back out of China. In other words, a certain recaster may well actually be using official Forgeworld molds to make certain products.

Which raises an interesting point, is it counterfeiting if you produce the product of a company from the company's own molds? It's still IP infringement most certainly, but the product is identical and made from the original manufacturers own gear.

It's a bit like sneaking into an Iphone factory at night and assembling on there. Sure, you did it illegally, but is it an iphone or a counterfeit?

 treslibras wrote:
My 2 cents: For old and long OOP models I find recasting to be a good way to spread lost beauty. Unfortunately, that case is so rare, it might as well be hypothetical. Most recasters of course will only recast what is in demand by lots of people which is not normally the case with old gak.

For new / available miniatures, it just damages the maker, disrespects him, and is against the law.

I think this sums up my view pretty well, too.

To expand on that a bit, the title of this thread "Who really cares?" - given the response in this thread, it's obviously a whole lot of people! I have thought about this a lot, because I like to do crazy converted armies and sometimes the models just aren't available. Taking this down from the hypothetical, I have found that creators are often extremely willing to give someone permission to make a cast for personal use (i.e. NOT to sell or profit off of).

Some examples from my experience (not including the names of the creators) are the following: I received permission from a creator to have a bit that was out of stock and not to be produced again cast from a single copy I could find of it. I have also several times received permission to have an entire model cast - in one case, because it was out of stock and wouldn't be back in stock in time for an event, and in another case for a model that was no longer being produced and had been out of stock for years. I have a feeling that even the most ardent "anti-casting" folks in this thread would be fine with something where the owner/creator gives permission (well, how couldn't you be ). But sometimes even then it can be a bit of a grey area, depending on whether the sculptor and company are separate entities, etc.

This issue requires a lot of thought because 3d scanning and printing are going to become extremely prevalent. Right now, I have a 3d model someone is tweaking for me that I'll have printed to use in my army. Now, this 3d model was provided to me by a Kickstarter (as part of a perk for backing) with permission to print for personal use. This is pretty straightforward - but in the future you can easily picture scenarios that are not so obvious! And actually even in this case it's more complex, since the native 3d model had many errors and wasn't printable. I commissioned an artist to modify it to improve the detail and so it could be printed, and will only be using it for myself. But what if someone else wanted to use it... who does it belong to now?

In the case of models that are Not being produced, or bits, etc - I would say it's at least worth reaching out to the owner and asking if they would allow you to make a copy for yourself, as I've actually yet to have someone refuse such a reasonable request! It's really if you were to profit off of their creation (and in some ways thus take away from profit they could receive) that I think creators are almost universally Not going to be OK with it, and with good reason obviously! But if it's to use yourself, I think you'll find most are willing to work with you if you ask nicely (and you could even go the old "shareware" route and donate to them as a part of the process).

Just my take from having thought about this a lot, and the ways in which folks who might be reading this who legitimately are at a dead end in a modeling project might be able to take the next step without going against a creator's wishes. You really don't know until you ask!

@ korinov I agree with you, I buy very little fw as I don't think it is worth the price. That said, on the rare occasions that I have really wanted something, I have bought it legimately.

Sorry to cut this conversation off but, I think all that can be said about this topic has been in 10 pages.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: the moderators of this site are volunteers who are absolutely free (and encouraged) to represent their own viewpoints when posting in a non-moderator role. These opinions, however, do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the owners of this site.

We (the owners of the site), do not condone or promote the practice of recasting copyrighted products in any way, shape or form.

And speaking for just myself here: I find the practice morally and ethically wrong. Creating miniatures, music, TV, etc, is the creation of art, and if you are someone who loves, respects and appreciates a particular art (like particular miniatures), then you need to respect that an artist (a company in this case) took the time and effort to create that piece of art into the world, which would not have had existed if they had not done so. This also gives them the right to set whatever price they like for you to purchase that art.

You can make whatever moral equivocations you'd like, but at the end of the day, if you are spending money paying someone to knock off that art, then you are helping to break the circle that creates that art, thereby lessening the chance that the artist will continue to be able to produce that art.

The ethical choice is pretty clear: if you appreciate the work that an artist makes, then pay them the money they ask for the art. If you think they charge too much for that art, then put your money towards a different artist whose prices you feel are more appropriate.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who might disagree with such a black-and-white statement and would like to respond, however in this case I get to use whatever little power I have owning this site and lock this thread on that note.

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And just in case you're left wondering what is or isn't okay to post on this site when it comes to unauthorized recasting, here's a breakdown of our official policy on the matter:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/205120.page#8615594