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LunaHound wrote:They arnt obligated to do so by any means under the law.
However if they wish to keep the existing customers, they still should show some concern ( even if its just an act)

And that's the meat of the point (I think) Cheese was making: why do the laws (seem to) protect the company over the consumer?

The answer seems to be that it's because the companies are more powerful and influential than the consumers. This isn't just about GW, which is no tyrant IMO, but about all businesses--including some that definitely are tyrannical. Gw just incidentally benefits from the laws for which those big companies continue to lobby.

These days, however, technology is putting the power back into the hands of the consumers. People who feel disenfranchised politically are voting with their computers by downloading digital media illegally. The point is that many people--probably most people--do not think this is morally wrong. If we lived in a pure democracy, it wouldn't be illegal.

I'm not trying to derail the thread with talk about illegal downloads. I think the same logic, on a smaller scale, applies here. Capitalists go on and on about supply and demand and yet decry the subversion of supply. Supposedly it is bad for us all. Many people don't think so. Whether they are right or wrong is a matter for debate, not foregone and rigidly-constructed conclusions.

Hmm , first of all i think 2 wrongs doesnt make a right ( the illegal media dls)

Why does law seem to protect the companies?
because sometimes the reason companies choose to do things are not what the customers assume them to be.

So GW doesnt make cheap meltas , so GW stopped their bits service .

So what about it? dont like how they do things , stop having anything to do with GW.

GW cant be held accountable for those reasons , people get into the product knowing the expense and decided to accept it.

And dont worry i dont think talking about the illegal media DL is off topic , its very related imo.

Lastly , Manchu i would be glad to discuss things with you in PM so we can go as OT as we feel like.
It just feels like Cheese started this thread to watch people fight , now he stopped posting probably relaxed eating his nachos

I feel that only oop minis should be reprouduced.

Would I steal a boxed set off a shelf? No.
Would I cast a 1 cent piece of plastic for my own use? Yes.
Would I sell a cast of that 1 cent piece of plastic to another? No.

oh noez, i broked the lawwzorz!! Do any of you ever drive faster than the speed limit? Ever taken a 16 minute break at work? Have you ever eaten anything off another person's plate at a buffet? This is not a question of illegality, it is a question of perceived harm. Frankly, you can judge me all you want and tell me how bad of a person I am. I have a moral compass, and I can make sound decisions for myself and my family. I don't "steal" from GW, because I think that somehow they're stealing from me. I make a rational decision to break a law because the percieved harm is low enough for my own and society's tolerances.

the_Armyman wrote:Would I steal a boxed set off a shelf? No.
Would I cast a 1 cent piece of plastic for my own use? Yes.


I make a rational decision to break a law because the percieved harm is low enough for my own and society's tolerances.

Sorry but i cant .... i Lolled

Manchu wrote:

LunaHound wrote:They arnt obligated to do so by any means under the law.
However if they wish to keep the existing customers, they still should show some concern ( even if its just an act)

And that's the meat of the point (I think) Cheese was making: why do the laws (seem to) protect the company over the consumer?

Because the companies are creating something, where the consumer isn't?

That's the basis of IP protection world-wide: if we want an individual/company to create technology/art/toys, and incur the expense of so doing, we need to provide the company adequate protection against others who would, for example, make illegal copies of their carefully-sculpted miniatures for their own benefit.

The answer seems to be that it's because the companies are more powerful and influential than the consumers. This isn't just about GW, which is no tyrant IMO, but about all businesses--including some that definitely are tyrannical. Gw just incidentally benefits from the laws for which those big companies continue to lobby.

These days, however, technology is putting the power back into the hands of the consumers. People who feel disenfranchised politically are voting with their computers by downloading digital media illegally. The point is that many people--probably most people--do not think this is morally wrong. If we lived in a pure democracy, it wouldn't be illegal.

I'm not trying to derail the thread with talk about illegal downloads. I think the same logic, on a smaller scale, applies here. Capitalists go on and on about supply and demand and yet decry the subversion of supply. Supposedly it is bad for us all. Many people don't think so. Whether they are right or wrong is a matter for debate, not foregone and rigidly-constructed conclusions.

I love the conspiracy theory. I mean, the basis for patents and copyrights is only in the US Constitution, and only goes back many hundreds of years - OBVIOUSLY it's all the result of a capitalist conspiracy amongst giant corporations. We don't live in a pure democracy, thank god. No country in the world operates as a pure democracy...because a pure democracy doesn't WORK for a modern-sized nation-state. The days of the New England town meeting are over; asserting an unprovable truth like "If we lived in a pure democracy, it wouldn't be illegal" is irrelevant.

Companies are under zero obligation to the consumer to produce their product. The relationship, particularly with GW, is one purely of choice - they choose to produce miniatures, and you choose to participate as a consumer of their products. If you object to the price of their products, you have a variety of legal options, starting with the secondary market, and ending with NOT obtaining their products. And you instead promote an illegal option?

LunaHound wrote:Hmm , first of all i think 2 wrongs doesnt make a right ( the illegal media dls)

Why does law seem to protect the companies?
because sometimes the reason companies choose to do things are not what the customers assume them to be.

So GW doesnt make cheap meltas , so GW stopped their bits service .

So what about it? dont like how they do things , stop having anything to do with GW.

GW cant be held accountable for those reasons , people get into the product knowing the expense and decided to accept it.

And dont worry i dont think talking about the illegal media DL is off topic , its very related imo.

Lastly , Manchu i would be glad to discuss things with you in PM so we can go as OT as we feel like.
It just feels like Cheese started this thread to watch people fight , now he stopped posting probably relaxed eating his nachos

I'm at school Luna. I've only got my sandwiches.

I do feel that I couldn't justify myself very well, and I find myself leaning on people sometimes. Recasting a few bitz is no major crime. I don't doubt that many of us break the law in small ways every day, by going a bit over the speed limit, graffiting something, or smoking where you're not meant to. Yet we do it. I mean, just how much effort did it take a Citadel sculptor to make a meltagun? An hour? Two? Am I cheating them? Would they be pissed off at me for recasting something that I'd otherwise be paying out the nose for?

I wouldn't be hurting anybody. I'm not causing GW employees to lose jobs, I'm not selling recasts, and I'm not making a dent in their sales.

Janthkin wrote:
Companies are under zero obligation to the consumer to produce their product. The relationship, particularly with GW, is one purely of choice - they choose to produce miniatures, and you choose to participate as a consumer of their products. If you object to the price of their products, you have a variety of legal options, starting with the secondary market, and ending with NOT obtaining their products. And you instead promote an illegal option?

Again , very well said.


Janthkin and Redbeard (page1 for people that skips... ) makes very clear and nice posts.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Recasting a few bitz is no major crime. I don't doubt that many of us break the law in small ways every day, by going a bit over the speed limit, graffiting something, or smoking where you're not meant to. Yet we do it. I mean, just how much effort did it take a Citadel sculptor to make a meltagun? An hour? Two? Am I cheating them? Would they be pissed off at me for recasting something that I'd otherwise be paying out the nose for?

I wouldn't be hurting anybody. I'm not causing GW employees to lose jobs, I'm not selling recasts, and I'm not making a dent in their sales.

Read the **************************************ing Tyranid army example on the other thread.
K cheese , im out of patience you just arnt worth my effort and time .

Manchu wrote:

Same here. And I am often told that I am a fool for it. I'm not sure if it's the most pressing of moral issues.

Here, I think, is Cheese's basic point:

Why should consumers be responsible to companies when companies are not responsible to consumers?

Certain the burden on the company should be greater?

Because companies own the property, and consumers have other choices.

This s the 5th thread or so on recasting this week ;P

I love it.


I'll be amazed of this thread will remain opened - cuz all the other ones got locked.


lol

Lunahound wrote:K cheese , im out of patience you just arnt worth my effort and time .

It was your choice to post here.

I will admit this is a bit of an 'Eye for an Eye' thing I've got going here, though.

Well, it's simple. Both sides are operating from pretty strong, but not opposing, arguments.

Side 1: Recasting is illegal and stealing.

Side 2: I wont' get caught, and the loss to GW is negligible.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yes it is. Would you rather go through the pain of ordering metal bitz from GW, waiting weeks for a screwed-up order, sending it back, and waiting even longer for the right order to come?

I've had horrible experiences with GW bitz services, and I'm not buying them anymore.

Yes, I know that it's illegal, but it's simply practical and sensible anyway. GW makes us pay out the nose for models that aren't even high quality, and you're calling me a petty thief, Luna?

If you are recasting then yes, you are a thief. The product you have copied for yourself was gotten without paying a royalty or due to GW, the IP holder. Now, that has NOTHING to do with right, wrong, or indifferent in any regard except my personal opinion. No law books backing up my words, only my interpretation. However, do not take any of the above as approval or disapproval on my part of the actions discussed. That would be folly. And yeah GW Bitz can be a shower of donkey-caves, no doubt. Just like any other similar organization, form time to time.

Manchu wrote:I don't want to get too involved in this but recasting without reselling is not against the law.

I wonder how some of you hardliners feel about illegally downloading music and/or movies, television shows, anime, etc.

OOOOOOOO, good one. I like it, and it appears to be perfectly valid. Mmmm..., can o worms.

Polonius wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:I wouldn't define it as stealing, TBH. ...But don't expect us to buy your bit that it's anything other than illegal, immoral, and selfish.

Illegal? Check. Immoral? In that it violates the law, check. Selfish? I dunno. Kinda on the fence there, Pol. I mean, yeah technically it is wrong. No doubt. But when put into the context of some of GW's pricing, I am questioning the selfish bit unless you mean in the strictest of senses, such as using a definition along the lines of "done for the benefit of the self.", as opposed to something more along the lines of a more common usage along the lines of "THat selfish bastard took the last beer in the fridge." Just a slightly different connotation, a presence or lack of some level of malice.

But not ALL of GW's pricing is berzerk like that. Go check out the quality of the stormlord kit, and then go look at a similar sized Tamiya tank. Now compare prices.

Polonius wrote:Luna Hound makes a pretty valid point. It's not like GW products are completely illiquid as far as resale.

I recognize that people building IG up from a cold start are in a bad way for melta guns. I really do understand. There are pretty valid options however, aside from recasting.

ouch my hands hurt.

A meltagun might have only 1c worth of plastic in it. But that is obviously not the VALUE of the item. An entire box of Cadians has probably 10c worth of plastic. Is it ok to steal the box, because the plastic is only worth a few cents?
No. Because the VALUE is obviously not the materials. The value is in the artistic concept and design and the time it took to create, make sure it is compatible with other bits, make sure it can be mass-produced through injection moulding.. etc.
Sure, it might be worth only 1c and an hours work; but, given 1c of plastic and an hours work could you make a melta gun? No, because you need the outlay on the mold. Like the 'Realm of Battle' board - I made an equivalent in 10 hours of work. Its only maybe a dollar of platic, and a few hours work, why should I pay $450 for it? steal it!!!

Most of the time it would probably be MORE expensive to recast anyway, considering the time it takes to learn the process.

It is illegal. No questions asked.

If you want to break the law and think you won't get caught, over one or two guns for your models, that is your choice. But don't try to say that it is legal.

I am not saying that it's legal, but I'm not doing anything that's going to have an effect on the GW.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I am not saying that it's legal, but I'm not doing anything that's going to have an effect on the GW.

I think if you argued you're not doing anything that has an appreciable effect on GW, than it's a pretty true statement. There is an effect on GW, just slight.

That does ignore the aggregation theory, though. Sure, one caster isn't much harm, but hundreds? That stuff can add up.

simple solution......each time to copy a part cheese, mail gw a penny

Polonius wrote:Because companies own the property, and consumers have other choices.

They do when it's a question of miniature soldiers. How about when its gasoline? As I already said, GW incidentally benefits from these policies. It didn't create them.

Janthkin wrote:Because the companies are creating something, where the consumer isn't?

That's a bit simplistic--where would the company be with what the consumer produced? Namely, money. Consumers are willing to pay for some things and not for others. If the free market is as important as big business claims in Congress, companies will have to respond to consumers' desires more rather than relying on laws they've created and bogus moralities that they've gotten people like you to believe in.

Janthkin wrote:That's the basis of IP protection world-wide: if we want an individual/company to create technology/art/toys, and incur the expense of so doing, we need to provide the company adequate protection against others who would, for example, make illegal copies of their carefully-sculpted miniatures for their own benefit.

And yet, somehow, there were inventions and innovations long before IP laws . . .

Janthkin wrote:I love the conspiracy theory. I mean, the basis for patents and copyrights is only in the US Constitution, and only goes back many hundreds of years - OBVIOUSLY it's all the result of a capitalist conspiracy amongst giant corporations.

Armchair legal scholars are certainly prevalent here. Modern copyright law has nearly nothing to do with the jurisprudence of the framers--except inasmuch as the Constitution itself reflects the interests of propertied, politically influential men. The laws we're talking about have almost without exception been extensively reimagined in the twentieth century and reflect the interests of the current propertied, politically influential people. I'm sorry if serious legal scholarship sounds like a conspiracy to you . . . but it doesn't actually make much of a difference.

Janthkin wrote:We don't live in a pure democracy, thank god. No country in the world operates as a pure democracy...because a pure democracy doesn't WORK for a modern-sized nation-state. The days of the New England town meeting are over; asserting an unprovable truth like "If we lived in a pure democracy, it wouldn't be illegal" is irrelevant.

I don't suggest that we ought to live in a pure democracy. I only suggested that if laws were actually a reflection of what most people thought was right and wrong, then illegal downloading would not be illegal. I'm not sure that the point needs a specific proof. If you believe that only a small percentage of the US population, much less the world population, disregards the moral and legal validity of intellectual property, well, you are severely out of touch with reality.

Janthkin wrote:Companies are under zero obligation to the consumer to produce their product. The relationship, particularly with GW, is one purely of choice - they choose to produce miniatures, and you choose to participate as a consumer of their products. If you object to the price of their products, you have a variety of legal options, starting with the secondary market, and ending with NOT obtaining their products. And you instead promote an illegal option?

No, but then again you didn't bother to read the whole thread to find out. I don't disagree that companies are in fact under "zero obligation" to sell what consumers want at a price that consumers find reasonable. Indeed, I don't myself download anything illegally and have been ostracized for it. What I'm pointing out is that intellectual property does not represent some eternal moral law handed down by God. It was handed down by legislators more heavily influenced by corporations than consumers.

LunaHound wrote:

the_Armyman wrote:Would I steal a boxed set off a shelf? No.
Would I cast a 1 cent piece of plastic for my own use? Yes.


I make a rational decision to break a law because the percieved harm is low enough for my own and society's tolerances.

Sorry but i cant .... i Lolled

I guess those of us who don't have your impeccable lineage can't quite live up to your lofty standards. But thank you for dying for all of our sins 2000 years ago. Much appreciated! Tell your Father I said "hihi."

Cheese Elemental wrote:I am not saying that it's legal, but I'm not doing anything that's going to have an effect on the GW.

Why do people say " why is GW so expensive? its just a piece of plastic" and then go right back to " im just copying a 1 cent plastic , no big deal "

Why do people assume that when themselves do wrong , no one else is doing the same?

Why do people put double standard on things and treats it ok?

Where do people draw the line ? Today i cast 1 sword , tommorow i cast all the plasma guns , next day i cast w/e else i can think of.

Why do people think casting for self and not selling them is ok? (Thats 1 person's army GW didnt end up selling to) multiply that by how many people that does it.
and take in consideration on how many more people might follow if it ends up as been generally accepted.

Why the above? Because people lie to themselves

the_Armyman wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

the_Armyman wrote:Would I steal a boxed set off a shelf? No.
Would I cast a 1 cent piece of plastic for my own use? Yes.


I make a rational decision to break a law because the percieved harm is low enough for my own and society's tolerances.

Sorry but i cant .... i Lolled

I guess those of us who don't have your impeccable lineage can't quite live up to your lofty standards. But thank you for dying for all of our sins 2000 years ago. Much appreciated! Tell your Father I said "hihi."

Oh , forgive me then ( and please no , i will never die for humanity rofl ). But im so curious now

Can you tell me ALL the reasons why you wont steal a box off a shelf?

@ Mancu: are you aware that Janthkin is an IP lawyer? He's not talking out of his ass.

I also think there's more of a moral ground work for IP law than you're giving it credit for.

I'm also a lawyer, actually, and am not too intimidated by someone who has the same degree as me.

And what exactly is the moral underpinning? And why is it that so many people don't find it compelling?

Just to throw another side in, if I use non-GW Green Stuff to make a melta gun that's convincing then I paint it and noone can tell the difference, is that terribly different from casting a GW melta gun I have, painting it so noone can tell the difference and using it? What if I made a mold and used GW green stuff to make the "re-cast" of a GW melta gun instead of sculpting it by hand? I think one or two things as long as you're not selling them won't ever matter, even in the slightest. I've scratch-built guns from GW bitz and sculpted completely out of Green Stuff. If there's nothing immoral about scultping one from Green Stuff, how is it any different?

Note that I am only referring to the case of making a few melta guns, not producing things like whole Wave Serpents or Units of Models. Doing anything above a few arbitrary bits then claiming that they're authentic GW is no different than using fake MtG cards in my mind. Luckily some LGS will let you use non-GW models to play GW games since they know it's not the end of the world.

Okee dokee , i want to ask a simple question to see the mind set from different people.

"What is a piece of plastic GW melta gun to you guys?"

Go!

LunaHound wrote:"What is a piece of plastic GW melta gun to you guys?"

A legally-protected product.

Something that looks like a "melta gun," and if it's a tournament, something made of GW parts that looks like a "melta gun." If we weren't mostly brain-washed then a melta gun would be whatever we wanted (a little spear, a little lightsaber, a regular bolter marines with a different color base...).

Manchu wrote:

LunaHound wrote:"What is a piece of plastic GW melta gun to you guys?"

A legally-protected product.

Yes and it goes into detail even more , to why a piece of plastic deserves to have gone to such a great length to be protected ?

LunaHound wrote:Can you tell me ALL the reasons why you wont steal a box off a shelf?

I already answered that in my original post. You never answered any of my questions. Have you ever knowingly broken the law? If so, then how did you justify it to yourself? If not, then once again, tell your Father I really liked his work on the Grand Canyon.

I would gladly make my own guns entirely from scratch, but my model will be branded anti-GW and I will most likely run into trouble playing in a GW tournament.

I am seriously doubting whether I should contribute anymore to this thread. I smell a flame war, but I could just be thinking about BBQ.... mmmm, I want some ribs!

I wish that I were in a country where something like this simply didn't matter in the slightest. Lunahound is technically correct that this is stealing, but it still relies on a law that some countries simply do not agree with (go power to the consumers!).

I do not call people thieves with a light tone, you either steal and it is blatantly obvious, or you do not. Casting and selling products is CLEARLY stealing, creating replicas of minor parts to fill the gap that GW cannot (for whatever reason) and using them for personal use is simply not stealing in my book.