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I must first confess a sin to discuss my thoughts. I have been browsing the catalogs of recasters. gasp. Please forgive me, but sometimes the bits stores just don't have what I need and I do not wish to pay full price for a kit I will be destroying for only a few parts. But as I was looking through these websites, a thought struck me. We have reached an overlap where these recasters have been running long enough that they now have models that have been discontinued by GW. With FW beginning to scrap many of their models not related to 30K and GW replacing old models, recasters will be one of the only places to access these old models. Besides hunting them down ebay, these bootleg companies may become impromptu archives for outdated models. This same logic also applies to the growing technology of 3D printing.

But this comes with a moral quandary. 3D printing a copyrighted model or buying a recast from Russia is not exactly legal or morally 'good'. But does that apply to a product if the business who owns the IP cannot, or will not, supply me with the product in question. Can I steal something that is no longer being sold?

For example I had been meaning to buy the Ork trukk upgrades from FW, but I always pushed it off to a later date. When I finally had the spare cash to buy them, I learned the kit is no longer avaialable.
But fear not, there is website where I can buy these old FW kits. Why should I not buy them from this fellow if FW can longer help me?

I realize this is only a single line of logic and there are arguments on both sides. I was curious to hear what other opinions and arguments are out there. If this devolves into something ugly, then may the mods smite this thread and have mercy on my soul.

^I have the same mixed feelings about it. I've never been a big purchaser of FW in the first place, but a couple things I've wanted are no longer sold. . . by FW. I definitely feel less guilty about a recast if it's no longer sold by FW.

That said, I'll always go to FW to purchase something they still sell. FW does the designs and the design is the valuable part of the product. So I like to give credit where credit is due and buy from them if I really want something. I'd still like to get an Arvus Lighter, probably in the near future, for example. I'll buy it legit when I do.

if they no longer make it, maybe.

if it's in current production...go feth yourself, simple as that.

If you go to sell it and dont tell the person that's buying it....go feth yourself.

If you're doing it to save a couple of bucks/quid/etc...go feth yourself.

if you cant afford the real deal and purposefully buy counterfeit...googol(as in  10,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000 times) feth yourself!

 Mr Nobody wrote:

But this comes with a moral quandary. 3D printing a copyrighted model or buying a recast from Russia is not exactly legal or morally 'good'. But does that apply to a product if the business who owns the IP cannot, or will not, supply me with the product in question. Can I steal something that is no longer being sold?

The answer to that is yes.

I dunno how big I am a fan of buying from recasters; Printing it yourself, though, I say go nuts. Print away.

I wouldn't really blame anyone who did print FW-adjacent models for personal use, either; I know this forum has probably seen this debate a million times before, but I am not convinced that prices are reasonable when a single model can cost more than a miniature magical manufactorum.

I always feel strange about the no steal stance of western countries and the whole IP stuff.

Making recasts of your own is okey, if the recast is made out of an inferior FW model, and not superior Russian cast. That is like paying for an inferior product, and being forced to be happy about it. A thing for smarter people then me.

It's not a conundrum, nor even a quandary.

Does the recaster have the right to sell someone else's IP? No.

Not "not exactly legal". Illegal. "or morally good" (aka wrong)

GW & FW own the copyright and trademarks. They MAY choose to exercise those rights again in future. They may not. Legally, the recaster is depriving them of that potential future income.

As for "impromptu archives" and "I don't wish to pay full price", it SOUNDS like you want a get out, and for us to say "it's ok: go ahead".

It isn't OK. Don't do it.

These questions arise from time to time on here and on Facebook groups, etc.
It's always the same and boils down to: "Am I entitled to this OOP product?"
And the answer can always only be: "No."

Does this mean it can stop you from buying recasts? Also no.
In most countries, buying knockoffs isn't illegal, selling them is.
If you get caught by customs, they can tax or destroy it, depending on their knowledge of the product in question.

Which means: it's your own moral decision.

Why do companies own rights to the likeness of their models? To earn money on the investment they have made into developing that model. Same thing with a movie, it costs a lot to hire the cast and crew to shoot a movie, so the companies need to own the rights to the likeness of their movies to earn a profit despite the initial cost of hiring crew and cast. Once the company stops distributing a product (assuming it does not have special value as a limited run item like the MTG reserved list), we can assume they have made all the profits possible on that model.

Theft of intellectual property is wrong because it disincentivises production of new intellectual property. Theft of out of production intellectual property incentivises continued production of that piece of intellectual property, allowing more customers to legally buy the product. Best case scenario FW contracts a small recasting firm to produce things at a smaller volume than they could before. Karol claims quality is higher and production prices must be lower if they can make a profit at lower prices, so FW can continue selling the models at higher prices and make a bigger profit while making better models.

It's a tiny bit wrong to do IMO if you feel like that model would really make you happy I think you should buy it. Be an excellent person to your 40k opponents every time you use the model and I think you payed back however much of a wrong it is to buy out of production FW recasts.

I do think intellectual property laws have gotten ridiculous over the past 100 years, they shouldn't last more than 10 years at most, anything more than that is no longer benefitting most people, but benefitting special interest groups like GW and Disney. Space Marines? I think GW should be able to compete with other companies that sell them now. Primaris Marines? Give 5-10 years and they should be able to compete with prices other companies can produce them at. How much of an obligation you have to obey the laws of your country is another matter, but we shouldn't advocate for anything illegal here, all my points here are made assuming it is legal where you live to purchase these models.

I don't think you're stupid if you don't care about the continued creation of new IPs and products and as such just buy wherever you can get your models with the best quality at the lowest price, I do think that every person that lives life this way is hurting every other person in the world and we would all be better off being better to each other even though some of our reptile instincts are to outcompete and starve our competitors and have as much offspring as possible. Making an explanation of why we should support the official relase as I am doing and shaming as Racerguy is doing are cheap and highly moral ways to discourage anti-social behaviour.

stroller wrote:
It's not a conundrum, nor even a quandary.

Does the recaster have the right to sell someone else's IP? No.

Not "not exactly legal". Illegal. "or morally good" (aka wrong)

GW & FW own the copyright and trademarks. They MAY choose to exercise those rights again in future. They may not. Legally, the recaster is depriving them of that potential future income.

As for "impromptu archives" and "I don't wish to pay full price", it SOUNDS like you want a get out, and for us to say "it's ok: go ahead".

It isn't OK. Don't do it.

Just about every player I've met has some number of these non-official kits. Given my view of greedy corporations, I have no qualms. And this is all I will say given how I am sure the mods will react.

Normally i am with stroller, HOWEVER,

- GW has a monolithic market position, is willing to atleast ATTEMPT to use IP rights a cludgeon, like dysney and consorts. therefore gaking on free use and by extension rights of others. So GW themselves are morally reprehensibale in many ways.

-is perfectly willing to discontinue support for whole lines and treat it's custommer base in terms of actual consumer friendlyness like gak.

-is demanding premium for inferior materiel product (FAILCAST and FW resin are just gak compared to other producers of Resin miniatures)


I still wouldn't do it and instead remain with original alternatives owned by the company itself.
But as stated through all of the above i think there is atleast partially a moral argument to be made against GW. But arguments on moral enter ethics and whilest i as a philosophy student like that you can debatte endlessly if or if not something is correct action or justified.

Not Online!!! wrote:
But as stated through all of the above i think there is atleast partially a morale argument to be made against GW. But arguments on morale enter ethics and whilest i as a philosophy student like that you can debatte endlessly if or if not something is correct action or justified.

Minor point, dude...

Morale - The thing that may stop you running away
Moral - Whether something is right or wrong

I have to confess that I've never been able to actually find a recaster, so I in all likelihood don't have any recasts (although, one never knows with Ebay lots of random stuff). I however have cast my own minis and components from manufacturers. For single bitz, it can just be insane to try to get sufficient numbers of them. And, of course, it also allows for more freedom in conversions and the like.

That said, I have nothing against someone using recasts in their army, especially of OOP products. It would be different if the recasts were from smaller companies, but honestly, if you build a GW army and halfway through, they cancel a product line, why not go for recasts to be able to complete it?

 vict0988 wrote:
I do think intellectual property laws have gotten ridiculous over the past 100 years, they shouldn't last more than 10 years at most, anything more than that is no longer benefitting most people, but benefitting special interest groups like GW and Disney. Space Marines? I think GW should be able to compete with other companies that sell them now. Primaris Marines? Give 5-10 years and they should be able to compete with prices other companies can produce them at. How much of an obligation you have to obey the laws of your country is another matter, but we shouldn't advocate for anything illegal here, all my points here are made assuming it is legal where you live to purchase these models.

I might agree with you on how copyright is handled (basically something remains copyrighted until 70 years after its creator's death, which is great for you if your dad wrote some famous book or something, because you're set for life, but it's still pretty ridiculous). Trademarks are another thing and mostly tied to counterfeiting. GW gets to decide who can or can't call their space marines "Adeptus Astartes" or put the Warhammer 40000 logo on their box. For GW, their reputation would be harmed if any random producer made crap and sold it as if it was official. For the customers, it'd be harder to tell if you're getting scammed or not. For example if anyone could make their soda and call it "Coca-Cola" with the same logo and everything, how are you supposed to know what you're buying exactly?

Now nothing stops you from making your own not-quite-space-marines models and selling them as "sci-fi soldiers in power armour." As long as you don't try to fool the buyer into thinking he's getting GW products, then it's 100% legal. If you call them "Adeptus Astertes" and use logos that look almost exactly like GW's ones, then you can get sued for trying to trick customers.

You are asking about ethics/morals. The answer is do whatever that you can sleep with at night.

Legally however you are engaging in copyright theft regardless of whether or not the owner of the IP is still producing the product.

Given that GW has spent decades dicking over its customers in a multitude of ways, I would have absolutely no moral qualms about purchasing models from a known recaster.

Sadly we can't all pass moral tests on a 1.

In my eyes, I will never buy anything from a recaster that takes a design (even a design gw no longer sells) and just duplicates it.

If it's something like "I am an artist and this is my 3d model of a much more high definition, better scaled Vostroyan/Taurox that doesn't suck/Funny variant ork sculpt/eldar aspect warrior that doesn't suck" then I've got no problem with that.

All art is iteration. Everything has been done before. Extending "intellectual property" to anything that's been designed before....well, then Games Workshop has some SPLAININ to do to the creators of such works as alien, judge dredd, heavy metal album covers, classic pulp sci-fi book covers, tolkien, WW2-era militaries, etc.

that, to me, is no different than enjoying the look of a piece of fan art, it's just the medium of the hobby is 28mm miniatures.

.

Im all in favor of buying original and legit but when a recaster offers you options than the IP holder doesnt then it's pretty much their fault. I realize that justification sounds like an abuser saying "look what you made me do" but I'm ok with that.

I don't buy recasts. I mean, I don't know why. I don't support our actual copyright and IP international laws and I find them extremely amoral , and I'm all for others to buy from recasts.

But I'm one of those that once stole a pencil from a bank and returned it the day after because I couldn't sleep. I'm just too legal for that, so I buy proper FW, like my achillus or my Saggitarum Guard.

To me, models no longer sold are just like abandonedware. As digital games show, what kills piracy is not lower prices but the avaibility and ease of access of a good product for a good price. Where I live , a TON of people buy from recasters. Like, theres other custodes players with 90% "FW" armies much more powerfull than mine that are 100% recasted, even proper GW plastic kits are recasted. I have like 20% of their collections. I don't judge them, I don't even think they are goind anything morally wrong. And they have offered me to do the same, but I just can't.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Can I steal something that is no longer being sold?

No.

The person who owns that thing is the person who gets to decide whether or not it should be made available.

Dakka does not, and can not, endorse copyright infringement or IP theft.