Licenced characters and products from other Companies [FICTIONAL]
RCTSpanky
Posts: 850
To make things clear, before you post here: The idea behind this thread is pure fiction. I don't have any information from DAZ, that they have plans for licenced products from other companies.
A few days ago I found a free 3D character model, which looks like a very famous Mouse from the Toonworld. I know that I can use this character only for my private use and for that reason I don't show any pictures that I've made with this character.
But an idea came in my mind ... what, if DAZ acquire a licence to sell characters from Disney for example. I would immedialty buy a Micky Mouse, based on Genesis. Imagine what one could do. Micky in the Supersuit? Could look like the one on the picture below.
Or what if DAZ get the licence from DC or Marvel to sell authorizeded characters or textures for the SuperSuit?
We all know, that DAZ sell with "Reby Sky" a licenced product. From that point is my idea not so unreal as it maybe first sounds.
I would like to know, what you think about the idea? Would you pay for licenced characters from other companies to use in DAZ or Poser?
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Comments
Poll removed - we aren’t sure why polls are enabled, they weren’t on the old forums, but it isn’t the intent that they should be there
How want you know, what your customers thing and want when you don't allow polls? Makes it a difference, if a poll was started by a user or by an admin. How should we vote for our wanted items in the annual DAZ celebrations??? Can I now report any polls, with a quote of this post?
That won't be neccesary as we find them and remove them ourselves.
On Topic. Yes I would buy and use licensed items if Daz had them. Disney and Marvel and DC especialy. That would be great fun.
Polls aren't supposed to be enabled?
You do know that polls are useful and not outlawed in other forums on the web.
:ohh:
I would buy if at a reasonable price and would work with Genesis.
better remove this one then :red:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/472/
not that anyone reads it anyway!!! %-P
Is that a valid reason, just because they wern't on the old forum, Polls are wonderful things, Peeps use them all the time on DA, another ART site. :)
I think DAZ should have a rethink, people here have used them and seem to enjoy them, I can't see a problem.
I doubt if I would by licenced characters. The primary reason would be cost. If (and that is a huge if) they were willing to licence them the cost to DAZ up front would be super high. Since this market is so small spreading that cost around would tack on a fair bit to any products.
I have nothing against Batman, the X-Men, Pluto & Mickey, or the like, but I'd rather see original content that doesn't have oppressive usage restrictions. I'm not paying to do fan-fiction or wall posters. I don't necessarily use everything I buy for commercial purposes but just about everything I have can be used in the creation of art and models for sale (depending on whether it a texture, render, or merchant resource).
Personally, I rarely even download a 3D freebie that has restrictions on commercial use (especially with respect to renders).
That s just me though. I don't like movie remakes and music remixes either.
BTW: I DO think polls should be allowed. People enjoy them; they are useful; and they don't hurt anything as far as I know. What's the rationale for disabling or deleting them?
For me, it would depend highly on the property being licensed, and what the product was.
I've done some fan art just for fun, but I don't do it enough for me to spend large amounts of money on it. That said, I might not mind shelling out for, say, a licensed Firefly model, or a set of Hogwarts uniforms approved by JKR (I know Poserworld has a Movie-verse inspired set), or perhaps (and probably more affordable/possible) a commercial texture set for Luthbel's Way of the Samurai using the official mons from AEG's Legend of the Five rings card game/RPG.
I'm a gamer, so when I do fan work, I tend to do original stories/characters set in other people's sandboxes, rather than using the characters themselves. So while SAV's Yanis keeps winking at me from my wish list, I don't see myself doing any pictures of Captain Jack Sparrow (for example).
Yes, I think licensed stuff would very likely have some very strong restrictions on use. I don't imagine Disney permitting Mickey to be used in commercial renders that advertise totally unrelated products, for instance.
I'm the same with the freebies. I understand why a creator might apply that restriction. But it does make the item less useful for me, and I don't want the trouble of keeping track of which items I can use and which I can't for different projects.
...I think it's more fun and challenging to try and create a certain character than to have one premade. Now granted, toon based characters are not as easy to morph from a standard model like say Vicky or Mike (or even genesis) as say comic book heroes/villains or RL celebs,
I have no trouble with not allowing a licenced character to be used in a commercial render without the proper permissions (which usually come with a price tag attached). After all, Micky, Donald, Shrek, Buzz Lightyear, etc. are still responsible for a good part of Disney's income as are Iron Man, Spidey, Wolverine, and the Hulk for Marvel.
However, I also remember the flap (sorry) over a certain WWII bomber model that was offered a couple years ago. Not only was the aircraft decommissioned and obsolete, but the company which built it was no longer in business. Apparently another firm which bought the original builder still laid claim to the plans and aircraft's designation/name, even though they have no intention of ever building another one of this type again, and subsequently forced the modeller. to pull it from circulation. Even myself (who is an avid fan of classic aircraft and pretty much stays up to date on aerospace industry trends and news) was unaware of the acquisition.
So one has to be very careful out there when offering a new model/mesh of an existing item or character for distribution even if it is flagged "not for commercial use".
It would depend on what the product was/who the character was as to whether I would buy or not. There is obviously a market for it with all those character morphs that are made to look like famous people.
I thought Shrek was dreamworks not Disney.
..ahh, you are correct. With all the 3D CG animation out these days for film and television, easy to miss just who is doing what anymore. :red:
Well,US Copyright and trademark law can be a hopeless abyss. I once spoke to the Copyright office to ask them if something I wanted to do was all right and they told me they did not know, that the only way I could be sure was to have a court of law rule one way or the other on my specific question. The situation has become ludicrous.
Not sure DAZ would ever open that can of worms since there is even risk in using characters and images in books clearly in the public domain. Mega-corporations, like Warner Bros & Disney, who have made an embarrassing amount of money using free stories and characters, now fight for exclusive rights to them (The Wizard of Oz comes to mind). It's not the only battle going on for the public domain either.
BTW, I'm not surprised about the problems with pressure applied to the modeller of the old aircraft. We had that happen at DAZ too with the old Indian Summer freebie a couple years or so. Content Creators and brokers choose to remove these items when there is a question re copyrights or trademarks rather than fight against the claims, even though 3D models of vehicles, structures, and other items may fall under different laws (especially given that these virtual replicas cannot be confused with the actual items).
Don't worry. Pretty soon one mega-corp will probably own the rights to both anyway. :)
Because of the legal minefield I would never purchase a trademark/copyright model especially if it was of a character or element easily identiable with a particular comapany or production.
Redacted
In order of importance, for once!
1) I, for one, would love it to pieces if polls were enabled and allowed for users.
2) I would love some Marvel-themed stuff. Don't care much about other mentioned properties, but if it makes others happy, I certainly would not mind.
Agree on the former, not so much on the latter. It depends on who's doing the remix - Mike Oldfield creating a remix of Tubular Bells, for example.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! We need a poll to see how many support having polls. :-)
...the issue I have with this is the fact they will never ever build that aircraft again so there is no threat to the company's profit margin. In a way it's free advertising for them. Heck, they allow injection moulded plastic models of the same aircraft to be released so why not allow 3D meshes as well?
Personally, I'd rather see a bunch of "close too.." models instead, just to keep the cost down and availability up. Something like the Sm*rf style chara here at Daz, the Schmoes ( http://www.daz3d.com/shop/schmoes/ ) on the Genesis/TriAx figures instead. I remember at one point, someone had a character named Toxin at another site- looked enough like Spiderman where just a few edits in the texture, and he was ready to go.
That all said, I'd love to see some Mr. Mouse type chara's, or the classic toons done to go with the Genesis anime style morphs.
That risks being sued over 'look and feel', which is even more subjective/unpredictable than normal copyright.
On Licensed characters and products from other Companies, nah.
Too many strings attached. Love the fan art ones though!
On polls ...
That may be too Poll-itical :coolsmile:
Lets do an example. I can do a generic creepy clown and it would be okay. If I bought a licensed version of Ronald the clown and then turned him into a creepy clown I might get into trouble.
I think it isn't too hard to do superheroes with a little work, but cartoon characters like the aforementioned mouse might be pretty hard without specific morphs. Maybe what would work would be something like the Creature Creator sets, but aimed at doing toon heads, faces and bodies. That might be especially useful for people who don't want to copy specific characters, but still want to do toons.
I actually brought up this issue in another forum posting a few months ago.
First, keep in mind that it could be a major project tracking down the licensing department AND convincing them that Poser/ DAZ products will be a commercially viable project for them.
Then, how much would these companies charge for a license? Would it be for one character? Would it be a large deposit or a cut of the sale price or both? Would a company really be interested in getting 50% of a $10 product sold at Renderosity or 50% of a $1.99 product sold here?
Next, these companies would impose licensing restrictions on any products made with their properties. A while ago, DAZ released an Anna-Marie Goddard character and Poser users complained about the restrictions that came with that figure. I can only imagine the complaints from people when they're told they can't use Wolverine or Batman in their commercial projects. ;)
Another point is that most of the people who replied to my forum posting said they wouldn't be willing to pay higher prices for officially licensed products. They also said they preferred look-alikes which didn't include any legal restrictions from the copyright owner.
...the issue I have with this is the fact they will never ever build that aircraft again so there is no threat to the company's profit margin. In a way it's free advertising for them. Heck, they allow injection moulded plastic models of the same aircraft to be released so why not allow 3D meshes as well?
I essentially agree with you, but I don't think it is just about profit margin or whether or not a company or product exists anymore. As I said before, courts are even hearing CR TM violation cases involving items, objects, structures, characters, and stories clearly in the public domain. It is about control. (The lights put on the Eiffel tower specifically to copyright it at night is a good example here.) It is also about setting legal precedence. People have been successfully sued and sanctioned for copyright Infringement / trademark violation when they didn't make any money at all. Some may even have lost money. Hell, just downloading one copyrighted music file from the Internet or publishing a single photo of a zoo animal in the US could cost a person thousands of dollars without counting legal fees.
Corps and other business are lobbying hard to expand their rights and forge others in the area of new media & technology. Some of the rulings are so restrictive that it virtually keeps anything from falling into the public domain unless it is actively placed there (and even that may not work.) One example of this extreme, thanks in large part to the Music Industry's "war" on piracy, is the rulings regarding sound recordings, most of which will not begin to enter the PD in the US until 2067, even if they are in the PD everywhere else in the world. I understand that businesses have a right to protect their interests. I just think the protective factors have leaned entirely too far in one direction -- toward mega-corp interests and away from small interests and the public in general.
Oh, another example of how companies battle for the public domain is the phrase "Who Dat" after the Saints made it to the Superbowl. (No one cared before that.) The NFL tried to crack down on merchants for selling "Who Dat" merchandise and using Saints colors, sending out numerous cease and desist orders. The City of New Orleans fought back and eventually the NFL claimed it was just a huge misunderstanding. Why mention this case? Because it sparked some good discussion. Was the phrase public domain? Did the City own it? Did the Saints? Did the NFL?
"Who Dat" was worth fighting for in New Orleans. But the mayor, city officials, and others in that dispute had the resources, energy and support they needed to hold their own against such an opponent. Not sure what we, as individuals, can do to keep our rights regarding 3D content creation, but allowing these companies to bully us into just removing items every time they say we should is probably only going to make it worse. Are 3D models different? If so how? If not, why not? Are they like plastic models or replicas or historical artifacts or old photos or something different altogether? In what ways can 3D models be confused with the actual items or can they? If we let mega-corps answer these questions for us, I can pretty much guarantee that the answers are not going to be in our best interests.
Unfortunately, as the copyright office said, the questions would most likely have to be hashed out in court. Otherwise I just might say put the 3D plane on the market and screw the naysayers. And therein lies the problem. Disciplined to be docile, as Foucault said?