Nicodemus:
Yes, any discussion on IP, Copyright, Patent & Trademark inevitably involve confusion over international standards, discussions of morally acceptability, socially accepted "fair use" and so on.Slev, I was hoping you'd weigh in on this topic as you've had some good insight on these topics in the past.
The thrust is that society and the spirit of the law says one thing. The letter of the law says another.
With regards to the nor-Dr Who, not-Firefly and so on, it's a case of exactly what is covered by IP that is the question. The aim here is to be close enough to be useful without going over the line.
I also remember the BBC trying to sue Ainsty(?) for their model "Historic Police Boxes", as they where blatant TARDIS rip-offs. The judge threw it out since the BBC had got away without paying the police a royalty as they claimed that such items where utility and public domain.
slev
I think this is a good spot to get back on topic from.
On another side of things - wouldn't it be possible to get someone from the forum here to sculpt up a few different mask variants, some various beard segments & styles, armoured bib segments, and maybe a CD face or two, a couple of arm and axe designs and some generic CD-theme shields so that they can be mixed and matched however one likes with little additional modification? They could be combined however one wishes in combination with dwarfs from BFSP or other dwarfs from other companies, possibly. With someone to do a few minor sculpts of individual conversion bits I think there are folks on the forum here who could easily make rubber moulds and castings from them to distribute to people.
Even if people are leery to do the relatively basic sculpting required for the BFSB CD conversion, anyone can follow Xander's videos and do the chiseling and scraping of their dwarfs to start with. From there someone would just need their "CDO conversion bits" and a little krazy glue and they're ready to paint.
Maybe there needs to be a WOH conversion kit contest, and all the entrants get a couple of copies of the top 3 submitted? I'd be more than happy to do the casting, bits of this kind of size don't require much resin at all, and mailing small things like that out to several people doesn't cost much either. I've done something like it before... This would be a small price to pay for supporting this community. After such a contest it could be a "pay for shipping and materials" based price on this site.
Food for thought anyway.
~N
P.S. I believe it's a non-issue to have someone sculpt bits from scratch on a scale and shape that's compatible with BFSP minis. As long as the themes and iconography is compatible with the CD theme but not a blatant infringement of IP it's workable. Just look at all of the other "Chaos Dwarf" themed minis being sold by other companies out there. As long as all of the bits are sculpted from scratch, arms, weapons, the works, we're in the clear. The fact that we wouldn't make a profit (and wouldn't expect to anyway) makes doubly sure we're well in the clear.