POKEMON - Trains

[shiniji]

Hey Guys,

 

The first: Happy New Yeah at All :)

 

I'am back with a nice Train  - Yamanote Line goes to POKEMON :D

 

before christmas I have a template for Pokemon trains (here the Yamanote Line) created and a decal manufacturer sent to the basket. Today finally got the decal sheet - awesome: D

I have my model of Kato then directly once provided with the decals (it still lacks the protective clear coat.

The result I find successful, some details have unfortunately gone down (which is the "size" is not surprising).

What do you think?
Soon I will make my views to the E2 or E4 Shinkansen :)

Regards, Patrick

[Densha]

Is this prototypical or did you think of this design yourself?

[IST]

What do you think?

Soon I will make my views to the E2 or E4 Shinkansen :)

Hmmm, very interesting and looks good, although I would not use decals on my trains if it is not necessary. :-)

When you finish your Shinkansens, please upload some pictures about it also!

[cteno4]

Patrick,

 

hey fantastic work! are these the same critters in the same locations as the prototype? ive thought of doing the e2 and or e4 as well. most were pretty simple and i think i remember all the white decal elements for the most part were over white train parts so you could do transparent inkjet decals.

 

what service did you use? it looks like they are transparent decals and they did white printing, is that true? thats the way to go! they looks decent resolution and at n scale its going to be hard to get super fine detail on transfers over irregular shapes.

 

too bad it would be so hard to get the rights (and probably huge cost for small runs) to this stuff or you could have a nice little garage biz here!

 

ive been tempted to do this myself. i got a rub off decal system for the laser printer and made a sheet of tama decals for doing the tama train just before the tomytec one came out! i have a couple of orange tomytec portrams that i plan to make a fantasy tama train with them!

 

cracking good job dude!

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Hmmm, very interesting and looks good, although I would not use decals on my trains if it is not necessary. :-)

When you finish your Shinkansens, please upload some pictures about it also!

 

well it necessary if you collect painted trains and only a small number are made as models -- there are a lot more out there in the prototype world to do!

 

extra rights issues come into play to produce the painted versions, so why they are few and usually expensive. Under fair use you can dig up the images if you can and make your own, but just cant sell them w/o the rights negotiated. most rights owners dont want to do little deals at all so set the minimum price high.

 

jeff

[IST]

well it necessary if you collect painted trains and only a small number are made as models -- there are a lot more out there in the prototype world to do!

Yes, you are right, I totally forgot that there are some people who would like to model (and not only collect) painted trains.

 

extra rights issues come into play to produce the painted versions, so why they are few and usually expensive. Under fair use you can dig up the images if you can and make your own, but just cant sell them w/o the rights negotiated. most rights owners dont want to do little deals at all so set the minimum price high.

 

jeff

This was a huge issue some month ago in Hungary when a newly founded Hungarian company made a special livery for a Taurus type loco and then agreed with a model manufacturer to release it in H0 scale in limited number. A Hungarian guy made the model on different basis and started to sell it on the internet without any right which was not liked by the company, so they went to a legal way if I remember well. But there was a huge dispute about the story on different forums for days long.

[cteno4]

sorry ist i was just poking you as im one of those nutz...

 

yeah the rights issue can even back into your personal use of reproducing the decals with a commercial company for personal use. some printing/decal companies wont reproduce any copyrighted materials for you even for personal use. of course you are free to do what you want with your own computer for your own use like this, just dont try and sell them or you may end up like the chap in Hungary!

 

rights stuff is so messy, im glad im not doing much there anymore!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[KenS]

yeah the rights issue can even back into your personal use of reproducing the decals with a commercial company for personal use. some printing/decal companies wont reproduce any copyrighted materials for you even for personal use. of course you are free to do what you want with your own computer for your own use like this...

 

Not necessarily.  I'm not familiar with Hungarian law (and I'm not a lawyer in any case), but "fair use" (or "fair dealing" in Commonwealth countries and some others) has a meaning that changes between jurisdictions, and isn't always well-defined even within a jurisdiction. It could well be illegal to reproduce a commercial work in that manner in some places, even for personal use.

 

Even in the U.S., there isn't really a "personal use" exemption, so much as historical interpretation and a "transformative" exemption that tends to create the same effect (e.g., timeshifting video and format-converting CDs to digital), and then mainly if there's a non-commercial aspect. People have lost lawsuits in the U.S. over devices sold solely to create personal-use copies. If you look at the actual laws, they don't mention "personal use" at all.  There's a convention that personal use is legal, and it appears to derive from historical application of the laws to commercial use (i.e., the "interpretation" aspect). But no specific legal right is codified in the law (see this PDF for a long but interesting discussion of U.S. personal use and how ambiguous it is under law).

 

So, scanning a commercial decal and printing it for your own use is probably illegal even in the U.S., which is likely why copy centers get nervous. It might pass under historical interpretation, but it seems more likely to fail as being insufficiently transformative and commercially harmful (since you aren't paying for additional copies). Copy centers don't want to be dragged into the middle of a lawsuit, particularly one they could lose, so they take a conservative view on what's legal.

 

Creating a model train decal from a photograph of a real train is a "derivative work" (and thus a right of the creator of the work), but one that would probably pass as transformative under U.S. law (but that's not a guarantee someone wouldn't be sued and lose, particularly if they distributed it, even for free, since that could affect sales of someone's licensed model). But Commonwealth "Fair Dealing" doesn't depend on "transformative" the way U.S. "Fair Use" does, and I don't think it has quite the same concept of Personal Use either.  It's more dependent on a list of classes of specific uses that are allowed.  At least that's how I read the wikipedia entry on it; I haven't dug into non-U.S. law in depth myself. And in any case it varies a lot from country to country, but it would seem that most other countries lack the specifics of U.S. "Fair Use" even if they have some analogous right.

 

And it's all subject to interpretation by judges anyway, since there's so much ambiguity in these laws and how they apply to new technologies.

 

I live in the U.S., so I wouldn't feed wrong in creating a decal from a photo for my own train, or even running it at a show (which could infringe the "public performance" right under U.S. Copyright law); I'd assume my use was sufficiently transformative to pass as Fair Use.

 

But I wouldn't make that same decal available for others.  That could be enough to cross the line, even here. And I certainly wouldn't scan and print copies of a decal, even for my own use (unless that decal was in some way no longer available, or if I wanted to modify my copy of it and use the copy instead of the original; then I'd feel justified that I wasn't denying the owner their rightful income from it).

 

And this whole argument can be extended from trains that are clearly "art" to trains that merely have a distinctive design; some North American railroads require model-making companies to license their trademarked designs. (and trademark law is different from copyright law, and doesn't necessarily have the same exemptions, so anything that might be trademarked, like a Pokemon character, could trigger a whole different evaluation).

 

It's all terribly murky, and unfortunately that doesn't look likely to change in my lifetime. I just muddle through on the basis of "do I think I'm hurting anyone?" and "do I think someone else will think I'm hurting them enough to sue me?". But don't count on "personal use" as a get-out-of-jail-free card, particularly outside the U.S.

[cteno4]

ken,

 

yes i completely agree. i didnt even want to get into all that you outlined, had to deal with it on both side of the issue with work stuff too much in the past and just tired of it. the personal use really is just the stuff that 99.9999999% of the time no one is going to sue you over, at worst maybe a cease and diciest letter.

 

most of the things in this bucket would also be trademarked, which as you say has a separate set of more restrictive rules than copyright.

 

then we back into the ethics of it all as well and this varies person to person a lot (and many have never thought it through well.) I pretty much follow the same rule of thumb myself.

 

its something i want to try to not deal with if possible, way too many media rights crap i had to do as well as deal with knockoffs that were trying to slide in as being modified enough. 

 

cheers

 

jeff

[shiniji]

O.O

the images are subject to copyright and in any case these are a trademark - unfortunately not for the private use ok for a small series possible: (

but I say it this way: I can not let them reproduced what "leave" from the decals and the owners to install themselves. As a small series which may include but not then.

Whether there will ever be a series of one manufacturer, I rather think not, because the license fees for this are probably too high. Especially since every 2 years anyway even another train to it (depending on whether a new film or again offer one of JR's are) with a new label is.

 

by the way, the decals are cut and soaked in water, then can remove the printed paper carrier and raise almost invisible on the train :)

[cteno4]

Shiniji,

 

again great work! you must be enjoying the train.

 

just curious, did the shop that did your details do white printing as well on your transparent decals?

 

jeff