Hi,

A question for all you legal-types out there:

"An indevidual or orgranisation cannot charge fees to repaint Freeware aircraft in custom schemes for any indeviduals wanting to pay for such a plane, if the original creator of the model has relased it as 'non-profit'."

Is this the case - and is custom repainting for fees against the law?

Many thanks for any advice or help on the topic,
Ed  

At a guess i'd say he just came up with it to be clear about what he's asking, that right Ed? Also, I hope its not illegal as I'm in the middle of a large batch of work for someone now...  8) Essentially I'm getting paid an ammount per repaint for my time and effort.

In the U.S. it is not, as long as you are charging the person who is paying money your time, and not the finished product.

So if asked by a laywer or anybody else, you did sell the new paint job, but rather you were payed for your services to complete a task for somebody.

THere are two issues here.

If I release a model and textures for freeware distribution, and someone pays someone else to repaint it for their personal use, although violating the spirit of freeware, it's an interpersonal transaction (why would someone pay to create a repaint of a freeware model/texture is another story)

Now, if that person in turn starts SELLING that model with the repainted textures (or just the textures), then I'm going to be highly unmotivated to contintue producing freeware, AND I might consider taking legal action because that person is taking my intellectual property - my model and the original textures from which the repaints were done - and profiting from it.

Note that the argument that " the textures were repainted and therefore not your creation anymore"  doesn't hold, because to get to that point you HAD to have used/changed my original textures - as mapped specifically for that model.

I agree 100% with Felix (as always!)
A freeware design IS a freeware design. No cost.

The original author should be able to control the use of his/her model for subsequent repaints and out of courtesy the proposed re-paint should be discussed and agreed with the original author prior to uploading.

IMHO only the orginal author can rightfully convert a freeware model into a $$$ commercial model.

Paying someone to re-paint a model for you then to use it for your own personal use is something else.

I'd hate to see someone do a re-paint for one of my YAS spitfires and then sell it as a commercial package. I'd get really p****d off.

Yeah,
but if u were to only supply the altered textures, i doubt thats illegal

I'm hoping to go to university next year, so if someone offers me an amount to do repaint(s) then i cant affiord to say no  8)

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I'll help folk out where I can, but teaching is one thing I am really bad at 

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Without wishing to blow my own trumpet, I think my work is of a suitably high standard  8)

quite true, you can never ask for anything extortionate, but as my monetry costs are £0, the profit is 100%. The only cost is the time I spend working on projects,