Sheesh - not them, too! Is this madness ever going to stop?!
I want to sit in the courtroom when the first case of "copyright violation" comes up. If I had a B-17, I'd paint a facsimile of the
Memphis Belle (TM) right up front just to tweak the AFM. It's simply a ploy to raise money on the AFM's part.
(Starcer, BTW, was on gummit time, and everything he saw, did, created, painted, thought, or contemplated belongs to Uncle. As a GI, his art was "Work for Hire". His heirs would lose
that case if they chose to pursue a "rights" claim.)
I'm sure the AFM's
Friends Association lawyers and/or bean counters (Gen. Metcalf, the director and a federal employee, nor his boss at AMC, IIRC, has the authority to claim jack-squat in terms of legal rights on behalf of the government. Only SecDef's office can do that.) are trying to piggy-back on the recently successful "licen$ing" of right$ by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, et al, for the production of F-16, etc., plastic model kits that are representations of said "intellectual property". There is legislation pending that will prohibit such licensing of items by the vendor which are the result of
federal contracts. Correspondence to the House and Senate conferees as part of that proposed legislation points out that the rights to license such property belongs to SecDef; nowhere are companies like LM and Boeing mentioned as having the authority to profit from their govt-contract designs. Personally, I think a major class-action may be able to recoup the licensing costs paid so far ... hmmm, wish I were a lawyer - I think the affected companies may have a case.
Similarly, there has been a flurry of activity recently on some of the artist's boards about an independent aviation artist who was asked by Lockheed Martin's marketing folks to remove his F-16 print from CafePress, insisting that the artist should have cleared his project with them first ... the "licensing" fever has reached into all manner of toys, R/C planes, and basically anything that produces a "likeness" of a "real thing".
It's apples and oranges in a way, but maybe NA$CAR fever has reached further into the business world ... try to do a painting or a model kit
or anything NASCAR-related without coughing up major licensing bucks first. You think a B-2 packs a whallop? Wait till you see what NASCAR drops on you if they discover your product for sale on eBay isn't "officially licensed"! You'll then know what "shock and awe" really means!
In that vein, guess how many years it's gonna be before I do an F-16?
Wade