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Topic: Life-size "Custom" Super Hero Statues from the Philippines Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Dave Aikins
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Joined: 31 July 2007
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Posted: 17 April 2011 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

The statues are not immune to any legal issues, but the seller's location is everything in avoiding a lawsuit.
However, it would be very easy to get ebay to shut down the auctions.
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Marc M. Woolman
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Posted: 18 April 2011 at 11:05am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Are these statues legal to buy? Are they authorized from Disney, Warner Brothers, et all? If not, how is this any different a transaction than illegal downloading?
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Brad Krawchuk
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Posted: 18 April 2011 at 11:11am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

I'm wondering the same thing myself - although many action-figure related sites have forums and such you can buy customs from, and ebay has a ton of them. I imagine this would be similar to that, and since those aren't being taken off ebay...
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 18 April 2011 at 11:35am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I would think that one-off statues would fall in the same gray area as commissioned drawings. The artist seems to be producing multiples of these, however.
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Robert White
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Posted: 18 April 2011 at 11:49am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

If he's producing multiples then it's not a one-off situation. This is clearly illegal and is only being protected by the fact that he lives in another country. I love the statues, but this is as blatant as it gets. I am surprised at how few have said a thing about this on this thread, but jump all over pirated digital comics. 
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Brad Krawchuk
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Posted: 18 April 2011 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I have two ideas. 

One, he's producing multiples, but he's still doing each one individually. Like if JB drew 10 commissions of Captain America all in the same pose, it would still be okay because even though it's the same pose, they're not prints. Every one would still be an original. 

Two, it's totally illegal and he's just not been caught yet. The thing is, the country of origin thing doesn't seem like it would be a defense if he's sending the items to other places; it seems to me at the very least WB, Disney, etc would be able to restrict him from shipping to the U.S. They may not be able to prosecute him where he is (I don't know) but if he's shipping them internationally then I think he'd be opening himself up to international prosecution.  
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