LAST EDITED ON Apr-28-03 AT 03:06 AM (EDT)
I've heard of problems with UP using UP, SP or any of the other roads that UP or SP acquired name or logo because of copyright law concerning company names or logos. I believe UP has overstepped their bounds on this one. To interfere with the artistic expression is against the freedom of speech laws as well as other laws giving artist the right to express themselves and to do what ever pleases them with their art.I have always approached MSTS and what I do in the way of routes, designing or reskinning locos from an artistic vantage point. I have 8 years of college under my belt, 2 ½ years at Yuba College, and 5 ½ years at California State University Chico with two degrees in Fine Art and a year in graduate work. I was going to be an Art Teacher at the Jr. College level.The laws UP is using to create havoc with us are to protect them from someone using their name or logo and damaging their reputation or ability to make money. There is nothing we do in MSTS that will damage their name, reputation, or image, and being they are not in the toy making business nor are they currently producing anything for sale to be used in MSTS we are not infringing upon their ability to make a profit in selling items for use in MSTS. And even if they were, their efforts to stop everyone else would infringe upon the anti-monopoly laws and would violate the fair trade act and fair competition laws.To me, creating a route, redoing a route, reskinning a loco, creating an loco from scratch, or creating static objects for use in MSTS is a form of art and self expression. We are the same as an artist only using the new tools available to us (computer and virtual worlds) to express our artistic talents and needs to create something as influenced by the environment around us. UP doesn’t go after the painter, photographer, or sculpture who capture images of their equipment and put the result on the market or gives it away for free, nor do they go after the historians who write history and school books about their railroads. That would deny those individuals their freedom of speech, freedom to express themselves, and freedom to create art.The railroads put their equipment, name, and logo out there for public exposure in the public domain. They are considered a part of the public transportation system and receives public money to subsidie their operation. In almost all cases it was public moneys that got them started. As such the public interacts with those items, are influenced by those items, and are interested in those items. Thus, those railroad items become part of our environment that we interact with, and are part of our past and of our history. Thus UP cannot interfere with our ability to express our interaction, and love or hate of those items. Therefore, we may photographic, paint, create sculptures of, create models of, and create virtual worlds that contain those items as suits our artistic and creative needs to express our interaction with those items without interference from the real Railroads and their bureaucracy.I may be wrong, I have been know to be wrong before. However, I for one would not worry about making a virtural or real model of any real or fictious railroad route or equipment. You are all artist of the highest caliper who wish to share their creations with the rest of us. And I for one say more power to you and have at it. I doubt that UP or any other railroad will be knocking on your door and any effort on their part to do so would create the worst publicity they ever feared and would defame their name in the public’s eye which they are trying to prevent in the first placae. Thus, keep on creating what ever you wish and what ever railroad you wish.
Happy and Safe Railroading to ya.
Tom (harby46) Harbison
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