27 Feb 11, 06:31AM
Hmm. This model should indeed not carry a logo that is a registered trademark ™ or in any way infer the name of a company that actually exists. At least I highly doubt that the modeler got the permission to use it at this juncture - RK will look into it!
In general you should ALWAYS assume media you "find" is copyrighted. Unless you can find and ask the original author for permission you should never use somebody else's work. The only way they can relieve you of this (oftentimes impossible) task is to bundle their work with an explicit license that grants you rights. This can be anything from putting their work in the public domain or more restrictive licenses that require you to attribute their work (a link to their website, mentioning them "somewhere" or such) or even restrict the license under which your derivative work (if the license allows it!!!) may be published. For example the CC-licenses have a very straight-forward way of categorizing exactly such levels of restriction-and/or-permissions.
Again: if in doubt: assume the most restrictive copyright applies
In general you should ALWAYS assume media you "find" is copyrighted. Unless you can find and ask the original author for permission you should never use somebody else's work. The only way they can relieve you of this (oftentimes impossible) task is to bundle their work with an explicit license that grants you rights. This can be anything from putting their work in the public domain or more restrictive licenses that require you to attribute their work (a link to their website, mentioning them "somewhere" or such) or even restrict the license under which your derivative work (if the license allows it!!!) may be published. For example the CC-licenses have a very straight-forward way of categorizing exactly such levels of restriction-and/or-permissions.
Again: if in doubt: assume the most restrictive copyright applies