As a customizer who's wrestled with the legal, and ethical, aspects of customizing, I'd like to chime in here.
Legally, any of us who have sold/bought unlicensed items is on shaky ground. The process can involve cease and desist letters, but usually, we're making so little money, it makes little sense for the property owners to put their legal team on prosecuting, or even, as I've learned, on legally selling the licenses in the first place! I've written letters and left messages seeking to legally acquire a license, only to not hear any response or be told negotiating with me was not worth their time.
At which point, I was forced to navigate the spirit of the law, if not the law itself. The spirit of the law, of course, is to protect the owner of the license so that I would not be making money that they were entitled to, and were themselves, trying to make. Every bootlegged song, for example, is a bit of money that would otherwise have gone into the rightful music owner's pockets.
But when I contact Universal to inquire about acquiring the license to make/sell 1/6 scale Russell Crowe Gladiator figures, and don't hear anything back, or am told that I'm too small for them to concern themselves with... then it can be argued that my making/selling that figure is not taking money from their income stream as they have chosen not to produce them. In fact, it could even be argued that my activity was stimulating interest in their property, potentially even inducing people to order it on PPV or buying it on DVD again, once they bought my figure... (I've gone back to watch certain horror movies, for example, that I hadn't seen before, because I'd seen some awesome custom figures of characters from those films.) Therefore, I've made/sold Gladiator figures, Marty McFly figures, and others, because there is NO mass-produced/licenses figure available for purchase. I do not make any characters that are already made/licensed/sold in 1:6 form. It's my own personal ethic. It's clearly not a law, but it makes sense to me. I no longer sell my Chris Reeve Superman b/c HT has laid legal claim to that realm and I respect it. And until someone licenses Gladiator or Braveheart, I just might help those who want one acquire one by making them...
Now, if someone else wants to find their niche in this "gray" area, they're welcome to. In fact, I actually really like seeing other artists' renditions of characters I've already made. We're on the same questionable legal ground, and ethically, we've stepped on no ones' toes, nor on each other's.
But if someone sells knock-offs of MY SCULPT, casting them poorly, and selling them at a lower price point to undercut me, I consider that a breach of ethics. (It's also a breach of law of course, but heck, what I was already doing was already a breach, and we all know that already.)
Where I was very careful not to encroach on anyone's income stream (legal or not), they did not exercise the same respect.
I do NOT think it is hypocritical to acknowledge the illegality of it all, yet cry foul when a fellow artist is being ripped off. If you want to make money selling a bootleg sculpt, then sculpt one yourself and sell it and put yourself on equal footing. But to sell recasts of someone else's hard work... that's just not cool.
