Write your congressman!

[Threetoughtrucks]

Aferg is right, you just have to walk thru the border on all crossings except for a few popular crossings.

Last winter my son and his girlfriend spent a snowy holiday in northern Vermont. One day they went snowmobiling and just drove up snow covered roads. At one point they passed a little building that was closed up. A mile further they stopped at a little tavern and found out they were in Canada. After lunch they just rode back. Nobody said BOO to them either way.

I'm glad Canada and us are friends, we are, arn't we?? eh?? We do give work to a whole bunch of Canadian born actors.

TTT

[parrish333]

Ok, not that I wouldn't love to continue the Canada banter but...

I have to play devil's advocate for a sec on this bill.

Take a company like AMC/Hummer --- they've produced thousands of Hummers for the US gov't. But they've also produced thousands of them for the American public. If a 1/18 scale die-cast car company wants to produce a civilian-issue hummer I'm sure they have to get permission from AMC, and that makes sense to most of us. But the second they want to produce a 1/18 military hummer using 90% the same parts, should they not have to get that same permission or pay any kind of royalty/fee? From Hummer's standpoint the US gov't just happens to be one very big customer that buys a lot of their product, but certainly not all of it.

Or even take solely military products like an F-16. The US is far from being the only customer. Those have been sold to many different countries (though with US permission I bet).

This is all just to say that it is not as simple as saying "the American people have already paid for these vehicles in full". Because, in many cases, we haven't. Many of the military models/toys we love have been sold to many other places besides the US gov't, and paid for from many different funds than our tax $$$ alone.

Don't get me wrong, it can only be good for the hobby I love for this bill to go through, and I think there is something to be said for the fact that w/o billions of our tax $$$ many of these things would never have been made in the first place.

I'm just trying to be even-handed

[Threetoughtrucks]

The quote from your last paragraph says it all:

"I think there is something to be said for the fact that w/o billions of our tax $$$ many of these things would never have been made in the first place. "

Without wars, past and present there would have been little R&D to improve weapons. War happened and our tax money was spent to design and produce these weapons. Why should we pay for toys made from the same plans? The same plans we paid for once before.

As to the Hummer, without the interest and publicity of people like ARNOOLD riding around in a Hummer, the market for Hummers might have remained for a small group of off road guys and guys like Malcolm Forbes (riding around in a LM129 with Lizzie Taylor). And by the way, hasen't the H1 Hummer civilian production line just been cancelled due to the gas prices.

TTT

[coreystinson]

This is too little, too late for Lanard Toys who last year lost a lawsuit to whoever owns the rights to the Hummer/Humvee. Lanard had been making that Humvee-like 1:18 scale vehicle for years, but somehow the rights issue got confused and Lanard ended up losing a huge sum of money between legal fees and a judgement against them. Now this. I bet they are shaking their fists in the air.

[aferguson]

Comments from Mike of BBI:

"Hi Andrew,
you best tell your guys it is early days on this yet and while the wording of this bill makes it look promising there is much to consider.
First it would need to be retrospective...that means to cover all previous equipment and not just commencing from now, if that happens there will be a real argument about "already paid fees" being compensated, etc...next and here is the real loophole, the companies don't license the design, it is the "trademark" that forms the license arrangement. So all of this may come to nothing.

Sure this may look promising, but be assured these companies will not give up their income easily and as I have said on so many previous occasions this is a very complex area.

Let's watch it and see...or perhaps "wait and see" "

Edit:

"In fact the wording of the proposed Bill is "any contract entered into or renewed"...so this will not cover World War 2 , etc...only new additions.

Note here the Trademark law is not ammended, so there will still be license fees

http://www.modelaircraft.org/PDF-files/ ... %20_2_.pdf