Griffworks said:Look at them and hug them and stroke them and name them "George"....
Gotta love those obscure Warner Bros quotes...
Look, Borg... Master Replicas sold a model of the 1701 for a couple of grand... and sold 'em out. And that, also, is a "copy of something someone else has done."
Go into most homes, and you'll find pictures on the walls. MOST of us don't have original Rembrandts on our walls, though. Most of us have reproductions of some original artwork. And ya know what? We usually PAID for those.
Mr. Schmidt here has been doing this sorta work for years. I first read his name in a pretty damned snazzy square-bound book, a couple of decades ago. I've got several published works with his name on 'em, though not yet any of these new series of prints.
This is the "Trek Tech" forum. As a general rule, then, you'd ASSUME that anyone coming in here, to read or to post, would have an interest in Star Trek technology, wouldn'cha?
People who have that particular interest... which qualifies, bluntly stated, as a small subgroup of an already small subgroup (hardcore Trek fans)... that pretty much is everyone here, except apparently you.
I have a HUGE stack of blueprints, all of which I have paid for, dating from the mid-1970s. I have a couple of shelves on a bookshelf full of various trek-tech-related books and manuals and so forth.
Why? BECAUSE I ENJOY THIS STUFF. I know perfectly well that it's all make-believe. But it's certainly no more weird than feeling a deep personal attachment to your city's football or basketball stars... the reality is that both are entirely trivial, both are entirely designed for entertainment, and both are related to people or things that don't give a rats ass if you or I personally live or die beyond today. In one case, because the people and things don't even exists... in the other, because they have many things that matter to them more than whether or not you do anything other than buy their branded products and throw your money at 'em.
I'd have to say that David Schmidt's work on these is significant more valuable to me, personally, than, say, the efforts of the Cleveland Browns... I'll get more enjoyment out of reading and studying his work than I will out of watching a ballgame, and it'll cost me less! Oh, and it also involves me using my brain, as opposed to sitting on the couch with a beer and a bag of cheetos... turning slowly into a potato.
I'm curious, Borg... do you think that he just scanned and is reprinting the full deckplans that Paramount Pictures creates for every ship design that they do for every Star Trek show? Or do you recognize that the creation of this work, from scratch, and the level of thought and effort that goes into making the existing physical sets fit into the existing model (which often do NOT match properly!) and then to flesh out the entire rest of the ship layout... stuff that was never seen on-screen in most cases... do you actually think that this qualifies as "no work" on his part?
Or are you just trying to argue in favor of him donating his work to you so you can download it for free?
I'm honestly not following what your complaint here is.