Many of us would be familiar with some of Lockheed Martin’s greatest hits: the F22, the F35, the F117, the Trident missile, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and many other complex and nasty tools of death, defense and destruction. It has just recently come to my attention that Lockheed Martin have been moving to ban 3D artists from producing or sharing models of their aircraft. The image above of the B-24 Liberator is a representation of the 3D model designed by John Macneill, “3D illustrator whose work frequently appears Popular Science and other national magazines” (source). The popular 3D content marketplace TurboSquid has bowed to pressure and removed John Macneill’s Lockheed Martin content from their website.

OK, so you might understand a that if the 3D artist were making detailed models of classified or currently operational military aircraft, there may be some issues. However, this particular aircraft is a World War 2 era machine. The mind boggles.

Lockheed Martin has recruited the DMCA to their cause. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act:

criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself

3D art is not allowed to represent their weapon systems and platforms, even of bygone eras and even the name “Lockheed Martin” or “B-24 Liberator” becomes sacrosanct. Am I the only person that get’s the feeling that some member of the administrative arm of the company formerly known as Lockheed Martin has found themselves with a little too much spare time on their hands ? Perhaps it is an ingenious way to raise revenue through copyright litigation actions. That the arms industry is the largest business in the world is no secret - that they might stoop to such low blows to raise more revenue is astounding.

Ultimately - this company is largely in the business of making weapons and weapons systems. You would imagine that they would use any little chance of a PR opportunity to make themselves seem a little less sinister. On the contrary, historical aircraft are now the property of the company and I can’t wait until they work out a way to come and repossess the memories and recollections of the crews who flew these aircraft.

A photographer can take a photo of any type of car and sell the photo; look at any car magazine. A painter can create a painting of anything and sell that, remember Andy Warhol’s famous 1968 painting of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup? But a CG artist cannot create a sculpture of a Ford Mustang and sell that, at least not on Turbo Squid. There is obviously a double standard here. So where does this leave CG artists? Until a stock company becomes willing to fight back against these takedowns, there seems little any individual artist can do.

(source)

Also see: Electronic Freedom Foundation article on this issue.