Hi Setsuna. I don't want to sound rude, but I just wanted to ask you If you where aware that charging for requests is illegal because it's technically selling copyrighted material that you don't own and you could be arrested and/or sued by a number of people including Namco Bandai, Composers, etc,?
To go into this further, this note is why at conventions you have artists able to offer artwork of copyrighted characters and able to charge for it. (You didn't think paying someone else to draw a picture of Haruka was technically legal from an IP standopoint did you? NBGI didn't grant every fan artist the right to reproduce Haruka on a page.)
From a legal standpoint, you're purchasing the labour costs of making the artwork, not any rights involved in making said artwork.
Before you ask, this has been tested in several countries. The UK, the US, Japan and Australia have successfully had cases where a company challenged this.
In the UK, it ruled completely against them and the appeal was denied by a court. I'm not that familiar with this case, but a friend artist spoke to me of this one, and explained this is why you can conduct the activity in the UK and apparently make a lot of money from it.
The US it was ruled that the person providing the artwork could pass the liability to the person commissioning the artwork, and the subsequent redirected case was ruled against due to the fact that it was constitutionally protected expression. (This one's a bit complicated.)
In Australia, it was ruled too punitive, as it was not considered a commercial quantity against that company, and the other party could not prove any actual damage. The case was dropped simply because it was too expensive because the return would have been 1 dollar (literally) before legal costs, which then would send it negative. (And even if they gained a complete victory and they got legal costs paid for, they'd only get 75% of their legal costs back, as defined by Australian law)
In Japan, the court ruled that you COULD do so, but it then asked the company why it failed to defend their IPs prior to this point. The case was then dropped by the plaintiff.
Does it mean you SHOULD be doing this? Not by the strict letter of the law, but in reality, until you go into commercial quantity (and make so much money that it's actually worth going after), or you commission into a criminal activity (as opposed to a civil breech) you're generally safe.
