Lego doodles POST THEM

[Zahru II]

I still don't think charging money for MOC instructions is 'ethical'.

Whoa, I missed this the first time around. You don't think this? Why not? Clearly it takes a certain amount of work to come up with a design, and additional work to create instructions for that design, especially for something as complex and difficult as the AC. Why isn't it ethical for someone to attach a dollar value to that work?

Because it's just a MOC at the end of the day. Many people share instructions/how to builds of their MOCs, but they don't ask cash for it, just to give them credit where credit is due if you ape their design. Idunno, it's not necessarily a reasonable argument, and 'ethical' may have been a hyperbole on my part, but still, the idea rubs me the wrong way.

[stubby]

Everything's somebody's MOC at the end of the day, from your toaster to your video games to your college education. Somebody designed it, somebody (or some hundreds of somebodies) put the work into providing it to you. If they provide it to you for free, that's great, but you're not entitled to the fruits of other people's labor. I give you BrikWars for free, for instance, while other game makers charge for their products - does that make them unethical? (Besides Games Workshop, I mean, who are a special case.)

(Footnote: I've argued in the past that giving BrikWars away for free might itself be unethical.)

[Bragallot]

At least you get to troll people.

The more people like me giving away stuff you'd normally have to pay for, the less room there is for the rest of the industry to make a living.

*looks at Games Workshop* Good!

Brikwars isn't exactly free (well, the rulebook is, but that one would be easy enough to reproduce, right?), we're just not paying directly to you. If you put a price on forum membership, it's possible people would just try to find a way around it, and you'd definitely have less members. Maybe we should just all start keeping track of our Brikwars-related expenses and ask Lego to raise your wage accordingly.

[Quantumsurfer]

Good Christ, Mike Rayhawk would instantly be promoted to billionaire and Lego would have to give him a major partnership.

I can't see it as unethical either way. Any time anyone brings anything of significance into the world, it's going to affect people. As its creator, you can't seriously be expected to be able to predict how. Doesn't mean you shouldn't consider it, doesn't mean you shouldn't take responsibility for what you knowingly control. But creators aren't mind readers, nor oracles, and when you produce a generally neutral product (as opposed to, I don't know, a bomb or something) you can't possibly know all its ramifications, even if you've produced a highly similar project in the past. You might have a negative impact on an individual, a culture, or an industry. You have an equal chance to have a positive impact on any of these. So it comes down to preference because you can't please everyone. I know some creators that always expect to be paid and some who believe in the free exchange of ideas for the sake of human growth. I know a lot of creators that do both, saving certain seemingly marketable ideas for future business venture. I support all of the above. I also think that if we're going to consider ethical implications, we need to look just as hard at consumers as we do at creators. We know what we're spending our money on...and what we're not spending it on. We are just as responsible for those decisions.

[Zahru II]

So if I rebuild something via pictures of a MOC, am I infringing 'copyright'?

[stubby]

Legally speaking? Yes you are. It's unlikely that the original creator will do anything to enforce their copyright though, because who cares.

[Zahru II]

Gotcha.

Huh. Suddenly I feel like my creative past time is serious business.

[Bragallot]

And he probably couldn't prove it.

[stubby]

No, he could. There's a whole legal system set up for dealing with copyright claims. All he has to do is prove that the images were somewhere where you might have seen them (i.e., the internet) and then show enough points of similarity that a "normal rational person" would think that your version was a copy. It's tort law, not criminal law; the burden of proof is pretty light. He doesn't have to establish motive or intent or any of that dumb stuff.

[Whiteagle]

No, he could. There's a whole legal system set up for dealing with copyright claims. All he has to do is prove that the images were somewhere where you might have seen them (i.e., the internet) and then show enough points of similarity that a "normal rational person" would think that your version was a copy. It's tort law, not criminal law; the burden of proof is pretty light. He doesn't have to establish motive or intent or any of that dumb stuff.

Of course this is implying one can copyright the numerous different combinations of a product they don't own...

[Bragallot]

And that the judge would give a shit. If it's an exact copy, then I guess so, if not any proper defense will quickly see it being attributed to 'coincidence', 'logical result considering availability of parts when striving for similar goals' etc. I'm told everything you write and put on the net can be copied easily as long as a few adjustments are made, when it comes to Lego designs, it would suddenly be the other way around? Hmm...

I also believe if you post stuff in certain places, you can't copyright it. Facebook would be one such example.

This is only theoretical though. Personally I never do 100 (or even 70) percent copies (because I think it's kinda lame and takes away the fun), I do look at people's MOCs to get inspired.

[stubby]

Guys. This is part of my job. Trust me on this. Any time you create any identifiably original and unique expression of anything, you have inherent copyright, whether it's a recording, text, an image, a model, whatever. The reason most people don't enforce their copyrights on everything is because it's expensive and a pain in the ass to hire lawyers and file civil suits, and most stuff just doesn't matter enough to anybody to be worth the bother. But that doesn't mean they don't have the right to.

Of course you can copyright objects made with someone else's products, otherwise you couldn't copyright software or paintings or printed text or anything else. When you write a program with C++ you don't get a copyright on C++, you get a copyright on the program. When you make a painting you don't get a copyright on the paint, you get a copyright on the image you made with it.

And it doesn't matter whether the judge gives a shit or not. It only matters whether the copyright owner gives enough of a shit to keep paying the lawyers to bring his case to trial. Do you think judges or lawyers give a shit about 99% of the cases they're involved in? Of course not.

[IVhorseman]

I don't like the cyclops all that much. His head seems too big for his body and I can't find a use for him elsewhere.

Aww man, I gave this guy space pants and use him as an alien thug. Sometimes he sticks on my Space Orc army.

[IVhorseman]

I can do graphic design well enough to trick laymen, but I'm lucky to be blessed with frequent opportunities to hear how cringe-worthy my designs and layouts look by professional standards.

I can't do layout, book design, or editing at a professional level, so I'll need to bring in help on those; more money out of pocket.

Wait a minute, this is the kind of crap that I've been going to school specifically for and have already had hammered into me for a few years. Give me a few more years to become less of a noob, but if you ever went full-steam ahead with a Brikwars book, I'd love to help out. Brikwars has been something that's taught me more about good game design and how to fuck over your friends than really anything else, so something like this would be a labor of love.

Seriously though, once I start getting my wheels in motion with technical writing (the writing and layout of instruction manuals), this is exactly the kind of thing I'd love to do professionally.

[Bragallot]

That's exactly what I was doing (well, save for the space pants). He isn't getting a fancy weapon though.

As for the copyright, unless it's blatantly obvious I think the judge will usually decide against anyone trying to copyright a Lego design because if I were a judge, I wouldn't want to encourage law suits being made over irrelevant shit, and I wouldn't want to deny an entire generation and everyone past that point the 'right' to come up with the same design by themselves (which, with Lego, is very well possible because of the amount of people building and the limited amount of parts / options).

Take my rifle design:



What are the odds of someone, at some point, putting exactly the same parts together? I'd say it's possible.

As the defendant, I would probably be able to find a similar, older design than his, of a person who isn't making trouble over it, thus refuting his point that he was 'first'. It doesn't even matter if he was aware of it, since he 'could be'. Otherwise you could bring copyright down to the smallest portion of your design ('I'm the first guy to flip visors around on helmets!'). Moving myself to the position of the judge, I'd be thinking 'Is this what it's come to? I studied for this? Let's put a stop to this by denying this guy's claim.' I'm not saying these laws don't exist, I'm saying 'he'd have a very hard time to prove it'. Just look at how much trouble even actual companies have to prove something when it's a clear steal: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/07 ... s-20120907