What happened to Brickfilms.com?

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

After years of not going to Brickfilms.com, I noticed some of the movies that were there before are now gone. Is this because of Youtube? What has happened? The site seems to have "shrunk", so to speak.

[Darkdragon]

It died when some major players left. Apparently the new big site for brick film is bricksinmotion. I have not joined the new site yet.

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

It died when some major players left. Apparently the new big site for brick film is bricksinmotion. I have not joined the new site yet.

So, they left for bricksinmotion? It's a pity... Brickfilmks used to be great.

[fallentomato]

There used to be a very lengthy (but very thorough) explanation of the tragic events leading up to the great migration of the community from one site to another. That webpage no longer seems to exist but here's a summary from what I remember.

One of the key issues here is that the term "brickfilms" is trademarked. It used to be owned by Joshua Leasure who ran the site in his free time and was an active member of the community. Running the site (and paying for it) got to be too much of a burden for Josh and it was sold to Adirondack Manufacturing Corporation who planned to run it as part of a network of education websites. The new owners had no prior connection to the brickfilming community and there was a lot of misunderstanding on both sides over what the change in ownership would mean for the site. The brickfilms community leader and guy who was actually doing the hard work of administering the site, Jonathan Schlaepfer, rebelled against the new owners and set up a rival site which is now Bricks in Motion. He has since resigned, but Philip Heinrich has done an excellent job of running things since then. The community mostly migrated to Bricks In Motion and BrickFilms.com has been in its death throes ever since.

It's unfortunate that the name BrickFilms is legally locked up, since it is widely used to describe LEGO animations.

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

There used to be a very lengthy (but very thorough) explanation of the tragic events leading up to the great migration of the community from one site to another. That webpage no longer seems to exist but here's a summary from what I remember.

One of the key issues here is that the term "brickfilms" is trademarked. It used to be owned by Joshua Leasure who ran the site in his free time and was an active member of the community. Running the site (and paying for it) got to be too much of a burden for Josh and it was sold to Adirondack Manufacturing Corporation who planned to run it as part of a network of education websites. The new owners had no prior connection to the brickfilming community and there was a lot of misunderstanding on both sides over what the change in ownership would mean for the site. The brickfilms community leader and guy who was actually doing the hard work of administering the site, Jonathan Schlaepfer, rebelled against the new owners and set up a rival site which is now Bricks in Motion. He has since resigned, but Philip Heinrich has done an excellent job of running things since then. The community mostly migrated to Bricks In Motion and BrickFilms.com has been in its death throes ever since.

It's unfortunate that the name BrickFilms is legally locked up, since it is widely used to describe LEGO animations.

That is an interesting explanation. I guess I'll just start visiting Bricks in Motion then. On another note, and this is completely unrelated to the topic, but we also lost recently promobricks.com