What would your reaction be?

[Hod Carrier]

I was just recently having a little browse through the Stud.io Gallery on Bricklink to see some of the wonderful models that are being shared there. I find it a very interesting way to pass an afternoon and have bought a few excellent MOCs for my own pleasure from this source. 

As I was scrolling down I found a model that looked extremely familiar which instantly arrested my attention. It was a model of something that I had also designed and built a year ago and shared here and on my Flickr pages, so I thought I'd have a quick look and see how it compared to mine. The more I looked the more I could see where this model was not merely similar to my own but actually identical. From a cosmetic perspective at least, this model is a copy of my own with the author effectively reverse-engineering it from the photos I'd shared. That said, he hasn't done an especially good job of it as his model appears to use rather a lot of rare and/or non-existent parts which renders it effectively unbuildable. It also appears that it's being offered free, so there is no financial benefit to this chap from copying my design.

My initial reaction was indignation that I'd been ripped off. But then I reflected on it a bit and came to the conclusion that I'd freely shared my own model and that perhaps imitation is the best form of flattery, as the saying goes. I know that I've copied techniques I've seen used elsewhere, but generally I always give credit to the source so that it's clear where it came from. I'm also happy to share freely with anyone who asks and have sent copies of LDD files and other designs to various people within the community. As a consequence I no longer feel especially aggrieved, although a feeling of injury remains.

Given the extent of the commonality between his model and mine, would it be unreasonable to ask that he at least credits me as the original designer? What experiences have other designers had with having their MOCs copied?

[Captain Dee]

It sounds like you've been ripped off regardless of whether or not money was involved. You said "I've copied techniques" but realistically we all have. That's how we improve as builders. What you're describing sounds more like plagiarism. Ethically, it's probably wrong if it's a close copy without any reference to the original. With individual techniques, there's not nearly as great a need for that acknowledgement; in fact, it can be quite difficult to remember who pioneered what, and besides, a technique is just one small part of what makes a full build anyway. People who get upset that others don't give them credit for a technique are often attention seekers anyway. But when you've put the effort into making a full build only to have someone make a close copy and pass it off as their own without proper recognition, your work is basically being stolen.

[Trekkie99]

If the dude can't give credit to the original builder then he probably doesn't have his priorities straight. Simple as that. The only other possibility I could think of is maybe he found your model but not the creator associated with it.

[MAB]

I believe you can contact BL and show them proof and ask for it to be removed if it is a direct or very similar copy. However, if it is a similar concept but not actually the same, then they might not remove it. You say that it is both "actually identical" but also that they have "used rather a lot of rare and/or non-existent parts". Are these just colour changes or different parts? 

[Hod Carrier]

13 hours ago, Captain Dee said:

It sounds like you've been ripped off regardless of whether or not money was involved. You said "I've copied techniques" but realistically we all have. That's how we improve as builders. What you're describing sounds more like plagiarism. Ethically, it's probably wrong if it's a close copy without any reference to the original. With individual techniques, there's not nearly as great a need for that acknowledgement; in fact, it can be quite difficult to remember who pioneered what, and besides, a technique is just one small part of what makes a full build anyway. People who get upset that others don't give them credit for a technique are often attention seekers anyway. But when you've put the effort into making a full build only to have someone make a close copy and pass it off as their own without proper recognition, your work is basically being stolen.

You're right. It's a question of trying to strike a balance between using a technique pioneered by someone else and just blatantly copying another person's homework. I just wasn't sure precisely where along that continuum this might be.

9 hours ago, Trekkie99 said:

If the dude can't give credit to the original builder then he probably doesn't have his priorities straight. Simple as that. The only other possibility I could think of is maybe he found your model but not the creator associated with it.

I'm not sure that would be likely, as the only places I've published it are here and on Flickr. I suppose it's possible that someone else is hosting some of my photos elsewhere without giving credit, but every reference I've seen for this MOC should bring them straight back to the source.

2 hours ago, MAB said:

I believe you can contact BL and show them proof and ask for it to be removed if it is a direct or very similar copy. However, if it is a similar concept but not actually the same, then they might not remove it. You say that it is both "actually identical" but also that they have "used rather a lot of rare and/or non-existent parts". Are these just colour changes or different parts? 

It looks as though it's been reverse-engineered from photos which means that structurally there will be some differences between the two models, although cosmetically they are virtually identical. I was careful when designing this MOC to make sure that it would be buildable which meant careful consideration of parts usage. This other designer has been less careful which means that his parts selection is more problematic.

Thanks for the pointers so far. I just wasn't sure what the appropriate response to this situation might be, so I wanted to take the temperature of the community before deciding what action (if any) would be appropriate to take, as I didn't want to be coming down heavy on someone if it's not warranted. I think I'll just send the guy a friendly message through BL first and ask if he wouldn't mind taking his model down voluntarily and then see where we go.

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, Hod Carrier said:

I think I'll just send the guy a friendly message through BL first and ask if he wouldn't mind taking his model down voluntarily and then see where we go.

I have a slightly different take on that: When I share something in the "open space", I'd rather love to see people copying it. That's the entire purpose for me: Sharing, so others can build and change what they want. When someone actually takes the elaborate way of producing instructions - even better!

There is only one thing I like to see: "Original model" or "model inspired" or whatever and then the name, nickname or any other piece of information about the original builder that can be found. If that is not the case, I don't care either, but that's entirely my own take. Maybe I got used to it when putting lectures online (university cloud, pwd protected) just to find them in other places as well. But hey: The kids apparently liked it, so I am delighted see my word spreading. It's PChem though and only a totally unimportant fraction of Earth's population will ever read it even pwd unprotected .

Even when people make money with selling instructions - well - I would ask them not to take any money and maybe add a reference to the original builder.

This is what I would do in your place now. Not necessarily having her or him putting it down. But add your reference.

But again: Just my very personal take.

All the best,
Thorsten

[Mylenium]

19 hours ago, Hod Carrier said:

Given the extent of the commonality between his model and mine, would it be unreasonable to ask that he at least credits me as the original designer?

At best it would be a matter of formal politeness, but otherwise I don't see how you can have any claims in this, let alone legally enforce it. UK copyright law is way too broad and unspecific and the burden of proof is on you, after all. And if it's a non-UK person it would be even more pointless, considering the differences in legislation in different countries. That's also why a complaint with Bricklink is probably all kinds of trouble and not worth it...

Mylenium

[Erik Leppen]

I 'd say: assume ignorance, not malice. So, you could send a polite message stating you're flattered by the similarities' but would like a little thank-you notice in the form of a credit or even a link.

If there's actual bad will, it will show soon enough.

Not that it matters much though. In my opinion, the internet is basically the wild-west as far as copyright laws are concerned. So my advice would be, enjoy the flattery and move on back to building.

[Hod Carrier]

2 hours ago, Toastie said:

I have a slightly different take on that: When I share something in the "open space", I'd rather love to see people copying it. That's the entire purpose for me: Sharing, so others can build and change what they want. When someone actually takes the elaborate way of producing instructions - even better!

There is only one thing I like to see: "Original model" or "model inspired" or whatever and then the name, nickname or any other piece of information about the original builder that can be found. If that is not the case, I don't care either, but that's entirely my own take. Maybe I got used to it when putting lectures online (university cloud, pwd protected) just to find them in other places as well. But hey: The kids apparently liked it, so I am delighted see my word spreading. It's PChem though and only a totally unimportant fraction of Earth's population will ever read it even pwd unprotected .

Even when people make money with selling instructions - well - I would ask them not to take any money and maybe add a reference to the original builder.

This is what I would do in your place now. Not necessarily having her or him putting it down. But add your reference.

But again: Just my very personal take.

All the best,
Thorsten

I always appreciate your views on things, Thorsten. You're a very sage chap.

I'm totally in agreement about credit being given where credit is due. It's something that I try to do at all times whenever I show something I have built to someone else's design, even if I have reverse-engineered it from photographs. Heck, if the guy had contacted me directly saying that he liked my MOC and wanted to build one for himself I would have offered him the LDD file for nowt. If he'd then wanted to display it on the Studio Gallery or elsewhere I would have asked for a credit to be given.

2 hours ago, Mylenium said:

At best it would be a matter of formal politeness, but otherwise I don't see how you can have any claims in this, let alone legally enforce it. UK copyright law is way too broad and unspecific and the burden of proof is on you, after all. And if it's a non-UK person it would be even more pointless, considering the differences in legislation in different countries. That's also why a complaint with Bricklink is probably all kinds of trouble and not worth it...

Mylenium

Yes of course. I am taking the polite friendly route with this because I don't want to try and enforce anything. I'd also be quite happy to reach a negotiated outcome with him that permits him to keep his model online but with an appropriate design credit. However, if it came to it I think I could easily prove plaigiarism to the satisfaction of the BL admin team on the basis of the timeline and degree of commonality alone.

2 minutes ago, Erik Leppen said:

I 'd say: assume ignorance, not malice. So, you could send a polite message stating you're flattered by the similarities' but would like a little thank-you notice in the form of a credit or even a link.

If there's actual bad will, it will show soon enough.

Not that it matters much though. In my opinion, the internet is basically the wild-west as far as copyright laws are concerned. So my advice would be, enjoy the flattery and move on back to building.

And that is the approach I'm taking. I've sent him a polite message and will see what happens next. If nothing else, I can always add my own credit in the comments section below his design. 

[ShaydDeGrai]

On June 26, 2020 at 12:03 PM, Erik Leppen said:

I 'd say: assume ignorance, not malice. So, you could send a polite message stating you're flattered by the similarities' but would like a little thank-you notice in the form of a credit or even a link.

If there's actual bad will, it will show soon enough.

There's a lot to be said for this. ^^  A lot of people just don't get the idea that intellectual property is something to be respected (I used to be a professor and even at the college level I was constantly berating my students over their lack of citations and skimpy bibliographies even when taking direct quotes - as a generational culture they just didn't seem to take such things seriously).  Some people see "their own" contribution as so valuable that it outweighs any attribution to original sources (but if I offer the best kazoo rendering of the theme to Star Wars you've ever heard it doesn't change the fact that John Williams wrote it, I just played it) Still others can't even identify the original source because reposting on social media has destroyed the pedigree (I'm not on Twitter, but I once had a friend forward me a picture of a cool MOC he'd found and thought I'd like, and it turned out to be one of my own from Brickshelf years earlier.)

Of course sometimes, it's just coincidence.  If I make a model of the Flying Scotsman (a famous train), the scale of the model is dictated by the size of the wheels, the color scheme and overall shape are fixed which limits the parts I can use (if a real world build) so if my model looks a lot like someone else's it could just mean that we're both really good builders using the same (limited) parts to render the same subject.  

That argument falls apart however if the subject is more subjective.  I designed Lego Ornithopters from the _book_ Dune (by Frank Herbert - got to get that citation in there ) that looked entirely unlike their design from either the David Lynch film or the Sci-Fi mini-series, so when I found photos of my MOCs (taken at BrickFair) on someone else's blog where the author was talking about "his" design and how he'd be making the plans available for sale "soon" (which I interpreted as, "he hasn't figured out some of the SNOT yet")  I was less than kind when he claimed it was just a coincidence that "his" ships looked so much like mine. After several less than polite exchanges he finally admitted that he was using the photo as "inspiration" for his _original_ design (which "would be better" than mine, because, apparently, mine was just barely worth stealing in the first place) moreover, he hadn't even personally taken the photo of my MOCs that he was using on his blog (he'd grabbed it from a random Flickr Stream of someone who'd actually gone to the show).  Finally I stopped trying to reason with him and just started leaving public comments on his blog pointing to original sources.  A week later the entire posting was gone and I never heard from him again.  I hadn't thought too much about that incident until reading the OP here, I don't like wasting headspace on that sort of petty behavior.

As others have said, I, too, like it when my creations inspire someone else to tackle the same subject matter and add their own twist on it (lord knows TLG itself has cooked up enough variations on SnowSpeeders and AT-ATs over the years...)  For a while, I was having a fun little contest with someone building Architecture-style versions of Helm's Deep from the Lord Of The Rings (I built one, he saw it and made his own improvements, I saw what he did and rebuilt parts of mine, he then offered his own rebuttal to my innovations, etc.)  It was fun, we both finished with better models than we'd started out with.  It's a nice way to build community, pick up new techniques and discover cool, nice parts usages.  

In my experience, most people are in it for the fun and that's what makes the few who aren't stand out so much as personal horror stories. So I'd say give the guy the benefit of the doubt until its obvious where he's coming from, then in the words of the great Maya Angelou, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

[Hod Carrier]

Just to update the story.

As I hinted above, I did drop the guy a message through Bricklink to point out the level of commonality between his model and mine but the message was ignored, so I added a comment below the model to give my own attribution including links in the hope that it would perhaps get his attention. For a while this was enough, but even this was ignored.

In the end it still wouldn't sit right with me. The situation was more akin to the Dune Ornithopter than the Architecture style Helms Deep from @ShaydDeGrai's experiences in that the design was more straight copy (even if badly done) than "inspired by", although without the dialogue, polite or otherwise. So I reported it to Bricklink and a few days later both the design and the member were gone.

I'm only offering this account to show that while IP on the internet can be a thorny topic this shouldn't stop us from calling-out folk if you feel that they have effectively stolen a design. The Bricklink complaint process was easy and I wasn't required to provide any additional information or justifications beyond the links to photographic evidence that proved the timeline that I'd included in my original complaint. I hadn't expected the member to have been deleted, just the design, but that must have been due to Bricklink's own policies and the terms of membership.

[ArneNielsen]

I can fully understand how you feel, and I am glad that you finally got the issue solved.

Back in 2003 I posted a MOC on LugNet and other sites. The MOC used brown shovels as roof:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=611693

In 2018 LEGO made the Ninjago City Docks, and when i built that, I discovered the same use of (black) shovels as roof:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=70657-1&name=Ninjago City Docks&category=[The LEGO Ninjago Movie]#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

This is a technique, not a full model like yours, but I still had that nagging FEELING, that it was not fair.

Of course I did nothing about it, becuse ideas are not intellectual property, but the feeling - that lingers on...!

 

[koalayummies]

7 hours ago, ArneNielsen said:

I can fully understand how you feel, and I am glad that you finally got the issue solved.

Back in 2003 I posted a MOC on LugNet and other sites. The MOC used brown shovels as roof:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=611693

In 2018 LEGO made the Ninjago City Docks, and when i built that, I discovered the same use of (black) shovels as roof:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=70657-1&name=Ninjago City Docks&category=[The LEGO Ninjago Movie]#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

This is a technique, not a full model like yours, but I still had that nagging FEELING, that it was not fair.

Of course I did nothing about it, becuse ideas are not intellectual property, but the feeling - that lingers on...!

 

There was discussion about a couple of techniques used in the official modular buildings with some suspecting that the Lego designers "copied" the MOCers (Parisian Restaurant and Downtown Diner). One of the more well known designers actually responded here on EB. The fact is its entirely possible for two people to come up with a connection or technique or idea or concept entirely independent of one another and at different times. It's happened to Jamie, its surely happened to others. I have come up with a connection I hadn't seen done before, held off on it for the right application only to see it show up on a building techniques flickr group a couple of weeks later.

Who came up with it first? Does it matter? Is the one that photographically publishes it first the creator or the one who physically snapped the pieces together the first or the one who actually conceptualized the connection first? Should MOCers just spam every possible technique in hopes of compiling the largest library of 'first connection' creative "licenses"? What if neither one of us actually snapped those pieces together in that combination first and it was instead designers at Lego since they designed the pieces and had access to them first?

With a full build its pretty straightforward but with a unique connection how does one keep track? And does one cite the original creator in every build that it is implemented? Do we track down the first to do every connection and permalink to the first documented instance?

[Toastie]

14 hours ago, Hod Carrier said:

The Bricklink complaint process was easy and I wasn't required to provide any additional information or justifications beyond the links to photographic evidence that proved the timeline that I'd included in my original complaint.

This may have also been propelled by the fact that TLG is now owner of BL - and has a good number of lawyers pushing buttons, folks haven't even seen before.

Best,
Thorsten