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AmperZand

Giving credit where credit is due... or not

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In another forum here at EB, it was suggested that by posting an idea or picture that you were implicitly giving anyone seeing it free reign to copy it without giving you credit. Do you agree or disagree with the assumption? If you copy someone's idea, should you give credit? Or is it the case that there's nothing new under the LEGO sun and therefore nobody is really creating anything anyway?

In the incident leading to the above, I wasn't the person copied. I had copied an idea but gave credit. Turns out that the person I credited thought they were the first to come up with the idea, but wasn't. So I innocently credited the wrong person.

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I think it is polite to give credit or perhaps more accurately state where you saw this used which inspired you to do the same. You didn't see whoever first came up with it and even if the moc you saw had credited the original that still wouldn't have been the moc that inspired you, the new one would have been!

D

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So I often take inspiration from other builders. If you look at my own posts here, I have done an ED-209, while most of the design was taken from someone elses MOC, there are traces of my own designs in there too. Now in this case I did not credit the builders whose model i'd seen orignally, considering I'd seen dozens of ED-209's and that all were similar, but different. This is what I see across the board, when I see someone copy a MOC, they almost always improve something, or leave something out they dont have or replace components with parts they do have, or whatever. I don't think any builder can claim any kind of ownership over any kind of lego systyem connection or series of connections, up to and including MOC's. If I happen to make something while in communication with other builders, using their input, then I may credit them casually as in like "hey so and so helped inspire me." If anyone ever made money off of something I designed, now that would be another story, but since there are few people outside of lego themselves who make money selling original concepts in lego, its not something I'm too worried about.

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I don't necessarily know where I got all of the ideas I use. My building has been influenced by many things. Sometimes I think that some Lego sets that have come out in the last 15 years have used ideas that I thought I originated. But many ideas originate from multiple sources independently.

However, if I use an idea that is especially creative (or brilliant) and I know its origin (or even where I got it), I should credit it.

I thought I invented some of the common SNOT techniques, before it was even an acronym. But I am certain that many others did the same thing.

I had no idea that some of my common building techniques were considered "illegal" by some purists, until I read an article by one of these purists. Some of the reasons for these connections being "illegal" I agreed with, but not all of them. (A few of these supposedly "illegal" techniques can be spoted in the Fire Station MOC I posted in another thread).

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Idk, this issue of credit is one that i simultaneously feel strongly for in certain cases, but most of the time it just irritates the hell out of me. Mainly because some builders (without pointing the finger at any one group, but you know they are out there) get hung up on specific techniques to the exclusion of just about every element and principle of design you could think of. Composition? What's that. Use of unexpected colour and texture? Who needs that when you have an awesum!! technique that no-one has seen before, something that you can put your great dirty mark all over and demand recognition for. :ugh:

Every now and then though, it has to be said that there are builders who come along with genuine game changers, ppl like Katie Walker for instance with her mosaics, or Luke Watkins (Derfel Cadarn) with his exhaustive guide to building a medieval village. These builders really do advance the knowledge and skills of others in concrete ways, and should be credited for that. Certainly if i see a technique that allows me to do something that i couldn't see a way to do before, i will credit if i use or adapt it. But those circumstances are generally the exception rather than the rule.

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^That's a good point. If you would have/could have come up with the technique before ever seeing it in someone else's MOC, then is credit really due? Yes, you happened to witness it before you yourself built it, but you could have very well came to that same conclusion independently. The downside are the builders who think they are better than they are so assume they would have come up with that technique, but in reality had no idea how to construct it...

Overall, I would try to give credit where it is due. Usually just saying I was inspired by this builder or that builder. But ultimately most of my builds haven't incorporated anything from anyone else (from what I've seen) and I haven't posted too many MOCs on here yet, so again, not a problem.

But I agree that most people improve/change their MOCs in the end, even if they do happen to use one technique from someone else that they didn't create "first."

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If I am directly drawing inspiration from another builder's MOC, I'll tell you. If I'm drawing from their style (i.e. "What would Peter Morris build?"), I'll credit it if I think the design lives up to their example. More often that not, though, I'll use System sets as inspiration. I've had a few people contact me privately insisting I credit their NPUs or Minifig combos, but most of the time they are builders I am not familiar with. So that gets a little weird.

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I've had a few people contact me privately insisting I credit their NPUs or Minifig combos, but most of the time they are builders I am not familiar with.

I don't get it. Are your MOCs costing those people lost income or something?

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I don't get it. Are your MOCs costing those people lost income or something?

Most of them are young and convinced that with the right attention, they could be the next "Big Thing". So they usually try to get as much exposure as possible, without any real regard to how they may come off to the person they are requesting it from.

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