Lord Admiral

Thanks for the clarification, brickmania, and thanks for not taking my comments the wrong way. The affairs on Lego Universe are troubling enough as it were, but I would expect community members and fans of MOCs to behave better. It's not surprising on a certain level, but it is disappointing that while everybody shares the same enjoyment of building with Lego bricks, the same can't be said when it comes to having respect for others' works. Best of luck with stamping out these bootleggers. I suspect though, now that you've let out the word, that they're not going to have much business.

120 SGD is 80 USD, and to be honest, it looks like TLG is going to slot it in as the $80 set, at least in the US. In a word: overpriced. For $80, the least they could do is print the bricks. Now, if it were $60, it'd be worth a second glance. If it were $50, I'd be more inclined. But I haven't bought the Flying Wing set because of the decals and the ridiculous single-piece wing, so I still might not get this one regardless. I like the fact that there aren't too many specialty pieces, and I like the exploding wings, though I think they'll wear the relevant bricks out unnecessarily, and I also like Henry. But I'm otherwise left unimpressed by the set, and if I have to think hard about it at $30 less than what it's probably going to sell for, it's not a good sign.

I sympathize with your situation. It is unfortunate that people are buying from these 3rd or 4th parties, rather than you. It seems from what you've said that you are encountering people who've purchased your product and are trying to resell it again. You can stop reading and ignore everything below if this isn't the case. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, just an avid collector of "intellectual property" information, but even if I was, actions aren't absolutely legal or illegal until a court of law says they are on a case-by-case basis, so don't take anything I say to be legal advice or to be binding. The thing is, people are selling Lego instructions on Bricklink, sometimes not even the original but a scanned version, and people are likewise selling used Lego sets. Not only does TLG not care to question such actions, but there is legal precedent to allow it. There is such a thing as doctrine of first sale, which states that if somebody's purchased a set from you, they are also allowed to resell it. They aren't allowed to make copies or to sell those copies, but they are allowed to sell the items they've purchased from you, or comparable replacements (if their original CD is lost or unreadable, they are allowed to make copies for backup purposes, and subsequently to sell it once--provided they destroy or include in the sale all of the other backup copies). There is also Peeron, whose service of providing set inventories and instruction scans through PICSL is a complete violation of copyright, and LDraw, whose models of certain pieces fall into a gray area of copyright and/or patent law. However, I believe TLG is not suing these services into oblivion because they provide value to fans of Lego, and would garner the ill will of fans everywhere if they did so. I'd like to clarify that I'm not in support of the guy who buys your kit, and makes copies of your instructions and resells it. That's not only against the law, but I find such actions to be morally reprehensible. I also would never condone buying your kits, and creating and subsequently selling models from your instructions. That's probably legal or situated squarely in a gray area, but not morally acceptable. However, what I'm saying is that once the kit and instructions leave your hands, you no longer have a say in what happens to those items. You can appeal to the community to purchase only from you (which may work, and which it seems you are doing), you can ask others nicely to not resell the kits once they've purchased it from you and refuse to continue to sell to known offenders (though that actually is not legal in all juristictions, so ask a lawyer!), you can put copyright control on your CD's (DRM), and you can support laws that change copyright to the point where you are in control of that which you're selling after you've sold it. Of course, again, this cuts both ways. If you want laws that allow you to control your creative works after sale, then you'll probably have to pay TLG for anything you sell, as will everybody else on Bricklink. This will probably drive you out of business quite quickly. My humble advice, if you will hear it, is to pay attention to the market. If the market demands for instructions, I would advise that you sell instructions separate from the kits. Perhaps put in added-value items, such as putting the instructions on paper in a book, or offer decals with the instructions or whatnot. I'd suggest you start with the kits you've discontinued and are still in demand, but such business decisions are up to you. But you cannot force the market to go whatever way you decide, because in the end, people are under no obligation to buy, and despite all of the recent BS about "too big to fail," no business, however honorable or amazing or fair or righteous or whatnot, is entitled to succeed.

Never had a misprint (and those marble bricks look really cool), but I did receive a second bag that contained armor, sheilds, spears, and some other pieces in 8877 Valdek's Dark Fortress. IMHO, one of the few respectable sets in the KKII line, BTW (made only better by having paid only half MSRP for the set), but that's neither here nor there. I'm still not sure what I want to do with the extra pieces. Right now, I have the armor on top of spikes (spears) set high on the fortress, in the way that cities might put heads on a spike as a deterrent. The rest I've bagged up. I'm waiting for the pieces in the bag to reach critical mass when I can build something with them. I'm not sure I'd like misprints. They may be of no consequence (e.g. if the minifig has a dual head, and only one side is messed up), but I can see how they'd be annoying, as in this case. But those marble bricks...here's hoping TLG doesn't throw them out but would opt to sell them as a novelty item instead. I'd love to pick some up just to have around.

With the release of Space Police III, which is nothing like the first two incarnations, I curious to know what people here prefer, generic minifigures or named minifigures. Generic doesn't necessarily mean the lack of details, but just the lack of a presumed identity. To specify, a city minifigure would be generic, one that can be anyone. Castle minifigs are also generic (and this is true of the current line, but inaccurate when speaking of the KKII line). Sets like Agents, Power Miners, and the new Space Police III have named minifigures. Licensed sets fall somewhere in between. Clone/Stormtroopers are generic, but Luke Skywalker and Batman are named. Edit: I'm so busy trying to define what generic is, I forgot to include my own thoughts. :p As I might've stated before, I'm a big fan of generic minifigures (who would've guessed, right). I don't mind named minifigs in licensed themes, but I abhor them in the regular sets. I find that the more personality they have, the more creatively restrictive they are. This is particularly true for villians, oddly enough, while the heroes tend to be a little more generic, and I can more easily ignore the pre-imagined aspects. I definitely ignore minifigure identities in a MOC, but I don't do that much anymore.

[rant] Evil! This is probably the most evil Lego piece in circulation, more evil than this or this. And I won't even mention the open-center Technic pieces, as evil as those are. It mascarades as a Technic piece, except if you think about it, it really isn't suitable for use in a Technic context. The only piece other than itself it'll actually connect to is this, which makes its side-element (the two holes) next to useless. Instead, it's just a piece to snap together two unconnected sections, so in fact, it's actually a System piece. [/rant] Anyway, for those looking for male-male and female-female bricks, those are it. I highly doubt TLG will release plates though, which is what I think the most clamor is for.

Actually, I'm rather bummed that sets like 7682 Shanghai Chase have a single piece as the vehicle cabin. These are wholly unnecessary molds that could be replaced by four or five smaller pieces. I'm pretty disappointed that the vehicles no longer have doors too, and what doors exist are not real door pieces, but hacks. Maybe there should be a thread on what pieces TLG should stop producing and using in their sets, or a thread on what pieces should be replaced. The piece wishlist on flickr is interesting, but I find many of the pieces to be wholly superfluous. There are a few gems in there, like the corner windscreen, some of the slopes and wedges (concave and convex), the arches (though I think they should be half-arches), and maybe a few of the 1x1 pieces, but the rest can be done with existing pieces. It might not turn out as smooth or as necessarily "good looking," but I don't think the point of building with Lego bricks is to create something as realistic as possible. Personally, I'd like to see certain pieces return into production. The old car doors, the roof hinges (with the sun roof!), etc. are all vastly superior to their contemporaries. As for new parts, I'd probably like to see a 2x2 plate with a hole in the middle. I'd also like to see the top half of the lightsaber, which can be a torch, or used to hold crystals. Just for kicks, I'd like to see a 1x1 dome. But that might be easy to choke on and easy to lose. Oh, and for the record, I'm completely against male-male and female-female bricks. I also feel it's cheating.

At least there are new PM sets for this round of releases. The pirates line has nothing new except the advent calendar, and that's a seasonal set for late '09. Pirates also came out at the same time as PM, and with significantly more fanfare, but I think PM has more sets at the moment. And two of the pirates sets are impulses. I have to wonder if people are hesitant to drop so much money on a completely new line. But then again, it has to be doing better than expected, if TLG's releasing a new $100 set just one round of releases later. It might just be the people here, who skew old school.

The kraken is usually said to be a giant octopus. The two sets appear to be the same on the surface, but the subtle details make them quite different. Firstly, the Playmobil raft has a sail and a treasure chest, while the Lego set is just a mast, some rigging, and the crow's nest. And, if the Lego set were scaled to match the Playmobil set, the raft would be around four times bigger. It's interesting to note that while the pirates in the Lego set have probably lost their treasure, and are floating on the remainders of their ship after its destruction at the tentacles of the kraken, the Playmobil pirates more likely came from an island or some other dry area (the sails have to be relatively dry, or the mast won't hold the weight), building their raft with flotsam and driftwood or salvaged parts from their ship. Maybe they're stealing the treasure from their captain and the rest of the crew. On the other hand, the Lego captain likely is no more.

Hahahaha, ok, that was pretty funny. Loved the bit in space, especially the explosion. Hilarious, and only slightly disturbing when the pirate appeared. I don't know where all the hate is coming from. It's a well-done parody of the GGW ads that appear on late night TV. Just remember that these are minifigures! If you're feeling uncomfortable watching this, well, it's time to consider a lifestyle change.

I'm not into army building either. I don't have the room or the patience to work with so many minifigs, especially of the same or similar build. I enjoy the kind of diversity in my minifig collection that is incompatible with the mindset of army building. There are cost concerns with building an army itself, but I'd also rather spend the money getting other sets than getting the same set over and over just for the minifigs. While minifigs are awesome in their own right, I like building sets, and derive the most enjoyment out of building sets. That having been said, I also don't like named figures. I like my minifigs to be a little more generic. One-face-fits-all is probably a little too generic, but perhaps having a few faces for police, a few faces for firemen, etc. would be ideal. But the minifigs lacking specific personages I'd imagine would make army building easier, which I'm all for as well. Anyway, no, I don't army build for various reasons, though it wouldn't be an unpleasant surprise if I somehow ended up with an army through buying a lot of sets.

WTH, I though TLG was de-emphasizing licensing. Ben 10 probably isn't and shouldn't be at the top of their list of licenses to pick up. Disney is a strategic decision, with Toy Story 3 likely being a way for both sides to get what they want (Disney/Pixar to get Lego blocks into their movie, and vice versa, TLG to create Toy Story-based sets), but what does Ben 10 offer? As for Galidor, well, let's just say, Allegra was supposed to be 14, but the girl playing her was 19. Apparently, Hollywood types haven't realized that casting overaged teenagers as underaged teenagers just doesn't work. Granted, it's probably easier to cast, but easy and worthwhile are incompatible.

I think it's fairly straightforward to design sets from even the original Toy Story line, and Toy Story 2 has even more set possibilities. It'd be interesting to see what TLG decided to do with the scale though, as there's both toy scale, and human scale in the premise of the movie. Toy Story has the gas station, the crane at Pizza Planet, the truck scene, Andy's bedroom, and Sid's bedroom among others. Toy Story 2 has several other scenes, the toy store, stinky pete's bedroom, the elevator, etc. And, not only do we not know what Toy Story 3 will bring to the table, but it's always possible to build sets unrelated to the movies using just the Toy Story characters. For example, Buzz's spaceship, or a RC jeep, etc. For minifigures, it's fairly easy to do cowboys, astronauts, and animals like pigs, horses, and dinosaurs. Slinky is also do-able, but the toy soldiers might be difficult, and Mr. Potato head is Hasbro's product and Etch A Sketch the Ohio Art Company's so those aren't going to be feasible. Perhaps the toys in Sid's room will be featured too. Toy Story 2 also has Zurg, the Darth Vader parody. Again, who knows what Toy Story 3 will have. Perhaps it'll feature minifigures, in which case TLG has sets right there.

Yeah, this kind of stuff happens to me a lot. If it isn't me dropping it personally because I have butterfingers, there's always somebody else nice enough to come along and knock it onto the floor in passing or whatnot. To be honest, until the model gets integrated into a diorama in a display somewhere, it's never a dull moment. And even then, taking models out for cleaning or rearrangement means reintroducing them to the many dangers of the open space. The better-built sets come out mostly intact, depending on their orientation when landing. Most vehicles make it out with nary a scratch or dent. But more detailed models with lots of fluff tend to lose extremeties. The really fragile sets have a tendency to explode all over the floor, which really upsets me.

Using the king's torso as a city minifigure is absolutely hilarious. All that gold suddenly becomes bling. Your review is very thorough, but I still don't like the set. In particular, I agree with some of your design concerns, including the two flag poles on the side. Surely, as a battle chariot, you'd want to be able to cut from all 360 degrees of the vehicle. I think a black one stud 2x1 plate would be better at holding the flags than the brown sloped wall bricks. Maybe give the king a shield, or have some shields along the sides of the chariot. I also agree with the lack of something to secure the chest in the back. A hinge plate or a plate attached to hinges would've been perfect (and you can unload from there too), but I guess TLG has something against hinge pieces these days. I believe people enter chariots from an open back, so the lack of another door doesn't bother me. Neither does the open back, if the treasure chest wasn't present. But it does seem quite disingenuous to place the treasure chest not only where it'll fall out, but where it's so easily stolen!

I'm torn about this set. On one hand, I really want to like it. On the other, it doesn't look amazing enough to be worth $35. I'm not disappointed by the vehicle, but perhaps that's because I don't really have a clear impression of it. It looks nice from the front, actually, but the rear seems a little neglected. It does look taller than wide, which means it might be a bit top heavy. In fact, the picture of the rear makes it seems like the vehicle is leaning to the right due to the net launcher. The coffee machine inside the vehicle is neat though. I'm a fan of little details like that. Oh, and don't take this the wrong way, but you might want to consider using natural light instead of flash for future pictures of Lego. Or, if you can, point the flash upwards. The bricks reflect the light of the flash a little too well, washing out the colors and giving off a strong glare down the middle of the picture.

"Legos" is definitely what everybody calls building blocks, whether they're actually made of Lego bricks or not. There's probably a way for TLG to capitalize on this mindshare, though I would be careful, as MB has the home court advantage in North America. Yeah, the theme has changed, with the emphasis now on models made with beams. They had a few models back then too, but made of bricks and with pneumatics and other advanced pieces. These seem to be tamer versions, without a lot of the more advanced elements Technic sets once had. Which is great if that's what sells Technic, but I'm not really interested in them. I just want a bunch of gears, axles, and bricks and plates with holes in them. Beams are OK too, but there's place for those, and it's not in lieu of bricks. I might spring for the models to get the more specialized parts, as well as the power functions elements once I can get a decent collection of gears, axles, and technic bricks going again, but that's dependent on what I'd want to build.

If there was a set with just the bus, I'd consider getting it. As a whole, this set isn't terribly appealing for me. The gratuitous use of decals really bothers me. And while the retro feel of the bike shop and pizza place is nice, the rest of the set just isn't enough to make up for that failing. I like the lamposts and the hydrant (upon which I've previously commented), but the bus stop really should have a real bench, or none at all. Instead, it seems like that red piece is just sticking out to take up space. Oh, and from the photos, it looks like the sloped 2x4 bricks used for the roof are smooth while the 2x1 bricks are not. It really wouldn't have hurt to make things a little more consistent. To be fair, this is a pet peeve, but failure to get these little things down really takes a lot out of my enjoyment of the set. Even a shoddily designed set or poor building methods doesn't bother me as much as the little things like making the roof tiles consistent.

I picked this set up recently, and just got around to opening it. I'm not going to go into a full blown review, as that's already been done, but I will point out a bit of what I like and dislike about this set. Obviously, I like the minifigures, and dislike the decals. Actually, I wasn't thinking about decals when I bought it, and I think things turned out OK in the end despite the lapse in judgment. Despite having decals for the road signs (which is an automatic -1 in my book regardless of how their purpose), I think this is a really, really nice little set. I'm a big fan of concise design, and this set defines concise. In fact, I'd say this is what three and a half impulse sets should look like, instead of the sorry excuse for city impulse sets that exist now. Actually, the only impulse sets I dislike are the fireman and policeman. The others I like. But I digress. The set really does show what can be made from a few simple pieces in the hands of a talented builder. That no special pieces were used for the bench, the hydrant, the traffic signal, and the ghetto blaster is particularly telling. And cool enough is that these were done largely to scale. Granted, the ghetto blaster really should have used 2 1x1 tiles with a printed square pattern on each to make it to scale, but that's just nitpicking. The bench does a great job of bringing out the true potential of hinge pieces. They could've gone with decals for the traffic signal, but chose instead to build it out of bricks. I'm very glad they did it that way. Using decals is a cop out, and I'm glad they didn't for the traffic lights. The street signs are superfluous, decals or not; those elements I really could do without. The handtruck and crate as well, though I would've loved to have had built one from various little pieces instead of having one big special piece. Both handtruck and crate add a little extra umph to the set, but this set really has plenty to it as it were. Hence the superfluous designation for the street signs, which are even less relevant. Instead, I think a tree and/or some bushes in place of the signs would've been perfect. I also would've liked to have seen a second traffic signal of a different design. Perhaps one that's suspended between two poles, or is somehow otherwise hanging. The latter is not a realistic request BTW, though the former suggestion is sincere. All in all, I'm glad I picked it up. It's not incredibly detailed, it doesn't have amazing special pieces, and it's not complicated to build at all. And at first glance, it doesn't really have much play value (and maybe alone, it really doesn't). But building the well-designed elements certainly excites me. And fooling around with the ghetto blaster is--no pun intended--a blast. And that's all I'm really looking for these days.

In general, different segments of the market do not overlap. For example, toys do not compete with groceries, as the budget for groceries is separate from the budget for toys. Granted, when money is tight, the money for entertainment goes by the wayside while money for essentials like food, clothing, and shelter remain the same. At best, you can say that toys fall under the entertainment umbrella which is as diverse as from movies to travel to big-ticket electronics. But only toys for teenagers and adults belong there, and believe it or not, that's a very niche market. Otherwise, toys targeted for children are a separate category altogether. Kids' entertainment typically have a separate budget, or rather, have a separate allocation in their parents' budget. One can go as far as to say that toys compete with childrens' television, but childrens' TV is free for the most part (or included in the cable package), and TV and toys don't necessarily compete for the attention either, so only in very specific instances does a toy compete with television. Construction toys and puzzles, I believe, are among those that are most likely to complement television, as it's not hard to have the television on and tuned to a favorite show while putting the pieces together. Anyhow, the general rule of thumb is that the competition of the biggest fish in the little sea is probably found in the big sea. Lego is a dominant brand in construction toys, so it's actual competition is one category higher, i.e. toys for school-aged and preteen boys. If the Lego brand ends up dominating that market, then its competition will be toys for boys from 6 to 18 or something of that sort. In fact, TLG moved into the teenage and adult market with Mindstorms. As for Technic, I do mean the Universal set when I say freestyle, but freestyle also includes other sets not restricted by any models, like the Basic sets. Technic fell out of favor as my interests turned towards minifigures and the visually richer models of Legoland. I never liked the Technic models, or the large figures that came with them. They looked too much like crash test dummies, which sort of freaked me out, since that was also the time of the crash test dummies commercials. That, and the battery pack required 3 C sized batteries, which meant it was extremely bulky and a bit expensive to operate. The last Technic models I built were all hand-powered, which wasn't too bad. I eventually lost too many parts, and since they discontinued the freestyle Technic sets, there was no way to buy a large amount of varied Technic pieces in one go. Besides which, my interests were firmly in Legoland by then, and there wasn't any going back. I dabbled with Mindstorms and the original NXT brick for a bit. I couldn't get back into it though, as Technic building requires a slightly different mindset than System building. And the API was pretty bad at the time, so the NXT brick was largely ineffective as a recreational pursuit to me.

I would say that Lego's competition is the entire toy market, not just the construction toy market. Construction toys competes against action figures, card games, car and train models, and video games. The construction toy market has to compete with all of these other distractions, and the individual companies have to compete within that. Back in the late 80's, toy companies were creating television cartoons to sell their toys. Incidentally, I consider that period of time the golden age of both. While Lego producst has a huge share of the US construction toy market, perhaps even the largest piece of the pie, the construction toy market is a very small part of the overall toy market, and hence Lego products actually only have a very small slice when seen in that light. Of course, looking at it as the glass being half full, it just means TLG has plenty of growth opportunities here, because while kids in the US perhaps don't buy a lot of LEGO sets per capita compared to kids in certain other countries, they do buy a lot of toys in general. I'm pretty sure children in other continents have far fewer toys, and I'd like to think they are more selective about each purchase. The high import tariffs of US goods and high quality control standards means that even cheapo toys in the US end up costing comparable to LEGO sets. Thus, most of the throwaway toys simply can't compete with the higher quality stuff, and don't even try. This, I think is what TLG means by higher competition in the US. I don't think MB's presence is relevant to TLG's performance in the market. MB is targeting a segment that TLG is completely ignoring: the lower cost, lower quality portion that TLG refuses to enter (and thankfully so, I would say). There's a market for cheap construction sets, but I think people who gravitate towards these purchases as toys tend to put more value in quality. I guess young kids couldn't always be bothered to discriminate between Lego and MegaBloks. But I think as they grow older, they will start to pay attention to the differences, and that's when quality (piece quality as well as set quality) will start to matter. Personally, I'm currently a big fan of minifigures and building System models and have been for many years, but what cemented Lego as the construction toy of my choice was actually the two or three freestyle Technic sets I owned. While I was building and playing with Legoland sets concurrently, Technic offered something no other construction toy brand could (K'nex and Erector were close, but not perfect), which produced my brand loyalty to Lego. Ironically, I won't touch Technic anymore (I absolutely loathe Bionicle, though that's because of the crass commercialism that TLG subjects the line to), though I still have a soft spot for Technic pieces in the System sets. I haven't seen any competition to Technic, though to be fair, I haven't seen any competition even from TLG to the freestyle Technic sets offered back in the day.

Yeah, that's the brand! Last time I saw a set by them many years ago, it was in Toys R Us of all places. I was drawing on very old and dusty memories, so forgive me if it's a little imperfect. I also had some Tyco Superblocks. I wasn't terribly crazy about their big-to-small converter brick, but they were decent on the whole. I never got into their models though.

Back in the 90's, there was also a knockoff brand sold in the US called COCO. Their quality was vastly inferior, but their branding, design, and even their figure pieces looked very similar to LEGO minifigures and pieces. Last I heard about them a few years back, they got sued by TLG into oblivion. They probably still manufacture and sell in areas where bootlegging run rampant. But I haven't seen anything by them for at least a decade, if not longer.

While I'm not a fan of schadenfreude, one part of the article did pique my interest. Mega has the licenses to Iron Man and Transformers, and have no products for them. I know TLG recently said they wanted to de-emphasize the licensed lines, so I have to wonder whether Mega picked these licenses up because of this, or whether they actually outbid TLG. If it's the latter, I'm not sure why the license holders aren't up in arms, since AFAIK, there aren't any Transformers Megablok toys, and very few Iron Man products. The fact that Disney pulled out is quite telling, but I'm still curious as to why Hasbro and Marvel haven't yet. And well, if they have, this may be a good chance for TLG to pick up some new licenses. I'm not sure if Iron Man would be sufficient to generate a decent product line around, but imagine TLG getting a license to large swaths of the Marvel universe...

I'd say, if there were ever a purpose for having Ambassadors as a liason between the fan community and TLG, making TLG aware of these problems and keeping the community up to date about TLG's responses would be primary. After all, this creates discontent within the MOC community and the rest of the LEGO fan community, and threatens to destroy a foundation built based upon trust--trust that what I say I built was actually built by me. What they need immediately is a "report this" button for people to report these kinds of violations. The system appears to be relatively new, so I'm not surprised they're running into these kinds of problems. However, I think TLG is realizing there is a huge internal conflict of interest. They cannot chastise their fans for bad behavior, especially if these are mostly children, out of fear that by doing so, they will alienate this new generation of LEGO fans. However, if they don't do something to ameliorate this situation, they will alienate MOCcers and most, if not all of the online LEGO fan community. Which is really why a community run by 3rd parties is probably more effective at inhibiting such transgressions than the 1st party. I think their biggest mistake was trying to establish an online community with no regard to or acknowledgement of the existing community. And in fact, there have been cases even within the existing community where people have tried to take credit for creations not their own. What we're seeing here are those sorts of people scrambling to lay claim to things that suddenly belong to no one (at least through TLG's official eyes). In this case, what's being taken is credit for existing MOCs. If TLG had asked the community to help catalogue and attribute all of the existing MOCs prior to a more general release, I'm sure this would not have become an issue. It wouldn't be possible to be 100% thorough. But it'd be a damn good start. But, just opening it up to the public as a clean slate, thinking that the community would then populate it afterwards leads to this kind of behavior. After all, a clean, blank slate or is most easily tarnished, and that's what we're seeing here. Hinckley, I would find an e-mail, a telephone, a contact, or any method of communicating with the people running the site, and report it. In fact, I would seek multiple methods of contact, to the point of annoying them, until you get your desired response. Start small, a polite e-mail, or phone call, or whatnot, and escalate if nothing happens. After all, you are as legit a customer as anybody else, and more so, considering you have displayed evidence countless times that you actually own a LEGO set, while the fraudster has not even done that much. I would have my sources ready: sites with the exact same picture, or sites that feature the same model, the model itself if possible, other members of the community able to vouch for you, etc. In fact, they're soliciting the community for news stories. You may want to write up and submit something about MOCs being plagiarized, with sites, photos, testimony, and any other evidence all nicely summed up. And you should encourage others to check to see if their works are being wrongfully attributed, and do the same. You can even put out a news item asking MOCcers to check this database for their MOCs that they did not submit, and put up a forum or a section called the wall of shame that enumerates all instances of this bad behavior. I'm sure if there are enough disgruntled people knocking on their doors, TLG will have no choice but to respond.