Comments on: Never insult a centaur… or a big blue troll, for that matter

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:46:11 +0000

^ Agreed — that’s what I do myself. I’m currently working on the editorial carterbaldwin suggested, and I’ve run into dozens and dozens of popular LEGO photos re-hosted on Flickr. For my own photos I found, I left a comment saying that it was my photo, and suggested faving my photo (with a link) instead of copying it without permission. The “Done” in this comment is a nice result of that.

I’m sure the same thing happens throughout the rest of the ‘net. It used to be that sites like Gizmodo were terrible about proper attribution, but I’ve seen them improve dramatically over the last two years or so. Now they at least link to a LEGO fan site like ours, where we do link to the builder’s home page, gallery, etc.

This is a great discussion. Feel free to add more thoughts, everyone — it helps me a lot with the editorial.

By: eti

eti — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:29:31 +0000

If somebody posts your picture (whether it be Lego or any other photo or video) on their Flickr photostream, the best thing to do is politely asking to take it down because it is not theirs. If they don’t do this, you can always report abuse and the Flickr team will take care of it.

I agree in some cases it’s plagiarism, in other cases it’s plain dumbness – don’t assume the worst, ask friendly first…

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:01:22 +0000

What’s so frustrating about the phenomenon on Flickr is that there’s a perfectly nice way of “collecting” all your favorite pictures on Flickr: Fave it!

I agree — most people are probably just being stupid, rather than malicious

@talltim: Definitely blogworthy, but we generally try to feature newer stuff, and from the context of the rest (posted in 2006), I think they’re pretty old.

By: Will Thomas

Will Thomas — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:16:18 +0000

@ Ochre and Nolnet: it’s common place on MOCpages…I’ve reported more “members” than I can count.

By: talltim

talltim — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:29:12 +0000

If the MOCs were worth posting, perhaps you could repost them as Micahs?

By: Herman

Herman — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:57:30 +0000

I’ve never posted any creations, but I’m working on it. Here’s what I would do:
- Keep the original, full resolution pictures to yourself.
- Post smaller versions and put in a watermark that clearly states who created the pics.

If ever someone cuts off your watermark and posts the pics as if they were his/hers, you can always send one of the originals to prove the creation is yours.

I don’t see the point of stealing other people’s creations. I take a lot of inspiration from others, and definitely will use building techniques I’ve seen on other work. The fun is in the building itself not in taking credit for it.

Although I do think some people will find cool stuff and forget to mention they didn’t create it themselves.

By: jpmanalo

jpmanalo — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:32:24 +0000

I believe another plagiarism-related issue is the one related to those who create a MOC, but for some reason or another don’t ‘publish’ any pictures of their MOC on the Internet, and lose the credit for their work when someone else ‘publishes’ pictures of the MOC, and takes the credit for it.
There may have probably been a couple of minor (and, likely, unreported) cases of this nature occur, but to paraphrase Ochre Jelly, “Whatchagonnado?”

By: Nolnet

Nolnet — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:49:16 +0000

^ Shit, that would’ve never occured for me, but I just found one of my pics on flickr as well, after a minute of search. Apparently you just have to search for the most stupit or obvious title under which people would post your pic.

By: Ochre Jelly

Ochre Jelly — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:12:35 +0000

Yeah, a lot of Flickr users seem to regard Flickr as just “a place to post stuff they found on the internet”. I just did a search on Flickr for one of my creations and found pictures of it on at least a dozen photostreams. That’s the great unwashed for ya. Whatchagonnado?

By: Motor.On

Motor.On — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:07:46 +0000

I haven’t followed the online community for long enough to know if there’s been a rise in plagiarism or not, but I agree that an article on it would be interesting.

Also, I wonder how much is true plagiarism versus putting pictures in your photostream for easy access. This obviously was plagiarism, as there were no citations or such, but how many “plagiarists” are just too lazy/stupid to create bookmarks/contacts, and just copy & paste? Basically, how much is malicious versus how much is stupidity?

By: carterbaldwin

carterbaldwin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:29:34 +0000

No harm no foul. I wouldn’t mind seeing an in-depth article on the recent rise in Lego plagiarism from TBB.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:59:22 +0000

Crap. Well, in Pete’s and my defense, it’s been nearly three years since we’ve featured Micah’s creatures, so I didn’t re-review all of them before blogging these. :-(

Unfaved, unblogged, and blocked for good measure.

By: Legoloverman

Legoloverman — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:39:10 +0000

Oh dear…

By: Monkfish44

Monkfish44 — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:33:50 +0000

Yeah, these are definitely Micah’s.

By: carterbaldwin

carterbaldwin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:06:06 +0000

Yeah, pretty sure that he just reposted Berger’s stuff.