Offbrand bricks are just fine. The reason I picked the Lego name is because everyone knows it. So no worries! If you want to make a specific community for offbrand bricks, I'd be glad to pin it!
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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I think this was the right call, discoverability is just so much better than any recombination of "interlocking building bricks" or something. "Lego" is very close to being a generic category name anyway, in my opinion. As long as the community is as small over here as it is right now, splintering it even further wouldn't be a wise move, I think.
Offbrand bricks are just fine. The reason I picked the Lego name is because everyone knows it.
Would be great, if you could write this in the rules-box.
That's a good decision I think. Calling it lego because it's the most famous brand, but allowing anything that's compatible.
Not sure if this is going to be an issue in future, but there are also building blocks that use a non compatible system like nanoblocks. At some point you might have to decide if those are acceptable too!
I dunno, why does everyone blow their nose on a kleenex?
Lego is eponymous for plastic building blocks. If you call the forum anything else, you aren't going to be recognizable and easy to find.
I mean, hell, there's people that don't even know there's actual brands other than lego at all
That's a problem in some ways. Lego alternatives are legal and simply competing products. Continuing to equal a whole product category to one brand is not helpful. It might have been a colloquial decision and be fine like you suggested. Unfortunately, Lego takes legal action against such attempts.
I understand the intentional misnaming of competitor products as Legos (not "Lego" mind you) in this incident, but the lawyers advocated for a video takedown. And I feel this community could be threatened by this as well. https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/held-der-steine-lego-abmahnung-gattungsbegriff-markenrecht/ Unfortunately it is in German, but it continues a very detailed lawyer's perspective of what happened there.
Lego alternatives are legal and simply competing products.
Well, not all of them are. Some are just blatant rip-offs and copyright violations.
On reddit, there's the r/lepin community for other lego "clones", someone will make such a community on here too probably
This is lego, because people want to discuss the lego company and product from them!
Also, there is no rule about posting non-lego product on this community (that may change maybe?)
Makes sense. The Reddit Lego community is pretty active, so keeping it focused helps. That said, I appreciate the openness here for other block brand posts for the time being.
When a lepin community (or anything else regarding other bricks) join Lemmy, i'll be sure to join them, other bricks manufacturer are cheaper and has way more diversity!
Honestly I don't see the need to have multiple communities for the same hobby. We're all adults here, people shouldn't care what name is stamped on your plastic building brick system. Needless division only works to make us smaller on arbitrary lines.
If only everyone else thought the same way...
why focus just on this company for a brick building community?
i mean, because it is !lego, rather than !brickbuilding
i dont see why competing products or alternatives should be discussed at length in a community that is about lego
Why are you opposed to offbrand bricks? The way I look at it the patents are expired and the purpose of patents is to enable a short term monopoly to create a profit motive for innovation. But after the patents expire then the invention belongs to everyone to build upon.
I dislike 1:1 copies of Lego sets. But copying the bricks is fine with me- and actually a good thing long term I think.
1:1 copies are not fine by me, because it is just straight up product piracy. Very hard so have sympathy for that.
Yeah, I agree. Maybe you misread my comment?
I meant it in an affirming way it would be cool to ban them from the community.
Although I am opposed to offbrand and custom bricks, it may help to jumpstart the community’s growth if we begin by allowing them for the time being. There is not currently a rule in this community that addresses offbrands. I think for legal reasons r/Lego did have to specify in their description that they are not affiliated with Lego™️ the company, so this community’s mod(s) may want to add that.
Why are you opposed to offbrand bricks? The way look at it the patents are expired and the purpose of patents is to enable a short term monopoly to create a profit motive for innovation. But after the patents expire then the invention belongs to everyone to build upon.
I dislike 1:1 copies of Lego sets. But copying the bricks is fine with me- and actually a good thing long term I think.
Great summary of the Constitution's IP clause.
Patens are expired, bricks are fair game to copy.
Sets designs and appearance are copyrighted so for sure copies of sets is piracy.
I prefer only Lego brand bricks. Sometimes I buy bulk bricks for my son at a local used Lego store and there are always a few off brand bricks. I usually remove them and throw them out. They don't go together as well sometimes, and all the time the colors aren't quite right. Even if the color does match, the color fades a little and always fades differently on off brand bricks. Just prefer the real thing.
The used Lego store has used bricks in bulks for $6 a pound, and you can pick and choose what pieces you want. For three bucks you can get half a pound of rare, genuine bricks, if you know what you're looking for. Great value.
To me, especially when it comes to MOCs, it’s like an art form to work within the limitations of what the branded medium provides, or with digital MOCs, what the branded medium could hypothetically provide. Using offbrand or custom pieces to embellish a LEGO structure feel like “cheating” in a way to me, both in the artistic aspect and the engineering aspect. I’m fine if people want to make communities for Megablox for example, or communities for any or all building blocks brands (excepting ones which support plagiarists like Lepin), but a forum for a branded item/medium should be almost entirely built with brand. There’s also what’s called a generic trademark, wherein a mainstay brand’s name becomes a common term for a type of product (ex. “Kleenex” in lieu of “tissue”), that I’d want to avoid since it makes it harder for clear communication among hobbyists and worse for the brand (and in this one case, I generally do like the brand).
As a MOC builder, it doesn't matter to me what brand I use. I look at it as an art form as well, with the blocks being my medium. What's important is the final product, not what it's made with. Nobody cares whether Van Gogh used Faber-Castell paints or whatever.
When using non-lego pieces, I restrict myself to pieces that lego themselves also design, so I avoid specialised pieces. I think we both agree that using pieces that exist outside of lego's library of parts is "cheating" in a way.
But then again, lego themselves are making a lot of new parts which are made of other parts... Funnily enough, some of the new parts they're making, I could have sworn they were made by megabloks many years ago :) but that's a different rant for another time.
Oh, you are opposed to offbrand bricks being discussed in the Lego community. Not just like opposed in general. I agree honestly. And I understand your position now :)
opposed to offbrand bricks being discussed in the Lego community
Yes, except if it’s in reference to LEGO™️ content (ex. “LEGO should make a piece like this Megablox piece”, or “LEGO‘s print quality is so much better than [offbrand competitor]”)
Not just like opposed in general
I’m opposed in general in the sense that I don’t buy them but if someone wants to buy Megablox or another legitimate competitor, I’m fine with that. Like you, I am opposed in general to plagiarist brands.
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