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 Administrative / General / 11775
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Subject: 
Re: Are custom made parts LEGO?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general, lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, lugnet.admin.general
Followup-To: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Fri, 30 Jul 2004 14:21:43 GMT
Viewed: 
96 times
  
In lugnet.general, Johannes Koehler wrote:
Hello!


And therefore: Are custom made parts subject of lugnet.general or any respective
theme-newsgroup? Though I do not at all deny the creativity that's put into
custom made pieces I still wonder.

I could take a knife and a piece of wood and carve my own parts that fit to the
LEGO system. Would that be LEGO? Even LEGO-related? Would a wooden ship that I
build and man with Minifigures™ still belong into lugnet.pirate? Would a castle
in LEGO minifig scale but built from real stones still be "LEGO Castle"?

For me the goal is to find building solutions by strictly using pure LEGO parts.
If I took anything else I could as well do modelling with wood or metal or
plastic kits. But maybe that's just me. Yes, I know even the model builders in
the Legolands are using non-LEGO parts... And I myself did that in my sinful
past :-)

However, recently I discover that custom made pieces are more and more flooding
the LEGO community. It's fine with me if people like those parts and use them
with their LEGO. After all it's just a hobby and should be fun, and everybody is
free to do whatever occurs to them. Should there be a newsgroup
lugnet.off-topic.customs, though?

What follows is my opinion, not any sort of Lugnet Admin official stance by any
means...

I think there's a need for a custom parts discussion group but I'm not sure it
belongs under off-topic. You can argue it both ways. This argument has in fact
come up on BrickLink in the past, where custom sets made of LEGO elements are
welcome but major company clone parts and sets are not.

The metric that matters to me is this: where did the parts come from, and what
does LEGO think about them?

For a big company like Ritvik, it's clear, LEGO views them as a competitor and
actively competes against them and takes legal action to suppress their cloning
whenever it sees an opportunity to do so. Hence MB discussion pretty clearly
belongs in off-topic.clone

For small outfits like BBB, I don't think LEGO sees them that way. In fact,
people who work for LEGO, when explicitly asked this question ("what does LEGO
think of BBB wheels?"), have responded (paraphrased) "we see these not as a
threat, but as an enhancement, we're fine with them, they're parts we have
chosen not to make and we're glad they are in existance". That may not be an
Official Pronouncement but it's close.

Hence, I think custom parts discussion belongs in the new group:
"lugnet.parts.custom"

(there have been previous requests for the creation of lugnet.parts, I'm
assuming/hoping those requests will be granted sometime soon but I have no more
info than that)

Until then, it may make sense to discuss them in their theme specific groups as
has happened already with Ben's BBB wheels and Jeff's Little Armory space and
castle stuff.

Hope that helps.

XFUT -->.admin.general because that's in my view the right place to talk about
groups and where stuff ought to go.



Message is in Reply To:
  Are custom made parts LEGO?
 
Hello! And therefore: Are custom made parts subject of lugnet.general or any respective theme-newsgroup? Though I do not at all deny the creativity that's put into custom made pieces I still wonder. I could take a knife and a piece of wood and carve (...) (20 years ago, 30-Jul-04, to lugnet.general, lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands)  

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