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Subject: 
is the lego group exploiting its user base?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 15:06:28 GMT
Original-From: 
Chris Stanley <cstanley@usit.STOPSPAMMERSnet>
Viewed: 
910 times
  
when i went to the official mindstorms site to sign up for my personal
section, i paused to read the legalese on the way in.  to my amazement,
i discovered that when you complete the sign-up you are agreeing to give
the lego group complete rights to do anything they want with any ideas,
designs, or programs you post there.  they are effectively taking
possession of anything you post!  now, given that the primary audience
for this site is kids that either won't read the legalese or won't
understand it if they do, it seems to me that the lego group is
massively exploiting their user base.  they have created a user base of
probably tens or hundreds of thousands of kids who are doing free r&d
for them.

a scenario: little johnny comes up with a really clever design and posts
it for his friends to see, and the next thing he knows his design has
been incorporated into the next ris expansion set.  now little johnny is
probably naive enough to just think "hey, that's cool! they liked my
idea!", but the rest of us realize that the lego group has stolen what
is legally his and is profiting from it.

to this point, the lego group has consistently impressed me with the
level of quality in everything they do.  but i think this is a really
bad thing they have done.

what do you think?

--
Chris Stanley
cstanley@usit.net


--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: is the lego group exploiting its user base?
 
(...) I think that you can't make a contract with a child. Cheers, Ben. -- (URL) grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less (...) (26 years ago, 31-Jan-99, to lugnet.robotics)
  Re: is the lego group exploiting its user base?
 
(...) I think that something is going on with LEGO at several levels. You are impressed with the quality of LEGO? Let me show you a true case: In Portugal the CyberMaster CD was not translated to Portuguese like in the other countries of Europe were (...) (26 years ago, 31-Jan-99, to lugnet.robotics)

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