BrickLink and CUUSOO Jointly Create a LEGO Publishing Platform

A couple of thoughts:
- If legally stressed, it would turn out very quickly that Cuusoo Brick can't legally publish, much less create a set from (and in extension earn money with) a creation without the permission of its original author.
- Cuusoo Bricks' inability to ever produce official Lego parts in new colours/with new prints should handicap sets published there. On the other hand, Cuusoo Bricks could allow use of non-Lego bricks.
- Ideas published on Cuusoo Bricks won't be automatically banned on LEGO Ideas. That would make it way too easy to shoot down other creators' ideas on LEGO Ideas by publishing them on Cuusoo Bricks. Of course, at some point, Lego Ideas will want exclusive publication rights to the final set.

Interesting.
In many respects, actually. Especially the bit about submitting other people's MOCs. Say, I publish a MOC on rebrickable, with instructions etc., such that it is available to everyone, for free. Then somebody else submits it to this new site and it becomes a commercial product. That quite likely has never been my intention.
So, clearly, somewhere along these lines I should have a right to step in and stop the process. Also, what happens with my IP if I've never been asked to give it up (for a commercial product)?

If it really works this way I find it very strange and dubious from a legal perspective.

lego wants to outsource all set design to the community in the long term,
we will see a lot of basic brick buckets and boxes, and then proper instructions for them on rebrickable from the community.
kids are so easy to put in unpaid work through the internet.
sneaky greedy lego company. not nice

@mxtp - this isn't LEGO's doing...this is a completely separate company trying to sell Lego kits designed by fans.

The original creator has all the rights to pictures of his work, no idea how they can even pretend to do something legal here. If you use those pictures with the obvious intent to make money from it you have to get the rights to publish those pictures. They just grabbed what they could find from the web to make their platform more interesting.

I suspect that once a couple of people who have had their work posted on there by someone else complain they'll change that. They just need to boost the initial projects on the site.

@Huw: Yes, I looked it up by now as well. It very much seems they would contact you before turning it into a 'proper' set. And they obviously would have to.

I would still argue that this is too late. While they provide a link to where they've 'found' the image(s) of the MOCs (again, something they absolutely have to do), I'd say they would need to notify the original creator that their MOC has been (proposed to be) put up on this CUSOO page, with an option for the creator to withdraw it. At least. Actually I'd say they would need to wait for the creator to give consent before publishing it at all...

Presumably, at least one BrickLink seller has to pull all the parts together and make them available via the MOC shop interface. With some MOCs, it might be impossible to assemble all the pieces, due to rare/expensive/impossible parts.

When I say impossible, I am thinking of cut pieces, custom stickers, or clone brand parts.
I wonder what happens about instructions? Will the MOCs come with them? If so, who will make them?

I wasn't aware that Cuusoo was an entity separate from Lego.

Seems kinda weird... It's a cheap knockoff of Ideas, with pirated projects from MOCers all over the Internet. To boot, almost all of the projects were submitted by the site creator, and contain only a few pics, an explanation of CUUSOO Bricks, and the phrase "I found this on the internet... I hope to buy it..." in bad English. Granted, the site's brand-new, and he's just kickstarting it, but this almost seems like a scam in the making.

Don't think I'll be joining the site as of now.

@lego613master, why would a former TLG marketing executive be joining another company just to scam people? You seem to just lump all the yet-to-be-proven negative points and make your own conclusion.

I say give them some time to sort out the grey areas, and then we'll see.

I wish BrickLink would sort out their atrocious site design rather than concentrating on these new strings to their bow.

^ No kidding...
This seems interesting, I'm curious to see how popular it will be.

^^Totally Agree...

It seems as though Bricklink is trying to fix their sinking ship by adding more sails and not repairing the hull. I could really care less about their MOC shop and would much rather see work expedited on the site design and selling operations. I mean, would it even be worth it for sellers to carry these items? The extra time and effort that would have to go into gathering the pieces and making the instructions would outweigh the benefits of eventually selling the set. Cool idea, but NOT for Bricklink at this point in time. If their site was up to date, then I would say, go for it, but they shouldn't be creating new roads for their hapless site to drive...

Besides that, the site won't even show me any projects, just that spinning wheel of insanity...

Glad that you published this article Huw. I stumbled across this site yesterday as sometimes I click on the old Cuusoo link in my favorites when logging into LEGO Ideas, and this really threw me for a loop.

I wonder what TLG thinks about this (not just the concept, but using the domain name for their old site - or is it a redirect?).

Personally, I'd be wary of posting something there that you already have on LEGO Ideas.

I'm pretty sure most people who buy on Bricklink are either MOCers who need individual pieces for their projects or collectors who wouldn't care about fan-made models. This seems to be targeted more at the general Think Geek crowd who just wanna own a cool custom Lego model. But builders like Chris McVeigh already have their own sites for that, while others like Tyler Clites just take commissions. I don't see why they would move over to something that seems so suspicious when they can manage everything themselves and not have to deal with a third party.

Interesting - I just clicked on my old saved LEGO Cuusoo link, which yesterday took me to this new site, but today it takes me to LEGO Ideas.

In my opinion most of the models in BrickLink's MOC shop are much too expensive--I'd much rather buy instructions directly from the designer at a reasonable price and source the bricks myself. Lego Ideas sets are reasonably priced and beautifully packaged--not at all sure how this alternative would look. And the idea of scavenging models from all over the internet makes me very unhappy. No one should be allowed to propose someone else's model!

I have what could properly be called "mixed feelings" about this.

On the one hand, I think it can provide several positive features that Ideas couldn't - namely, producing sets based on IPs that LEGO does not/is not able to produce(or at least the Lawyer-Friendly style that Minifigs Me has used on several occasions). Also, CUUSOO as a brand is at least seems to be better targeted to a potential customer base than Bricklink's Moc shop was. Also, it may give a small financial hand to talented, albeit broke MOCers(I myself am thinking of submitting a refined version of my Loadlifter Mech).

But, as others have pointed out, there are several overall problems with the site. Although "Users submitting MOCs they like" may at first seem like a good idea, there are many, many ways this could fail. A creator does not want his MOC used in such a capacity, or a digital MOC might depend on non-existant part color variations. Or, where a MOC like, say, a full-scale Firefly, isn't feasible because it's a full-scale(too many parts!).

Possibly the biggest danger is one that no one seems to have pointed out yet - the clause in the original Ideas contract about LEGO having a degree of copyright control over all submitted ideas. This could backfire in a number of ways, especially if users can submit ideas they do not own. Even if they had nothing to do with the clause being broken, a situation where a user submitted there idea like that could end up with the creator of the clause-covered project in unpleasantly warm water.

Never-the-less, after considering all of this, I do think that there are high possibilities for this site, IF certain simple rules are followed, and I encourage other MOCcers to go and submit any ideas you think might be appreciated.

Ok this is weird.
I have extensive experience with both old Lego CUUSOO and with Ideas for any critics.
1 If someone else (not the creator) publishes an Ideas project on Cuusoo Brick, Lego could remove it from ideas for attempted commercialization.
2 if the creator submits it on their own to Cuusoo brick and ideas Lego SHOULD remove it.
3 They need to tell people they can't use LDD extended for the lack of being unable to recolor.
4 This goes beyond marketplace and Lego is probably pissed.
5 The creator of the Piano became an official staff. Not smart man.
6 100 is way too low. They'll have achieved projects up to their ears with the heavy promotion they've got going.
This does seem interesting for old color models though.

It'd be nice to have a place for MOCs to go which fail Ideas review or don't quite make the 10,000 votes, but I'm not sure I have any faith it'll work. Wasn't BrickLink already beta testing a sort of Ideas-alternative? Has that been merged into this, or are they just scattering seed to the wind and seeing if anything takes root?

If you post an MOC to the internet then anybody is free to use that design without compensation or permission. Your ownership extends only to the original image.

@Greendude: I would argue that this is only partly true. If people re-create your moc, because you made the instructions available, they create a private copy, something that could have never been prevented with any kind of copyright law and probably was your intention in the first place. If, however, someone is trying to gain profits by using you creation, he/she still needs your agreement as an author. I don't see why this wouldn't apply to a creation in LEGO bricks.