Plagiarism. The scourge of universities and LEGO-sharing websites alike. Now at The Lego Car Blog we are a fairly liberal bunch. Sharing ideas, content and techniques is all part of the joy of building, and is pretty much how the internet operates in almost every community, be it film, music, news or bricks. After all, almost everything we post here is an image taken by someone else that we’ve used without prior consent in order to publicize their creation.

However, there has been a growing trend of picture theft and re-post amongst the Lego community, with the thieves pretending the stolen creations are in fact their own. This is often in an attempt to win a contest, gain popularity, or just common-or-garden trolling.

In reaction to this Brick Busters was born; a forum where the ‘swipers’ as they are known, can be published and action taken to remove the stolen images and/or ban the thief. The Brick Busters team do a fantastic job and have halted the theft of countless MOCs on Flickr, MOCpages, Brickshelf and others.

So how can you help in the fight against plagiarism online?

Join the Brick Busters group, either on Flickr or MOCpages. The more eyes they have, the more effective they can be.

…And what not to do:

Steal someone else’s MOC (obviously!), but also use or directly copy an original idea or technique without giving credit to its original inventor. By the same token though; don’t go too far the other way and claim everything you make is an original masterpiece – our favourite attempt to claim credit was someone thinking they had invented ‘4-wide’ cars. ‘Delusional’ doesn’t even come close!

Brick Busters; from all at The Lego Car Blog – Keep Bustin’ : )