UPDATED 3/1, 9:43 PM–A request to the hit and runners. By that I mean the people who swing by for the express purpose of hurling blame, invoking Gail Simone, calling me names and departing. You might want to consider taking the time to read the thread. Read it in its entirety, read the most recent posts, whatever. The chances are you will already see your comments responded to (since the H&Rs are pretty much all saying the same thing) by myself, various fans, and Gail. Honestly, I don’t expect this message to have much impact on the H&Rs, but I figure it’s worth a shot.
Did you ever hear of Scans Daily?
I had not.
Kathleen informs me that it began as a site on Live Journal where individual scenes from comic books were put up and commented upon. Apparently, this included certain panels from “Young Justice” to which homoerotic subtext was ascribed. It’s a shame I never had a chance to see those. That would have been funny.
But somewhere along the way, it morphed into posters giving page by page summaries of new comics, complete with the entire pages. Writing a critical review and posting up a panel or a page to illustrate a point falls under fair use. Posting over half the book while saying, “This happened, then this happened, then this happened,” is not remotely fair use and a blatant copyright violation.
On an “X-Factor #40” thread on CBR, someone put a link to it. This put it on my radar, and–I suspect–on other people’s radar as well.
Conscientious people have reported to me when they see flagrant copyright violations of my work (typically entire Star Trek novels being posted online). So I did the same thing, informing Marvel of the scans.
Did Marvel then shut them down? No. Because before Marvel legal had an opportunity to do anything, the scans had already been removed for being a violation of terms of service of Photobucket, the site that enabled the posters to put up pictures on line. Perhaps the CBR links put the site on PB’s radar as well as mine.
I did, however, use my wife’s Live Journal account to make my presence known. A fan asked if I had informed Marvel about the scans. An honest question. I replied honestly. I said yes, I had, but that the scans were pulled before Marvel took any action.
Two days later, Scans Daily was shut down completely. Purely a guess: Photobucket complained to Live Journal and LJ said, “Enough’s enough.”
The reaction on the blogosphere? Peter David got Scans Daily shut down.
Well…no. Again: My intervention wound up having no impact. And besides, if anyone got Scans Daily shut down, it was the fans themselves. Some will own up to that reality. Many, I suspect, won’t.
PAD
• 
Chances are, Mr. David, you may have put LJ on the scent, so to speak.
Of course assigning blame doesn’t help those of use who lost one of the more open and informed comic sites on the net. I think that energy would be better directed setting up camp elsewhere.
I have visited Scans_Daily infrequently in the past (never bothered to create a livejournal account to comment), so I know they’ve been using Photobucket for years without incident. Dunno what happened there.
In any case, prepare yourself for a shitstorm, PAD. If you thought the people at CBR’s X-Board had entitlement complexes…
I’m honestly flabbergasted by the way that community treated you and other comic book creators. Though I enjoyed a post there from time to time, the entitlement of fans complaining that a community dedicated to copyright infringement and given to threatening creators was shut down frankly flabbergasts me. Please know that not every fan who enjoys a bit of homoerotic subtext from time to time thinks you’re the devil incarnate.
Ah, and Lawful puts down a Chaotic Good community yet again.
Chaotic *Good*? Yes, it was. Before finding Scans_Daily, I bought maybe one or two comics a month. At a bookstore. After, I would spend twenty bucks on comics on a good Wednesday. S_D always encouraged readers to buy the comic if they liked what they saw. They highly discouraged posting the entire issue, and were in the midst of changes to further limit the number of pages allowed: less than eleven.
Also, it posted all sorts of things. Not every single post were recent comics with large amounts of scans. Most of them only had a couple of pages. Some even had just single panels. Not all of them were superhero books either; I started reading Tintin because of the community.
And I almost always bought the comics (or trades) that I liked. I don’t go to see movies without trailers, and I fully admit that I often watch illegal Pilot episodes if I’m planning to buy the dvds. But if I like what I see? I do try to get it legally.
That being said, it was always assumed that Scans_Daily could be shut down at any time, because it was Chaotic, not Lawful. It would always bend the rules, and occasionally it would break them. But I have no doubt (to continue this D&D metaphor) that it was fully in Good (I consider most of the internet as neutral).
Do I blame you in particular? No. Maybe. But the fact of the matter is that I would be in a very different place today if it were not for Scans_Daily, and the internet is angry.
So hundreds of posts about how awesome you never came to your attention before, but one post about how someone thinks you suck means let loose the dogs?
Good to know the internet still works properly.
You’ve hurt a lot of people who love you (inadvertently or not).
So hundreds of posts about how awesome you never came to your attention before, but one post about how someone thinks you suck means let loose the dogs?
Good to know the internet still works properly.
You’ve hurt a lot of people who love you (inadvertently or not).
At least Gail Simone got us.
Erm, forgive me if I’m wrong, but Peter David was informing on a site that was ripping off his work, and putting it there and useable for everyone, without them having to pay for it? That’s certainly his right ot do so.
As to it being ‘open and informed’ – well, it was very much open and informed that it was in violation of copyright. Yes, it’s a pity that a place where people could discuss things has gone, but surely they can reopen it in a different place, but not providing the stuff that I have to pay to buy…
Oh, no! The Internet is angry! We’re doomed!
Wait, no, it’s already been distracted by a video of a cat singing the theme to Firefly…
It is obvious that “Nametastic” didn’t read the post. Congrats on trying to play, though.
I used to check Scans Daily a few years back and it was mostly harmless (a lot of Deadpool panels, etc). It is sad to hear that some posters on it crossed the line to infringing on the copyright of entire comics.
Websites aren’t people, and treating them like a dead family member isn’t that smart. I’m sure someone will start up a new “funny panels” livejournal that understands what is appropriate and what isn’t.
My knowledge of Scans Daily came from when entries from it showed up on Fandom Wank. Which kinda says something about it right there.
Since Erik is pretty up-front about not having read the post, which I did, I should explain that no one posted the whole issue, nor “over half the book” as PAD characterizes it. A few pages were posted, but they did contain some pretty major plot twists, and some other events were mentioned briefly in the text of the post.
Also PAD’s “making his presence known” didn’t include any kind of request to take down the scans or anything like that but was solely directed at chastening posters whose criticism of his work he felt was way too personal.
Fair enough, and he was under no obligation to give anyone fair warning before reporting them. But it’s important to be clear that that’s not what happened.
Jamie, the site hosts less than half of any given comic, it is not a torrent site where entire issues are available to download. The traditional effect has been that people who would normally be hesitant to drop (let’s admit it) a ridiculous amount of money for a comic would be more inclined based on what they see and positive feedback. It was a thriving discussion community and rec site first and foremost.
Chances are that it did more good than harm to the comic industry. I know I wouldn’t be picking up half the titles I do if it hadn’t been for scans_daily. Mr. David did nothing wrong, but I’m hardly going to cheer him on as any great champion…and his idea that this will help him boost sales on X-Factor is…naive at best.
Yes, scans_daily was in the wrong, but it was a benign, if not beneficial, wrong. It also had the benefit of being much more female and LBGT friendly than many comic communities. I’m sad to see it go. Many of the people who comment there will survive the migration onto a new site, but those discussions and scans of rare and hard to find comics are gone.
Chances are, Mr. David, you may have put LJ on the scent, so to speak.
Well, again, I think the fans who posted links to it on other websites had far more to do with it. But I’ve little doubt I’ll take the hit regardless of the reality.
PAD
On the other hand, that whole cat singing the theme to Firefly sounds pretty cool.
PAD
So that’s why some loser vandalized your Wikipedia article early this morning with this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_David&diff=273825477&oldid=273279112
Jean Marlowe: Do I blame you in particular? No. Maybe. But the fact of the matter is that I would be in a very different place today if it were not for Scans_Daily, and the internet is angry.
Nametastic: You’ve hurt a lot of people who love you (inadvertently or not).
Luigi Novi: If you’re referring to those who violated copyright law, then they hurt themselves. Peter wasn’t even the one who got the site shut down. I would suggest that any of those people, either those who created and ran that site, or those who merely visited and enjoyed it, can always start up another similar site, without posting large enough amounts of copyrighted material that would violate Fair Use. Do that, and no one will shut it down. In any event, try to accept/attribute responsibility properly. When someone violates a just law or a creator’s rights, you don’t blame the law or the creator; you blame the violator.
Absolutely, BoosterBeetle, scans_daily got me buying comics again when I’d stopped frequenting my local comics shop for a few years. I could name about two dozen favorite titles that I got turned on to through the scans and discussion there — and started buying regularly — that I wouldn’t have known about or bothered with otherwise.
Like people leafing through a comic in a store, the community giving people a taste of what was inside wasn’t hurting sales per se. If people liked what they saw, they’d buy it. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. Ultimately the work speaks for itself.
Wow… The Wiki thing happened faster than I thought it would.
With all due respect, Mr. David, if we’re intent on assigning blame I think there is plenty to go around. Yes, you’ll probably take a disproportionate amount of the blame because it’s so much easier to be mad at someone rather than about something, but it was a chain of events that lead to s_d closing, and it’s quite possible you were a link in that chain.
There’s no ‘shame on you’ here, I can appreciate that your intentions were to protect your interests and the integrity of what you create, I just feel, as someone who has posted at that site for years, that this is a loss. Especially because I KNOW it will cause me to cut back on, and be less likely to pick up, new books.
In any event, try to accept/attribute responsibility properly. When someone violates a just law or a creator’s rights, you don’t blame the law or the creator; you blame the violator.
Yeah. That’s exactly what’s going to happen…
PAD
but it was a chain of events that lead to s_d closing
I think the “chain of events” was something along the lines of “y’all were stealing.”
Grow up, kids.
So that’s why some loser vandalized your Wikipedia article early this morning with this edit:
Oh, I dunno. Luigi. At this point the edit, which claims that the thing I’m best known for is shutting down scans daily, may be accurate. And the fact that the “knowledge” itself is, in fact, inaccurate, since I didn’t actually shut it down (what, I run LiveJournal or Photobucket now?) just makes it consistent with a typical wikipedia entry…
PAD
Well, again, I think the fans who posted links to it on other websites had far more to do with it.
Really? I’ve seen scans_daily links for years. For instance, Comic Book Rumbles, a subforum of Comic Book Resources (where they came to your attention), has been using them forever when you need to back up a claim about a character’s abilities, or occasionally in their “Quotes that define…” threads.
It’s not like they’ve been secretive with creators either: Warren Ellis posted on occasion, for instance, including linking from his blog to the site so that people could check out parts of “Genius”, which was up for Top Cow’s Pilot Season contest. It was one of the winners, strangely enough.
So the lesson is, read Warren Ellis’ blog, and you’ll always be aware of what’s happening on the Internet.
I’m glad to hear you clearing up the confusion about who did what. Of course I thought, like everybody else, that it was due to a complaint from you, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking “That sounds a little too petty to be Peter. Maybe it was an overzealous fan or something and we’re all mistaken.”
I’m sorry that Scans Daily is gone. But you’re not to blame, despite what apparently the rest of the internet is thinking.
Why does civil, polite discussion have to end at the keyboard? I don’t give a dámņ what “popular slang” is. People should think before they shoot their mouth off. It’s one thing to disagree with a plot point. It’s another to start specifically harrassing a guy and his wife. Seriously, what are these people thinking? Did their parents raise them to speak that way?
I think the lesson here is that you shouldn’t say on the net what you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. In the words of the great Wil Wheaton, “don’t be a dìçk.”
Hello, Mr. David. I’m another old user of Scans Daily.
I just want to say that I’m very sorry you are probably getting a terrible impression of us now. Please remember that people are upset and angry, and probably feeling a great deal of loss over a community some of them have been part of for years. Things will be said that should not be said. One unfortunate thing about the internet is that it makes it easy to fire off screaming reprisals before someone cools off.
Please, please believe me when I say that it was a positive, fun loving community. It may seem ugly now, but that’s because only the most angry people will be making the most noise – all the others who remember their manners will just be shaking their heads sadly at home and moving on, not contacting you or yelling on the internet.
SD was actually greatly influential in getting me to try out stories like X-Factor, She-Hulk, and etc. I came from a comic background that was the total cliche of female-comic-reader that only reads Sandman or indie comics. I would have never grown and expanded my variety as much without so many people talking excitedly about what the loved, what was controversial, what was silly and fun.
Again, I am very, very sorry you are on the receiving end of so much anger. You don’t deserve it. But at the same time I don’t think SD deserves to be characterized as just another torrent site, which it was not. It was a love letter to comics. Maybe there were lovers spats in there, or ridiculous things said as well – but in the end, it was about love.
I think the “chain of events” was something along the lines of “y’all were stealing.”
Oh, no denying that’s the issue, plain and simple, but the fact is the site has been doing the same thing for five years, with numerous industry insiders operating in the ‘know’ and even being members. Nothing dramatic changed, so I think it’s safe to assume there was a catalyst of some sort. It’s not like LJ just woke up and noticed a site with thousands of members.
Also, I do so hope that all the copyright enthusiasts I’ve met over the last few hours abstain for pirating music, do not watch youtube clips that feature licensed audio or visual tracks and haven’t touched a torrent.
And don’t get me started on people who read manga online or mod their videogame counsels to play unlicensed games.
I’m frustrated on your and Kathleen’s behalf, Peter. In other words, I’m in your corner.
And I don’t have more to add that’d be intelligent, so here at least is a show of support.
so I think it’s safe to assume there was a catalyst of some sort.
The catalyst was that the inevitable caught up with S_D. It’s not about never engaging about piracy, it’s about not sulking like kids when you’re caught for doing it. The tone of most S_Ders is something like “We’re the unsung heroes of the comics internet,” or even more ridiculous, “well this was the ONLY PLACE ON EARTH to learn about new comics, so I guess I’ll spend less now…”
So again: grow up, kids.
So hundreds of posts about how awesome you never came to your attention before, but one post about how someone thinks you suck means let loose the dogs?
Uhm…no. I hadn’t actually read any of the comments prior to informing Marvel of flagrant copyright violation. I clicked on the link from CBR, I saw a posting of scans that was far in excess of anything resembling fair use, and I informed the copyright holder…which ultimately had no impact since Photo Bucket had already taken the material down for copyright violation.
So it has nothing to do with anything anyone said about me for good or ill. Those are the facts, presuming the facts matter in a witch hunt.
PAD
Mr. David,
Love your work. You’re definitely one of the creators whose book I will give a shot based on your name alone.
I’m actually truly surprised that neither you nor Marvel knew about Scans Daily. It’s a site that, according to some, gets traffic in figures close to what Newsarama or Comic Book Resources gets. Especially considering the fervent love they have for both you and Young Justice over there (though I recognize the argument that if they really loved your work they wouldn’t post it, I’m just talking the feedback and headers and such).
It’d odd, and I’m sure there are those who disagree, but I’ve always kind of known Scan Daily as the trade waiters paradise. a “those that buy trades but don’t want to wait, kind of place.” Or a place to check out new talent or a book you wouldn’t normally buy.
Regardless of that, and not taking a position on the right/wrong/legality of it all, there will most likely be a significant fallout over the site being shut down. Not only on the net, but also likely in sales. I Hope this doesn’t distract/detract you from your writing. I’m actually very interested to see if this has a sales impact, not only for you, but for Marvel and DC in general. Though that’s probably something we won’t find out for awhile.
Looking forward to your future work.
Personally, s_d had fallen off my radar. Because I kept finding new titles that I wanted to buy. And I’m not made of money. When DC started sucking me in, I stopped reading.
But it feels a little betraying. Nobody at s_d was ‘kneecapping your goal of tripling sales’. Nobody wouldn’t buy X-Factor because of s_d. They wouldn’t buy X-Factor because of the massive downloading indexes out there that will give them the whole issue, on demand, for free (and without ads). And nobody can take them down — the RIAA & MPAA have tried. But I *did* add X-Factor to my pull list directly as a result of an s_d post.
So there are other factors you might want to consider. This isn’t a comment to throw blame or gripe at you. Just to say “Thank you for writing a series that I’ve really enjoyed over the past two years … since I discovered the comic on scans_daily.”
@Sheila
My knowledge of Scans Daily came from when entries from it showed up on Fandom Wank. Which kinda says something about it right there.
Have you ever visited the message boards at places like Newsarama, DC Comics, or CBR? THAT, Miz Sheila, is wank. Insufferable, immature, idiotic wank.
Scans_Daily, on the other hand, for all its moments of wankery (it’s LiveJournal, what the hëll do you expect? Even fandom_wank gets wanky!) was the truest comic *community* of which I’ve ever been a part. Abuse and áššhølërÿ were usually not tolerated, and even if we disagreed, it was mostly civil, respectful, and sometimes even thoughtful!
So no, I deeply resent the implication that fandom_wank’s s_d entries is representative of the whole. I would show you proof of it otherwise, but I obviously can’t.
Kaete:
That was absolutely beautiful and exactly how I have always felt about the community.
As someone who has had internet denizens turn on him at the drop of a hat before (though not NEARLY to this extent)? I sympathize.
This is one show of support.
As someone who has had internet denizens turn on him at the drop of a hat before (though not NEARLY to this extent)? I sympathize.
This is one show of support.
I don’t recall anyone saying it was the only place to learn about new comics. It is likely one of the more accessible and more complete places that you can find information and opinions from outsiders(vague solicits and limited previews don’t always fit the bill). Some writers don’t even like, and try to limit, people recapping issues. Lots of people do not frequent comic forums for various reasons, and tend to gravitate towards LJ, so it is much more likely they would find out about new releases through scans_daily.
I think most of the posters are upset about the loss of the community, not the scans themselves. Also, I don’t think you’ve heard the opinion of most of the posters, try to keep in mind how many of us there are.
I don’t suppose you’d drop the condescending tone if I asked politely?
Abuse and áššhølërÿ were usually not tolerated, and even if we disagreed, it was mostly civil, respectful, and sometimes even thoughtful
Wow. Let’s just say that my experience somehow managed to miss the “usually” part.
PAD
I’ve never stopped buying a series because it was theoretically available ‘free’ online, and I can name at least eight monthly series off the top of my head that I probably wouldn’t have touched if I hadn’t first been exposed to them as scans.
I didn’t become an Ed Brubaker fan until I read his Daredevil, and I’ve always been fairly indifferent to Captain America. Being able to go and catch up on his run is what sold me on that big omnibus (and the monthly issues since), which I otherwise wouldn’t have given a second glance.
Looking back, I’m buying more comics now then I did before I knew scans even existed, so I reject the notion that it’s hurting the industry. I hope the people arguing that it is have never claimed that downloading music is okay because it exposes them to new artists or encourages them to buy stuff later on.
I feel I should point out at this time that all online “communities” are granfalloons.
Well, it seems like scans_daily is not going to stay down in any case. There’s a new scans_daily up at Insanejournal.com, already active.
I’m actually very interested to see if this has a sales impact, not only for you, but for Marvel and DC in general. Though that’s probably something we won’t find out for awhile.
Considering that sales have been dropping on many titles for some time, I think it would be pretty much impossible to prove whether it has any sales impact whatsoever. Poc hoc ergo propeter hoc and all that.
Furthermore, with SD gone, it’s not as if fans are now deprived of the ability to see previews of books. Those are pretty regularly available. All they’re deprived of is a site that makes it easy for them to keep up with titles without having to pay for doing so. Now you can make the argument that such activity generated sales from people who might not otherwise have bought it. But you’ve no real way of proving that other than anecdotally. I could just as easily claim that for every single reader who declares, “Scans Daily prompted me to buy a book I wouldn’t otherwise have bought,” there are one hundred reads who could declare, “I would have had to buy more titles, but thanks to Scans Daily, I could keep up with the stories without having to do so.” Except they won’t want to admit to it.
Ultimately, I’ve seen enough books that were massive critical favorites on the internet that sell little to nothing, so I’m unclear as to just how much real impact on sales the internet has.
I am very clear, though, on what is and is not copyright violation. I think we all are. The rest is just excuses and rationalizations.
PAD
@Ken Lowery
No one is saying that S_D was the only place to learn about new comics, but for my money it was the best.
-LJ is one of the largest social networking sites on the net. Furthermore, plenty of non-comics readers are on LJ, so not only did it seem welcoming to n00bs who might have been curious, but it also lacked the “secret treehouse” atmosphere that a lot of other comics boards have.
-The interface is prime for sharing images and, unlike other forums, it is possible to hold multiple conversations on the same post without getting bogged down with quote boxes and having other conversations mixed in.
-Unlike Newsarama and CBR, who have their content fed to them by the publishers, S_D could be far more democratic. If only one person thought a comic was worth looking at (be it from the Big 2, small press, or webcomic), it could get face time.
-S_D was also frequently used to share comics that were out of print, especially ones that had never been collected into trades.
I agree it had its problems and should have had stricter rules and been better moderated, but it’s sad to think that such a vibrant community was shut down without warning and without a chance to fix itself.
I think most of the posters are upset about the loss of the community, not the scans themselves.
How was the community lost? If you have a tornado come through and reduce a town to splinters and the survivors scatter all over the map, then a community has been lost. Here a section of Live Journal was shut down due to copyright infringement. The individuals are still hale and whole and will, I suspect, have a new talking area set up within a week. And if they go back to doing what is my understanding that their original content was, they’ll go about their business unharmed.
In fact, when the community exists once more: If the leaders of that community want to take the first issue of “Fallen Angel” when it relaunches and give it the kind of blow by blow outline that they did with the first issue of X-Factor, they need simply contact me and I will give them the okay to do so. Why? Because as copyright holder, I have that option, and that’s how it’s done in the big wide world.
I don’t suppose you’d drop the condescending tone if I asked politely?
I wasn’t going for condescending so much as I was world-weary. If you took it as condescending, I apologize.
PAD
I think most of the posters are upset about the loss of the community, not the scans themselves.
I am sad at the loss of some of the scans, but only the rare ones. Scans_daily was a great place to check out out of print series or other old oddities that are fairly hard to find. Like Alan Moore’s cat comic, or all the old Marvel horror stories that someone had dug out of a box and would scan from time to time. There were even a couple of Miracleman posts, and I doubt I’ll ever touch an actual copy of that comic in real life, much less read it.
@PAD
Wow. Let’s just say that my experience somehow managed to miss the “usually” part.
Which is really unfortunate. As others have noted, that community has mostly been a place to celebrate and discuss comics, including your own (dear lord, but they love YOUNG JUSTICE).
Personally, I’ve read (and I want to stress this) MUCH worse on the Message Boards of major comic sites. And as such, I was eventually able to tune out the bad eggs because of the sheer abundance of good ones. They made it worthwhile.
It’s the internet, after all. Finding a comic community that’s only occasionally insufferably rude and wanky is a bloody miracle. And it was.
Which is why–regardless of the cause–I’m very upset.
For the record, Photobucket likely didn’t take the material down for copyright violation, but for bandwidth issues. (They limit how much CPU server time a image can use over a period of time.) I’ve never heard Photobucket ever do anything for copyright issues. I’m not even sure they have the software to check images for copyright issues, but they have repeatedly taken down images for bandwidth issues before without scans_daily getting suspended (as have other hosting sites.) The odds are that Photobucket had nothing to do with scans_daily being closed down (although there’s no way to prove that without getting info from Livejournal.)
(I’m willing to admit that scans_daily was illegal. I’m also willing to claim that it also helped improve sales on various comics by encouraging people to experience new titles.)
Creators who requested that the mods not allow a cliffhanger ending or disallow their material to be posted at all were generally heeded. Scans_Daily was not a place you went to to steal comics – there are about a hundred different sites you can go to for that, and I guarantee that you’ve just upped their traffic.
S_D was a place you could go to to discuss new comics and to get previews – especially for niche comics that wouldn’t find an audience otherwise, like Blue Beetle, Manhunter or Immortal Iron Fist.
Over 70% of the comics on my shelf right now – including, I should say, many of yours, Mr. David – I own directly because of scans_daily. S_D acted more as a previews site with occasional spoilers than as a torrent site in which the whole issue was available… because, unless something was long out of print, the whole issue was never, ever available.
But that’s not the point, is it? What S_D did was questionably legal – and yes, I think it was questionable, not black-and-white illegal due to their strict regulations over what got posted and Fair Use clauses – and everyone knew that it COULD get shut down any time.
The point is, of course, that this does a rather severe amount of harm to the niche books that publishers throw out occasionally. Is it going to hurt the sales on X-Men Legacy or Dark Avengers or Superman? Nope. What it will hurt, though, are the sales on future projects like Blue Beetle, Patsy Walker: Hellcat or Manhunter. At 2.99-3.99 a pop, depending on company, there just isn’t any way that fans in this economy can be expected to ‘take a chance’ on a book like that. S_D offered a rallying point for such books, shoring up fan support and posting scans of the series to try and convince people that it was indeed worth their money, even if it wasn’t important to the next megacrossover.
So, of course, my reading list goes down. Not because I’m doing something so juvenile as ‘boycotting’ any books. Just because I can’t really afford to take chances on them. There are a few writers I’ll follow, but until the economy picks up, I won’t be reading any books by creators I’m on the fence about, and I certainly won’t be touching authors with whom I am unfamiliar.
So, I’d like to thank S_D briefly for introducing me to…
Immortal Iron Fist
Blue Beetle
All-New Atom
Incredible Hercules
Captain Britain and MI:13
Global Frequency
Gotham Central
Animal Man
Secret Six
X-Factor
Runaways
Manhunter
She-Hulk
Captain America
Patsy Walker: Hellcat
… and many more.
I’m not really terribly upset with you, of course, Mr. David. I wish you had gone about this in a better way, contacting the mods and requesting that the post be removed, but it was your right to do what you did. I can’t help but be a little upset – new comics on my pull are going to get to be quite few and far between, and I love new comics – but you did what you felt you had to.
I will get a tad irked if people who are clearly unfamiliar with the community and its rules continue to post, in ignorance, about the community and its rules, however.
Looking back, I’m buying more comics now then I did before I knew scans even existed, so I reject the notion that it’s hurting the industry.
Okay. But I would counter that Scans has been around for five years and during that five years we’ve seen sales overall slide and slide and slide.
Now: Can we prove cause and effect that it’s hurt? No. No more than we can prove that it’s helped. But if you’re trying to make the case that it HAS helped, then based on the steady decline of sales that matches up with how long it’s been around, I think you’ll have a difficult time doing so empirically.
PAD
@Anthony L.
I am sad at the loss of some of the scans, but only the rare ones. Scans_daily was a great place to check out out of print series or other old oddities that are fairly hard to find.
Exactly. It was a place to give obscure and lost comics new life and new appreciation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people go, in awe, “WOW! I had no idea this existed! Where can I get it?!”
For example (just one of literally dozens of such examples I’ve seen over the years), one guy’s been doing daily posts of old CREEPY stories, things that the vast majority of us had never even *heard* of, much less read. Each has been a daily highlight. I had no idea stories of this quality existed.
I understand they’re finally putting CREEPY out in TPB. Scans_Daily is the reason why I’ll be eager to buy it.
I discovered scans daily like a year ago, but I’m on the internets way too much.
I’m with other people on the “entitlement” problem.
I’m honestly surprised that you hadn’t discovered it yet.
Anyway, thanks for informing Marvel. I was curious that people wouldn’t have found it yet.
Here a section of Live Journal was shut down due to copyright infringement. The individuals are still hale and whole and will, I suspect, have a new talking area set up within a week. And if they go back to doing what is my understanding that their original content was, they’ll go about their business unharmed.
It’s more a case that some of our posters (likely quite a few given our bloated membership) will not make the transition to a new site. Unless they know to go to one of the mods LJs they’d likely be left out of the loop. The posts themselves were filled with conversations and speculation that may have been meaningful to those involved. The memories are gone as well (not actual memories, but memories as in significant posts tagged for posterity). It’s all very ‘woe is me/us’ and is pretty insignificant in the long run, but when you naively expect something to be a constant and it disappears it can leave you going ‘bwah?’
The posters who have said that scans_daily has no real right to be surprised and upset by this are right, we don’t. However I fully admit that I’m an irrational being and it’s going to take me a while to get used to something that was basically part of my daily routine for four years isn’t there anymore.
I know, I know, cry more. I’m just annoyed that scans_daily was taken down despite the good I believe it does while it’s almost impossible to bring people who download entire issues to task.
I wasn’t going for condescending so much as I was world-weary. If you took it as condescending, I apologize.
No need, Mr. David. I was actually speaking to Ken Lowery, my fault for not making it clear. I’m new to this format.