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
• 
Bravo, Gail.
May I copy-paste that on my own LJ?
Our of curiosity, Mr. David: Are you also adverse to the 30 second previews for songs on iTunes?
Oops, that wasn’t Gail, that was “Gail Simone FAN.” Whoopsie-daisy.
My own perspective as a non-user of scans_daily, but an active semi-professional on LJ?
Nobody won this one. Everyone lost something to varying degrees. And yes, scans_daily was on a ticking countdown clock. From the first posted scan. Someone was going to trigger this chain of events and dispute sooner or later. Whether they planned to or not.
Go DIAF and take all your šhìŧŧÿ comics with you.
Peter David, you have just made my day. It’s a pity you’re actually trying to distance yourself from your accomplishment, but I suppose I can’t have everything. If you had spent any sort of time in that drama mecca, I imagine you might have enjoyed it – the place was little more than a collection of bitter Young Justice fans constantly moaning about how “dark” comics are, and how all their favorite characters were “ruined” once Young Justice (and Impulse, and the medicore and hackish run of Robin from Chick Dixon) ended. It gives me great joy that a community full of loud, opinionated, annoying and self-entitled Young Justice fangirls was crushed by PAD himself.
Comment removed by Kathleen because it was not relevant to the conversation and was harassment.
Fair use law? Common sense?
Sounds like the average post at Scans Daily and you shut that down. Guess fair use is in the eye of the beholder.
Nice meeting you lot. Best Wishes, PAD you wrote the best Hulk of all, they should have tapped you for the movie scripts if they didn’t.
“Are you serious? Morals? We’re talking about changing marketing techniques and intellectual property law to accommodate new media– the way it happened when the printing press was invented, and photography, and the phonograph, and cinema, and VHS, and so on.
This is mass media, not holy writ.”
I hope you’re joking and being sarcastic. If not you’re looking very stupid right now.
” I’ve sampled, my art has been Photoshopped, my words have been stolen. I don’t care. That’s how things are now.”
Congratulations, by your own inaction you yourself contribute in some small way to the gradual erosion of your own creative rights. Now take that view of yours and multiply by every other person with this imagined view that everybody seemingly outside two or three countries has NO copyright enforcement in place, and that’s a good indicator of how we arrived at the current position – where the creators “don’t care” about people abusing their creative rights, and so who steps in to fill the vacuum?
Oh right, RIAA and others who traditionally live off the backs of the artists.
Only now the artists “don’t even care” anymore.
Well surprise Sherlock, what did you THINK was going to happen? Who did you THINK was going to come in to fill the void?
“I used the RIAA own statistics on Asia. They have a multi billion dollar industry of computer programs, movies and music, all stolen.”
…..wait, there’s laughter in my head. You’re using RIAA statistics….to justify claims that nothing gets done about piracy in Asia?
Oh my God. It’s hardly in their interest to put something out saying hey guys, everything is fine!!!
is it?
“The majority of them will not be caught or stopped, because the WTO co-operation is in words only. “
….no, an endless stream of comics related piracy sites continually shut down is pretty good proof that its not “in words only”. Countries can’t just sign up to the berne convention and give it lip service, you know. There’s some pretty heavy duty issues that come about as a result of doing that.
All those Malaysian and Thai sites that have big warnings up about NOT posting marvel comics (with a growing number of them also warning about DC titles) must be some sort of figment of my imagination.
“Our of curiosity, Mr. David: Are you also adverse to the 30 second previews for songs on iTunes?”
Probably not, seeing as those have been legally CLEARED to be there. Good lord, where do these people come from?
Also, a minor clarification with regards this:
“Did you know its LEGAL to make a private copy of copyrighted music even if the source isn’t legal?”
The country being refered to in the above would be Spain (which I forgot to mention).
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.
I believe there were over 8,000 LJ users who were members watching the community. Add to that however many lurkers there were who read it who were not members or even LiveJournal users. That’s a lot of people, many of whom won’t be able to reconnect with friends and acquaintances they shared that community with, that shared a love of comics.
At any rate, new comics are available online usually within a week of their release elsewhere. That, or simply reading a few pages of a comic in the comic book store, is what might let me catch up with a comic without having bought it.
Shutting down scans_daily won’t stop internet piracy of comics. Shutting it down will, however, prevent those who are curious or casual fans/readers from discovering new comics, old comics, or the comics medium itself.
I wouldn’t be buying comics if not for scans_daily. Not every comic gets a preview on Newsarama (and Young Justice certainly doesn’t) but the community has prompted people to seek out and buy those comics.
Instead of a comic book company sending out preview pages to comic news sites, instead you have a passionate fan posting scans and saying “you guys, you HAVE to read this!”. That’s grass-roots comic book fandom, and free advertising, right there.
I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with a post and/or a particular user. I never got a chance to read the post in question, but I am sorry if your only experience with Scans_daily has been negative.
The more I think about this, the more I find it hard to believe that Marvel had no knowledge of Scans Daily before Mr. David’s comment. This is NOT a new site. I think a little of the vitriol being spewed might be spewing the wrong direction, as anger over the site shut down seems to be directed at one of, likely, many people who reported it. The fact that Mr. David is a public figure (so to speak) gives him a little more notoriety. As stated in the original post, for those who read it, all he did was make one report.
As for it being copyright infringement, under the current law right now, it clearly is, regardless of how many pages or how the site was policed, if the copyright owner doesn’t want the stuff posted, they can seek to have it removed. With regard to X-Factor and Mr. David’s other Marvel work, I’m guessing he doesn’t currently own the copyright, or is leasing the copyright, to Marvel, so he couldn’t have had them remove the scans even if he wanted to (this is my best guess. Who knows what agreements have been worked out). Only the copyright holder has the standing to seek to close down a site. Marvel itself can only request that Scans Daily remove the Marvel stuff. They can’t say diddly about anyone else’s work. So likely this is the decision of someone who runs Live Journal, most likely based on the amount of or the recentness of some complaints, some probably from attorneys. Live Journal doesn’t want to get sued for knowingly allowing copyrighted material to be reprinted.
As for whether the current copyright law is right or not, that’s another story and one I think many have a problem with. Why can there be a scenario where someone can go into a Kinkos and copy 10 pages out of “Tigerheart,” where Kinkos is not be liable for copyright infringement when someone else can go to scans daily, post 10 pages from X-Factor, and scans daily IS liable. One would think the wrongdoer is the one who infringes the copyright and not the one who allows the facilitation of it. However, the reality of the situation is that it’s hard to track people down, and when it comes to lawsuits, Kinkos or Scans Daily is probably going to have more money and more insurance to reimburse the wronged party than a 15-year old kid in his parent’s basement. Further, it costs money to track down and prosecute these people and most times it isn’t worth it financially, especially if there’s no payday at the end. Anyway, that’s a problem for the legislature.
On a side note, I know where Mr. David is coming from, but I do think it’s amusing for him to take the position that copyright infringement is illegal when he writes stories about characters who break the law all the time when it fits the purpose of the story. See recent issues of She-Hulk for instance. Not making a judgment here. It’s a reality versus fantasy thing. Just my own warped mind amusing itself.
Hope this all works out satisfactorily for everyone.
@Jerry Chandler
I look stupid for suggesting that it might be a bit melodramatic to claim that it’s actually immoral to alter copyright law and marketing?
Jennifer, you’re not helping.
As for whether the current copyright law is right or not, that’s another story and one I think many have a problem with. Why can there be a scenario where someone can go into a Kinkos and copy 10 pages out of “Tigerheart,” where Kinkos is not be liable for copyright infringement when someone else can go to scans daily, post 10 pages from X-Factor, and scans daily IS liable.
Eh, there’s a considerable difference between using a group’s services to do copywright infringing, and using a group specifically set up in order to do so. If Kinkos (i’m guessing a store of some kind, American maybe?) had signs up suggesting it to people, and racks of already copied material next to the copier, then I imagine it would be easier to make a case against them as at least the equivalent of an accessory.
@Peter Block
Why can there be a scenario where someone can go into a Kinkos and copy 10 pages out of “Tigerheart,” where Kinkos is not be liable for copyright infringement when someone else can go to scans daily, post 10 pages from X-Factor, and scans daily IS liable.
Are they, legally? I thought it would be the individual posters and/or Livejournal itself. Although I guess your point still stands.
I have always loved and respected you as a writer – still do. I am glad that you explained this here in your own words, and if you can ignore the crazy comments you’re sure to get here, I hope you know that the sane among us appreciate that.
I would also like to take a second to talk about scans_daily so that you know what they were about. Several very diligent, conscientious moderators enforced strict rules keeping participants from posting entire books. If it happened, mods deleted the posts as soon as they were physically able.
(It did happen sometimes because, as I’m sure you’re learning now, a lot of people on the Internet are very, very, very stupid. The mods had to deal with these same idiots, and I feel that they did so very well.)
No offense was intended toward you or your work, and if anything, it seems to me that those involved with moderating the community wanted to push people *toward* your work and encourage people to buy it because we *don’t* want your books to get canceled. You have always been one of the few writers who has consistently told good stories of serial fiction, and we want that to continue!
Thanks again for all you do.
Here’s an issue that I’ve brought up before on my podcast and would like to re-introduce:
You can go to Blockbuster or Netflix and rent a movie, and you can borrow books and even albums from your library. However, a medium without a kind of “rental” system is comics.
My opinion is that so many people flock to places like Scans Daily, or resort to torrenting, is a combination of two things. One, the price to buy a comic that you’re not sure about is prohibitive for some people. Most comic shops don’t allow you to read in the store, and there’s simply no commercial framework in place for borrowing comics. Yes, you can just pass things around to your friends, or better yet borrow trades from the libraries – but some people don’t have many comic-loving friends, and trades don’t exist without strong sales of individual issues to begin with.
Two, with regards to older, out-of-print and not-collected-in-trade comics, there is simply no other way to get exposed to them that isn’t the old-fashioned way. I’ve loaned out a lot of trades, but I want more people to share my love for certain comics, and showing why they’re awesome on the internet is the most efficient way to reach a large audience.
And what if you want to read, say, extremely old issues of ACTION COMICS or whatnot and they aren’t available in trade? Surely we can’t afford them.
Peter – and everyone else – what would be an ideal means of exposing people to comics that are a little under the radar (FALLEN ANGEL or MANHUNTER, for example)? I know talking about the issues online is one thing, and it is probably the best solution, but comics is a half-visual medium, and it’s like describing an action movie to a blind man without the pretty pictures.
I want to respect copyright policy, but on occasion it’s simply not feasible for either budgetary reasons or simply a lack of access.
Addendum: Ideally, I suppose what I’d really like to see is something like iTunes for comics. It might hurt print, but at least the creators still get paid.
Do you think this is going to make people buy your comics? You’ve pìššëd øff a lot of fans. There are people who are wanting to sell the comics they bought, because you’ve embarrassed the comic community.
You think you’re the only writer who’s had his work featured there? God, your ego is so big.
OK this one stays even though it is pointless because it does stay on topic (barely) -Kath
Alexa: “I look stupid for suggesting that it might be a bit melodramatic to claim that it’s actually immoral to alter copyright law and marketing?”
The way you worded it; yeah. Besides, you don’t need to really alter copyright law for the internet. Posting copyrighted materials beyond review or fair use standards or without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal. Period. Just because the print medium is electronic rather than paper doesn’t change the concept.
My local paper can’t do it and a website like SD can’t do it either. Very simple really.
PAD’s chief beef with SD was that they would publish full pages and then say, this happened and then that happened. He doesn’t seem to believe that’s fair use, unfortunately IP law being what it is, you never really know what fair use is till it goes to court.
However, if the only reason someone is buying a book is to see what happens next, then you aren’t doing your job as a writer. SD excerpts never conveyed all the story in a full-issue, and your job as a writer is to tell a story people want to read, not simply to move the plot along.
So, essentially, this pretty much boils down to Mr. David reacting to a copyright violation in a completely rational and legally prudent (hëll- legally mandated) manner, and his detractors saying “come on, man, be cool.”
Jenny: “Do you think this is going to make people buy your comics? You’ve pìššëd øff a lot of fans. There are people who are wanting to sell the comics they bought, because you’ve embarrassed the comic community.”
Aw… People are upset that they can’t get something for nothing? What a shame.
And how exactly did Peter “embarrass” the comic community? Don’t you really mean that he that he upset a small group of people in the comic community.
I knew about this website, but never really visited because I had heard some pretty bad things about the community. As proved by this entry, there are a couple of smart posters, that understand what’s going on, and a mob of idiots that just want to be angry at someone.
By the way, good luck on trying to triple sales. I sincerely hope you succeed, as X-Factor is among my favorite ongoing titles.
Pretty much, Scott, yeah.
I bought a lot of comics I love because I’ve seen parts on scans_daily. And how he embarrassed the community was by getting upset over a comment from some idiot, and it resulted in a community that a lot of people will miss.
Why aren’t these people yelling at LiveJournal, since they would be the ones who actually shut the community down?
Look, I know what it’s like to lose an internet community; it’s kinda like having your neighborhood bar demolished overnight. You can find new places to hang out, but it isn’t quite the same. (And, yeah, I’ll cop to the fact that the only times I heard about that particular neighborhood bar was secondhand reports of the bar fights that broke out. I’ll take the words of those who hung out there regularly that it wasn’t as bad as all that.)
Still, once a place is gone, no amount of wailing and moaning is going to bring it back. Particularly when you’re wailing and moaning at someone who has no power to bring it back anyway.
So why is no one angry with the idiot?
Scott,
It’s debatable if scans daily policies fell under the fair use exception. I think it’s too much to say it was definitely a violation of copyright.
It’s ironic: scans_daily got me reading comics again after a years-long hiatus. The first comic I ran out to buy after reading the community: Madrox. But don’t worry, you won’t need to worry about me buying anything you produce again. Also, I don’t think you need to worry so much about people spoiling your interesting plot twists; you can worry about that when you write one.
Not much to say here. I was first turned onto your run on X-Factor by scans daily. I’m not particularly fond of most comic forums, but scans was interesting and had some vivacious and interesting people, many of whom became friends. I also bought a fairly sizable part of my collection due to learning about things through scans daily. I would have never really paid attention to Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, Images’ Flight, Marvel’s Annihilation, and a number of other titles without it.
So, congrats, you won. A site you didn’t like is gone. But so is my support of your work, and I’m sure many others feel the same. You may not have been responsible, but you would have been if someone hadn’t gotten there first.
There were plenty of creators who seemed to like scans, and I’m sorry your introduction to it seemed to be a flame war ready to happen. You took a comment fairly seriously (and I can understand that much at least), it escalated, I think it reflects poorly on you to “tattle” to your company.
To further, the entire scan wasn’t up, and you are misleading your readers here. In fact had the entire issue been up, it would have been taken down by the moderators or the poster would have had to take some of the scans out. There was a page limit on what one could post of new issues (fairly old issues I think were immune to this, but the copyright holders don’t make money off of back issues anyway unless they are collected).
Yes, the author of the scan provided commentary which may have given more of the issue away.
Go ahead and cry copyright violation all you want. In that case find a lawyer and have them argue it for you against the company. Or, did you think to act like a decent human being, contact a mod, and say “I don’t want my work shown here”? Because I’m sure the moderating team would have respected your wishes, and it probably would have kept many now former readers of yours quite happy.
Lulu: Our of curiosity, Mr. David: Are you also adverse to the 30 second previews for songs on iTunes?
Luigi Novi: Why would he? iTunes posts previews and full songs LEGALLY, with the PERMISSION of the copyright holder, and in any event, a small portion of a larger work does not violate Fair Use. If you bothered to actually read what Peter has said here, both in his blog entry, and in his 1:22pm post, for example, you wouldn’t have to ask such a question.
Peter Block: The more I think about this, the more I find it hard to believe that Marvel had no knowledge of Scans Daily before Mr. David’s comment.
Luigi Novi: And indeed, Marvel wasn’t responsible for taking down the site. Photo Bucket was. Peter mentioned this explicitly.
Tom: I refuse to argue with you. I’m sure you’re right. PAD has plenty of time to surf the entirety of the Internet to make sure no in China posted pages of Young Justice. And I’m sure his stance on Scans Daily will cause the dwindling comic fans to search their souls and buy comics on pure faith again.
Luigi Novi: Straw Man.
The issue is not about “buying on pure faith” vs. “posting entire issues online”. A reasonable middle ground is posting small previews of the material, which consists merely of a small portion of the work that would not violate Fair Use, which is a long-time practice, and which Peter clearly said he was okay with. By talking about “pure faith”, you only show that you haven’t bothered actually reading what he has said here.
Jenny: Do you think this is going to make people buy your comics? You’ve pìššëd øff a lot of fans. There are people who are wanting to sell the comics they bought, because you’ve embarrassed the comic community. You think you’re the only writer who’s had his work featured there? God, your ego is so big.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, because not liking it when someone violates copyright law by posting entire issues of comics without permission of the owner really requires much of an ego.
This has nothing to do with whether this will “make” people buy his comics, or whether he was the only writer whose work was posted there, or whether he did anything to the “entire” comic book community. It has to do with the fact that people in that community were violating the law, an act that certainly doesn’t typify the “entire” comic book community, since I never did anything like this, a point that you simply can’t refute.
Luigi Novi: And indeed, Marvel wasn’t responsible for taking down the site. Photo Bucket was. Peter mentioned this explicitly. Actually, as far as I can tell, this isn’t the case. Photobucket deleted the scans themselves, identifying them as copyright infringment, as PAD says, but there’s been no mention (either by PAD or anyone else) of Photobucket then themselves contacting Livejournal. Photobucket was responsible for taking down those particular scans alone.
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@ true2myart
“It’s one thing to have a discussion forum, even a sneak preview might be acceptable. But anything more than that is wrong. “
Rule Governed behaviour tells us this is wrong because law tells us so or society deems it so. A lot, of things are and have been considered immoral, evil, wrong, illegal for no other reason than it was deemed so by someone in a greater position of power. The internet does blur alot of lines on things like copyright and in the past few years laws are trying to catch up. Add that through the internet, people from multiple countries are involved, and things get more confused. That being said, theft has and will I imagine, be generally agreed to as being “wrong” regardless of law. Our problem here is defining what was theft. “previews” as you say are acceptable (and Fair Use agrees to an extent), but what makes something a preview and not a spoiler? Laws are neatest when things are measurable. “Did you walk out of the store with the product without paying? Theft.” and we’re done. But now we’re trying to say you can walk out of the store with “some” of the product, but no more than that. A sort of taste test, but the tester can fail? Maybe the analogy is getting away from me, but when opinion starts to get mixed in with law, obviously arguements shall follow.
What I’ve never understood was the notion that scans online are worse than used comic shops. Multiple people reading one comic with no additional profit to the copyright holders except for the hopes that knowledge of past issues may encourage them to buy new ones. Is it the scale? I’m sure a scan on the internet will see far more traffic than a used paperback, but is it the amount of people that read the comic what shifts it to being wrong?
(In hoping the “motto” holds true)
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@ true2myart
“It’s one thing to have a discussion forum, even a sneak preview might be acceptable. But anything more than that is wrong. “
Rule Governed behaviour tells us this is wrong because law tells us so or society deems it so. A lot, of things are and have been considered immoral, evil, wrong, illegal for no other reason than it was deemed so by someone in a greater position of power. The internet does blur alot of lines on things like copyright and in the past few years laws are trying to catch up. Add that through the internet, people from multiple countries are involved, and things get more confused. That being said, theft has and will I imagine, be generally agreed to as being “wrong” regardless of law. Our problem here is defining what was theft. “previews” as you say are acceptable (and Fair Use agrees to an extent), but what makes something a preview and not a spoiler? Laws are neatest when things are measurable. “Did you walk out of the store with the product without paying? Theft.” and we’re done. But now we’re trying to say you can walk out of the store with “some” of the product, but no more than that. A sort of taste test, but the tester can fail? Maybe the analogy is getting away from me, but when opinion starts to get mixed in with law, obviously arguements shall follow.
What I’ve never understood was the notion that scans online are worse than used comic shops. Multiple people reading one comic with no additional profit to the copyright holders except for the hopes that knowledge of past issues may encourage them to buy new ones. Is it the scale? I’m sure a scan on the internet will see far more traffic than a used paperback, but is it the amount of people that read the comic what shifts it to being wrong?
(In hoping the “motto” holds true)
@ Chris Scott
“Eh, there’s a considerable difference between using a group’s services to do copywright infringing, and using a group specifically set up in order to do so. If Kinkos (i’m guessing a store of some kind, American maybe?) had signs up suggesting it to people, and racks of already copied material next to the copier, then I imagine it would be easier to make a case against them as at least the equivalent of an accessory.”
Kinkos is an American Business that makes, among other things, copies. They have various stores set up across the nation where there are a bunch of copy machines set up for making copies. They also do copies for various businesses. As for your analogy, neither Kinkos nor Live Journal have signs up stating that people should copy and distribute copyrighted material.
It’s a big complicated issue. Made more so by the fact that, at least with regard to the internet, most of this material is not being “sold.” Though I suppose you can make an argument that money is coming in from other sources (i.e. advertisements) and that the copyright holders should be entitled to those funds. I dunno. Is the internet that different that our laws in the “physical” world should act differently when applied “digitally?”
I fully support PAD in reporting Scans Daily. From my experience with SD, most of the “reviews” were a line followed by the pages. Those hardly could be considered a review.
People claim that they use SD for deciding whether not not to buy a series. In the case of the X-Factor issue, there already WAS a preview of that issue out. It is not as if they couldn’t decide from the preview Marvel gave out.
Comic companies and their creators should have a say in when and how many pages they use for preview material.
Luigi Novi: And indeed, Marvel wasn’t responsible for taking down the site. Photo Bucket was. Peter mentioned this explicitly.
Actually Peter guessed thats what happened, considering SD users having been using Photo Bucket for a long time with no problem and since Marvel has been aggressive with questionable copyright claims, I would almost guarantee that Marvel’s legal department was involved.
Gosh, some people sure get mad when you take away their free stuff, even when that stuff is illegal.
I had heard about Scans Daily several times, but never went there. How did I find out about new comics that might be good? I found reviews of the books and noted the ratings that the books got. If 3 different reviewers had the same feelings about a book, I knew whether to seek out a book or not. There was no need to read the entire review before reading the book, just the rating. After I read the book, I would then return to the review for detailed opinion.
Movie trailers are paid advertisements made to perhaps attract the viewer into going to the theater. What point would it be to watch a 15-minutes recap of the movie before going to see the movie? Why destroy the viewing experience by knowing the entire movie before you saw it?
The same is true for comic books. Why know the whole story before you read it? A story is made to cause an emotional involvement. If you already know the story, your involvement won’t be the same as is you were reading it for the first time.
I own more issues of your comics than I can count. I never would have bought a single one if it hadn’t been for Scans Daily. I never would have bought any comics at all if it hadn’t been for Scans Daily. I wonder how many future comic fans will now never exist because of this.
It’s amazing how many people have stopped in to comment on copyright law that have never examined copyright law.
@Peter Block
Kinkos is an American Business that makes, among other things, copies. They have various stores set up across the nation where there are a bunch of copy machines set up for making copies. They also do copies for various businesses. As for your analogy, neither Kinkos nor Live Journal have signs up stating that people should copy and distribute copyrighted material.
Ta for the info on Kinkos. Yes, Livejournal have no such signs, but s_d itself could be said to have the digital equivalent of signs suggesting scans, to the extent that analogy holds. s_d wasn’t simply a resource for copying, but a storage for it, as well.
Jenny: “And how he embarrassed the community was by getting upset over a comment from some idiot, and it resulted in a community that a lot of people will miss.”
Two points.
(1) You need to reread and actually understand what was said by Peter here. He didn’t do anything at all because of what one poster said to him. Hëll, he gets flamed by the odd troll here and their posts, even three year old ones, can still be found all over this site. If it was just criticism that upset him; don’t you think that the posts like that on his own site, where he can delete or edit as he wishes with minimal effort, would all be gone? They’re still here.
Hëll, I’ve seen him get completely flamed by reviewers and fans alike on CBR and Aint It Cool and their reviews and criticisms stayed in place as well. There was a guy who came here and was a total ášš one time. He runs a She Hulk fan site. He got his feelings hurt and turned his site, whenever posting a review of Peter’s work on the book, into a slag on Peter site. Peter and Glenn both know about the guy. His posts still exist on this site, his reviews still exist on his and the few images from Marvel’s She Hulk that he posted with the criticisms still exist as well since he didn’t overdo the use of the copyrighted material.
Peter reacted, from my reading, to what looked like posts on SD where too much of a given comic, some new, were being posted free online. There’s a limit to how much can and cannot be shown for even general review purposes. He then contacted the legal owner of the material so that they could review the situation.
(2) Peter didn’t really do anything. The owners of the site killed the things before Marvel looked into it. Maybe DC or some other company had already spoken to them about it. Besides that, even it it had been Peter who caused the site to be taken down it’s still not Peter’s fault.
(A) The site owners should have been aware of what they could allow people to do on their website. That’s part of what goes into doing a site like that.
(B) The site owners pulled that section of the site down and closed it and no one else. And, they didn’t even have to do it. The site owners are the idiots here. If the issue was that too much copyrighted material was being posted to fall under fair use; they only needed to have those images pulled down, explain to users that no more than three to five pages (or whatever Marvel, DC, etc said was fair use) could be posted from that point forward and enforced that rule by deleting posts/threads that refused to abide by that rule.
Scans Daily killed that forum by, from what facts we have right now, either over reacting or just thinking that it was too big of a bother to treat their users with some level of respect. If you want to cry about it and vent your anger at someone you should do it to them.
(or whatever Marvel, DC, etc said was fair use)
I didn’t know corporations got to decide what the law was.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
NOT
Poc hoc ergo propeter hoc
If you’re going to use Latin, please google it and use the right Latin.
Wow. So this wound up turning into something like a full out verbal brawl with very few people actually listening. Peter, Kathy, I’m very sorry about that.
I came back because I realized I’d forgotten to add something. Regardless of of what becomes of scans_daily and its supporters, those of us who have been reading comics before the internet made them downloadable will continue reading. The hundreds, thousands, of fans who attend comic conventions every year and have followed these characters since they were children will continue reading. The loss of one website is not going to make or break anyone’s career and the fact that the website broke LAWS was what caused it to be pulled down. So its supporters really only have themselves to blame, if they really cared about it and what it represented they wouldn’t have let the website degenerate to the state it was in before someone else cared enough to take notice.
And I stand by my assessment that there are plenty of websites out there where readers can obtain previews and excellent detailed information without stealing, again if anyone cares enough about their comic readings to find them. If the artists mattered to you you’d want to support them, not steal from them.
That’s all.
Kit: “Go ahead and cry copyright violation all you want. In that case find a lawyer and have them argue it for you against the company. Or, did you think to act like a decent human being, contact a mod, and say “I don’t want my work shown here”? Because I’m sure the moderating team would have respected your wishes, and it probably would have kept many now former readers of yours quite happy.”
Kit, you need to learn how to read and, more importantly, understand and comprehend what you’re reading. Peter contacted Marvel and not the mods himself because it was Marvel’s property that he saw and not his own. As he stated above; he would have contacted them directly had it been Fallen Angel since he is the copyright holder of that book.
You also seemed to have missed the bit where SD killed the forum before Marvel ever did anything about it. That would seem to indicate that someone other than Peter caused the forum to be closed.
Also, as I pointed out a few moments ago, SD killed the forum and no one else. They could have removed the images, requested the posters to remove the images, set a limit to how much of any one comic could be posted, enforced that limit from this day forward and only deleted people trying to skirt the newer restrictions and not delete the entire forum.
Aint It Cool News runs into something like this all the time. They get images or video that they put up as previews and get contacted by studios and requested to remove the stuff as it’s not approved for release or other reasons. Harry and crew do so without deleting any of the write up or the discussion thread. SD chose to take a more drastic, or more lazy, course of action. Their choice, their fault and no one else is to blame for it.
Jerry Chandler – SD and the mods (and I’ve spoken to all three) did not kill itself.
LJ killed it.