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
• 
Betsi: “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. “
Yeah, Betsi, I wonder. Of course, the periods of the comic book industry’s greatest sales figures all all happened pre-internet. Even the giant speculator boom of the late 80’s and early 90’s only existed with print reviews and word of mouth. Geez…
Jerry Chandler – It’s not SD it’s live journal… Scans Daily was simply a community that was part of live journal. The fact that your confused about what the site actually was isn’t helping your arguments.
tru2myart: the fact that the website broke LAWS was what caused it to be pulled down
Please explain what laws were violated and how you arrived at this conclusion.
Jerry Chandler: SD killed the forum before Marvel ever did anything about it
Actually if you read carefully you find only the offending entry was removed. I’m still giving even odds Marvel legal sent a letter to LJ and that’s what killed SD.
“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.”
And so the demonisation of those creators who dare defend their work from copyright violation continues.
Because of course, “thinking to act like a decent human being” involves NOT exercising your right to protect your IP.
Amazingly enough, he didn’t HAVE to go “find a lawyer”. the system in place put there by sites such as live journal did what it was supposed to.
Presumably you only need a lawyer for all those pesky eastern countries that ignore copyright law, even though they don’t. Oh wait, they do….according to RIAA statistics.
Thank goodness for wholly unbiased statistics from corporations with a vested interest in presenting the rest of the word outside america as an unlawful mess.
Where would we be without them?
@Jerry
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.
You’re misunderstanding, I think. s_d, or the moderators of s_d, didn’t shut themeselves down. Livejournal itself suspended it. As far as your other comments, there was indeed a limit to the amount of one comic that could be posted, which was enforced, usually with the very methods you describe here. Again, the choice to delete the either thing was not s_d’s, but Livejournal’s.
“LJ killed it.”
Sorry. Brain fart. Meant to do Live Journal and just substituted Scans Daily since that’s what was in front of me on the monitor. Quite right. My screw up.
Blame Live Journal for overreacting and not Peter or anyone else.
Thanks for catching that and mentioning it, Cameron.
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.
Except the tiny little detail that no more than half a comic was permitted to the posted, and if two separate posters put up more than that one would be advised to remove pages. And the mods were looking into reducing the number of pages from a single story permitted.
You may not have liked how SD was talking about you and your work, but don’t misrepresent what it did or was.
Your “theory” about photobucket complaining is weak. Photobucket is a hosting site, not the copyright owners. They would have no legitimate claim to complain to lj about how PB users are using PB’s services(posting pb hosted images on lj) They wouldn’t care where people are displaying the images and would only removed them if some-one complained to PB about the images being on PB’s servers..
I’ve never seen what was posted at scans_daily.
From what I’m seeing/hearing, a bunch of (predominantly) young people were having a really great party, but some of them got more than a bit loud and rowdy and the cops closed the party down. There’s now a whole lotta whining and bìŧçhìņg going on…
Folks, next time there’s a party, don’t let it get out of hand. Simple as that.
Cheers.
From what I’m seeing/hearing, a bunch of (predominantly) young people were having a really great party, but some of them got more than a bit loud and rowdy and the cops closed the party down. There’s now a whole lotta whining and bìŧçhìņg going on…
And you would be wrong. I love how people who never visited SD are judging its merits and legality.
@Axolotl_lan
“But now we’re trying to say you can walk out of the store with “some” of the product, but no more than that.”
No. Using Borders as an example, you can preview a song, get a taste for it and buy it if you choose. You couldn’t walk out of a store with a partial copy of a cd or movie, that would still be considered theft. But to hear a bit of the song, to see a piece of a movie, to get that taste and see if you like it, that’s good salesmanship. Previews of other movies at the movie theatre, the small bit of songs you get from Itunes, even videos shown released by musicians to their music blogs, good salesmanship. I don’t think I have to point out why that’s acceptable and, say, filming a newly released movie and selling it to the public isn’t.
“What I’ve never understood was the notion that scans online are worse than used comic shops.”
You make a valid point. But keep in mind that even with a used comic shop there was a profit for the artist when the comic was originally bought. They made the sale they intended to make. I’ll use my paintings as an example. If I sell my work I made my profit. If the person who bought my painting then resells it I consider that their right, I sold that one piece of property, that particular piece of canvas. However, I didn’t sell to them the right to make photocopies of my work and sell them at a profit to the public. The idea, concept and art is mine, even if the canvas no longer is. They were given the right to do what they wanted with the item I sold them and ONLY with the item I sold them. Not to duplicate and sell my work on behalf of me as if the concept belonged to them.
I don’t think it’s the amount of people who read the comic that makes the difference. To be given a preview of the item to entice new readers is o.k. But to copy the property and distribute it to others as if you owned the work? That’s wrong.
I found your work through SD. However, I do believe that they got caught up in their “rebel without a pause” stance, and that was reckless. As writers of fanfiction and other Internet users all know, you don’t flaunt your fun, or tweak the nose of the owners. They were clearly moving from, “Hey, this is COOL, have you bought it?” to “Hey, this is cool, I can post it here for free.”.
Artists deserve to be paid for their work. If you love the creation, then recognize that the creator needs to pay his bills, too, and buy it.
That being said, in fairness, going to Marvel without first trying to find resolution with the moderators of the community was fairly…well…wanky. Those are fans, there, some of whom were doing no wrong. Perhaps killing flies with hammers is legal or even your right, but it seems quite disrespectful to the good, rule abiding, comic fans who enjoyed fellowship there. Just because you have a legal pit bull doesn’t mean you should set it loose at the first sign of butthurt, unless you really want to be known as the Anne Rice of the comic fan world?
“Except the tiny little detail that no more than half a comic was permitted to the posted”
Which is a bit excessive. Most review sites are kept to about five pages. Most review releases that I’ve seen for print media are about five pages as well. Half the book usually doesn’t fly.
“You may not have liked how SD was talking about you and your work, but don’t misrepresent what it did or was.”
And yet millions of posts exist here and elsewhere, many that Peter are well aware of, that are extremely critical of Peter the writer and Peter the man and he’s not had anyone do anything to any one of them. You think that maybe you all are really starting to look dumb by constantly barking up that wrong tree over and over again, Sparky?
Dear PAD,
As someone who tended to frequent scans_daily, the community did have a lot of positive and negative aspects, and attempting to paint it one way, in either direction, is silly. Especially on your part since all you had was one experience of the place to go on.
It was the place where people got introduced to series from smaller publishers. It was the place where new issues got spoiled minutes after the books hit the shelves. It was the place where older stories were celebrated and enjoyed, some newer ones were either worshipped or pilloried, stories were debated about by fans, and occasionally a creator would stop by to comment on/defend their work.
In short, it was a place where people could present and talk about stories that they liked, present and bìŧçh about stories that they didn’t like, and present and debate all the stories in between.
Personally, I liked the place. It introduced me to books like Empowered, Phonogram, Incredible Hercules, Street Fighter, and Globan Frequency. It also let me keep up with events like Secret Invasion, and Final Crisis without having to waste money on them and their 10,000 tie-in issues.
I buy the books that I like, support some indy books that don’t get much love over at cbr and newsarama, and I don’t have to buy ten books that I don’t like just to keep up with what’s going on in the marvel universe at the moment. It saved me a ton of effort since my nearest comic shop is an hour away, and it’s way easier on the wallet.
It’s a terrible thing that the place is gone now.
Sincerely,
William O. Green Jr.
PS: As for people being rude? It’s the internet. That happens. But if you thought that being Peter A. David gave you an automatic level of respect in a place like scans_daily… man were you wrong. I didn’t get a chance to read the exchange you had there, but I can tell you that if you don’t have a relationship with the people there, anything remotely negative you say will be returned at least a dozen times over.
PPS: Also, I should mention, there was the s_d spin-off community of fullscans_daily, also on livejournal, which posted entire issues of comics, but that got shut down soon after it launched.
Except the tiny little detail that no more than half a comic was permitted to the posted, and if two separate posters put up more than that one would be advised to remove pages. And the mods were looking into reducing the number of pages from a single story permitted.
There’s a reason that 4 to 5 pages of publisher-provided preview has become the standard. It ends up being about 20 percent of the overall comic. As a librarian who has staff making copies all day for document delivery and interlibrary loan purposes, I can tell you that anything much higher than that is pushing it.
Half a comic? I don’t care if you’ve written the best review on the planet and posted it on a site for illiterate children to encourage them to read, you’ve violated the owner’s copyright.
“I didn’t get a chance to read the exchange you had there, but I can tell you that if you don’t have a relationship with the people there, anything remotely negative you say will be returned at least a dozen times over.”
But if you DO have such a relationship, you’ll apparently get defended to the death and beyond.
@Rob
“tru2myart: the fact that the website broke LAWS was what caused it to be pulled down
Please explain what laws were violated and how you arrived at this conclusion.”
(From Wikipedia for lack of a more clearly defined definition) Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.
I keep seeing commenters say “Only HALF of the comic was posted”. Fine. I’m not entirely certain what constitutes a preview but the logical side of my brain says it’s not HALF an entire comic book and then detailed information within the same post on the rest of the comic book. Having said that, in my opinion it constitutes copyright infringement based on the definition above (still looking for a better definition).
Of course I’m not a lawyer by any means but as a reasonably intelligent adult and an artist it only makes sense.
I don’t see how getting rid of SD will have any impact on sales at all. People who want to pirate comics can do so from thousands of other websites- scanned, packaged, and uploaded the same day they come out. Why would they bother saving eight or nine images from SD, containing only a sample of the story?
Like it or not, it did gather together comics from all places and introduce thousands upon thousands of readers to titles they had never heard of. Reading and taking part in a passionate and lively interactive discussion between people who genuinely love their comics piques the interest much more than a biased synopsis or a short review. My local comics book store recommended the site to me, clearly realising it would not stop me buying from them, and plenty of people in the business were known to frequent it.
I don’t think PAD is entirely to blame for it. I can’t shake off the feeling that it may have been part of a grudge, given how he has repeatedly mentioned how unpleasant he found the community, but regardless, I have known other people to get the wrong impression when they first come across SD, and assume it supports piracy. Contacting LJ may not have been the best response, but ultimately, the decision to suspend the community lay with them.
I think the real problem is LJ panicking and overreacting, as they have done before with Harry Potter fan communities- deleting hundreds without checking them after an outside party claimed they were a hotbed of paedophilia. The energy expended here would be better channelled into contacting LJ and explaining that no entire issues were being shared, and perhaps implementing the decision that was already in the works to further reduce the page limit, just to be on the safe side. That would satisfy the fans, and once again restore an extremely popular source of free promotion and feedback for the industry.
I really hope it comes back. I have tried other communities, but SD was the perfect place for me- interactive, a large female and GLBT presence, welcoming, and a good mixture of the latest news and previews, together with old stories or silly little panels that I would never have seen otherwise.
And you would be wrong. I love how people who never visited SD are judging its merits and legality.
Okay, I went there a few times when someone linked to a page when discussing things elsewhere. Twice I went there and found person A posting the first half of a book and followed a second link to find that person B had posted the second half of the book.
Did that go on all of the time? Can’t say as I didn’t frequent the site all that much, but I saw way more than what falls under fair use whenever I looked in following a link.
PAD,
A correction. Scans of comic book pages have been around for at least 10 years if not more. If sales have just started to slack off in the past five, perhaps fingers should be pointed in a different direction. I’d suggest looking at the quality being presented, the lack of basic storytelling skills in (some) artists and writers, the lack of any apparent editorial guidance other than “put Wolverine [for example] in the story”, or maybe the “dwindling amount of story in” vs “the increasing cost of” the average comic.
We’re out of the Bush regime. It’s time to step up and take responsibility. If the product isn’t selling, maybe it’s a problem with the product, not some outside “boogey-man”.
–Ed
tru2myart
We have this thing in IP law called fair use, simply put a copyright holder doesn’t have absolute rights to their work.
Jerry Chandler but I saw way more than what falls under fair use whenever I looked in following a link.
Did you go to law school Jerry, because I did and even though I don’t do IP, I remember that fair use is like pornography. The court is very squishy about what is and isn’t it.
Wiki page is fixed. Peter. Best to you and Kathleen.
Okay, I went there a few times when someone linked to a page when discussing things elsewhere. Twice I went there and found person A posting the first half of a book and followed a second link to find that person B had posted the second half of the book.
BTW, I visited SD everyday and I can’t ever recall seeing that situation.
I own a comicbook shop in my town, and from now on I’m not carrying any of Peter’s books any more. Not that it would matter, since no one buys them anyway.
I own a comicbook shop in my town, and from now on I’m not carrying any of Peter’s books any more. Not that it would matter, since no one buys them anyway.
Rob
I have to ask, are you an artist? Of any kind? Musician, comic book, writer?
Do you understand the impact to an artist whose work is stolen and then has someone tell them that “it’s o.k. because we have fair use laws, so we can just take your work, do whatever we want with it and complain when you tell us it’s not right”?
And in response to fair use laws:
One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords.
Let’s be sure we’re being specific here, I don’t remember anyone asking Peter’s permission.
“”Dear PAD,
As someone who tended to frequent scans_daily, the community did have a lot of positive and negative aspects, and attempting to paint it one way, in either direction, is silly. Especially on your part since all you had was one experience of the place to go on.
It was the place where people got introduced to series from smaller publishers. It was the place where new issues got spoiled minutes after the books hit the shelves. It was the place where older stories were celebrated and enjoyed, some newer ones were either worshipped or pilloried, stories were debated about by fans, and occasionally a creator would stop by to comment on/defend their work.
In short, it was a place where people could present and talk about stories that they liked, present and bìŧçh about stories that they didn’t like, and present and debate all the stories in between.
Personally, I liked the place. It introduced me to books like Empowered, Phonogram, Incredible Hercules, Street Fighter, and Globan Frequency. It also let me keep up with events like Secret Invasion, and Final Crisis without having to waste money on them and their 10,000 tie-in issues.
I buy the books that I like, support some indy books that don’t get much love over at cbr and newsarama, and I don’t have to buy ten books that I don’t like just to keep up with what’s going on in the marvel universe at the moment. It saved me a ton of effort since my nearest comic shop is an hour away, and it’s way easier on the wallet.
It’s a terrible thing that the place is gone now.
Sincerely,
William O. Green Jr.
PS: As for people being rude? It’s the internet. That happens. But if you thought that being Peter A. David gave you an automatic level of respect in a place like scans_daily… man were you wrong. I didn’t get a chance to read the exchange you had there, but I can tell you that if you don’t have a relationship with the people there, anything remotely negative you say will be returned at least a dozen times over.
PPS: Also, I should mention, there was the s_d spin-off community of fullscans_daily, also on livejournal, which posted entire issues of comics, but that got shut down soon after it launched. “”
THIS.
And there’s a growing example of the good the community did in promoting books:
http://community.livejournal.com/noscans_daily/1065.html?page=1#comments
I encourage anyone who has bought books because of exposure on Scans Daily to add their own post.
OMG PETER DAVID BROKED TEH INTERNETS!!!!! NOW ALL TEH INTERNETS ARE ALL GONE FOREVER AND THERE’S NOTHING LEFT BUT LOLCATS AND SANDY DUNCAN FAN PAGES!!!!
Sorry you’re taking such a hit here, Mr. David. I bet you have some dámņëd interesting/annoying panels in your future. For what it’s worth, I for one would trade a good 99% of teh aforementioned internets for your run on the Hulk (though I’d ask you to also throw in at least one issue of Captain Marvel where Marlo makes out with Moondragon.)
=S9C=
Wow. I’ll try to come at this from the angle of a neutral observer, in that I have never looked at the site in question.
This screams to me as good intentions gone wrong. The concept behind the resource in question seems fair, it appears that matters simply escalated to where the behavior became legally questionable.
What can we take from this? There’s a clear niche for this type of service, if some checks and balances are put into place, it can be a valuable resource for both fans and professionals.
So, instead of trying to point fingers at who was to blame – which will probably never be clearly determined – why not put those energies into play into rebuilding a site that plays by the rules.
Put a limit on pages per issue (15% of total?) that can be posted. Allow an easy manner for copyright holders to request work be removed, and quickly do so on request. Play by the rules and you might see the actual publishers provide content for review. The potential is clearly here, heck if I had the time I’d do it, but I don’t.
Anyone here who does?
tru2myart
Like I imagine many of the visitors to PAD’s website I am a writer but it’s not my day job. As far as stealing, if I broke a record of Beethoven’s 5th symphony into concentric pieces and then I gave you the opening and the finale, and told you that in between was some of the most incredible music you have ever heard, would that be stealing. Would that be a substitute for listening to the entire thing, or would that inspire you to go out an buy your own copy. That’s what SD was, despite attempts here to paint it as something else, it was a site for people who loved comics to encourage other people to get the things they loved and avoid things they hate.
As far as fair use goes, no one has to ask the copyright holder’s permission with fair use, and the idea that SD destroyed any value of their creation is preposterous. If the only thing that creates sales is unexpected plot twists that have to be carefully guarded, then the writer isn’t doing their job.
Rob: “Did you go to law school Jerry, because I did and even though I don’t do IP, I remember that fair use is like pornography. The court is very squishy about what is and isn’t it.”
Law school? No. Legal training? Yes. Specifically in the area of copyright? No. Dealing with some related statutes? Yes. Been a part of a case that dealt with unauthorized sales/reproduction of copyrighted materials? Twice.
Rule of thumb to not get your butt in a sling follow the rules that most of the owners of the materials have people who come to them for the rights to use the material do. Most professional preview sites and publications do no more than five pages for a reason. That’s all that they’re allowed to use by the copyright owners. And when the owners let them have, say, ten pages? You’ve never noticed what a big deal the site or publication makes of that? They’ve got an exclusive look at a whole TEN pages of a book!
As someone who claimed to be a librarian said above; even libraries watch how much they copy so that they don’t get into legal issues with the owners of the works. Fan magazines and sites that became professional sites over the years all scaled back what they did because, once they got on the radar, they were… requested… to limit future reproductions of works to only so many pages. That so many, from reading a lot of review sites over the years, is usually no more than three to five.
But I could be wrong. Hëll, Peter probably has Maggie Thompson on speed dial. I’m sure she can speak far more definitively about what comic book companies will and will not legally allow publications and sites to reproduce. She’s been doing it for years. But we shouldn’t need to get her word on it. Again, just look at what’s the norm for most of the review sites that are regularly on Marvel and DC’s radars. I’d tend to think that there’s a reason that three to five pages of material is the common standard.
You know what, that comm worshipped PAD. Absolutely worshipped him to the point where I personally found it nauseating, even though I’ve been reading his varied resume since I was a preteen nerd. But the point is, they LOVED him there. Some of us (including me) took issue with the X-Factor twist, finding it to be lame, and a couple people were downright apeshit, but those few bad apples were apeshit about everything from Final Crisis to Young X-Men.
This response was not warranted or applicable to the situation. Enough creators visited s_d to know it was one of the most powerful free advertising tools comics have today. I can’t count the amount of new and old books, writers, companies, etc I’ve gotten into because of the comm. Much of PAD’s more obscure work included – like Captain Marvel, which I now love. Because s_d loved it. Because they posted and discussed it so much. Like Young Justice. Like his Hulk.
All that goodwill is gone now. There was a HUGE PAD worship society there. They won’t be supporting X-Factor now. I know I won’t. And maybe in its own weird little way, or maybe not, the loss of s_d is going to hurt sales, and it’s especially going to hurt those wonderful non-“Wizard Top 10” creators, new and old, whose work we don’t always get to see otherwise. Paul Cornell. Keith Giffen. Abnett/Lanning. Ann Nocenti. J.M. DeMatteis. Priest. And yes, PAD.
Walter: “I own a comicbook shop in my town, and from now on I’m not carrying any of Peter’s books any more. Not that it would matter, since no one buys them anyway.”
Really, Walter? What’s the name of the shop. Only fair of you to say. Peter has the guts to put his name behind anything he says or does so why can’t you do the same?
As I said, I don’t do IP but if memory serves me correctly one of the key questions in fair use cases was if the use destroyed or damaged the marketability of creation. I don’t think SD did, but that goes back to my statement about writing quality. If you buy comics just to see what happens next than yes, SD probably wasn’t fair use. If you actually bought them to read a story than I think it probably was.
Peter I posted your blog on this issue on CBR to get your side of the story out. I should have gotten your permission but I didn’t want to wait because it is getting ugly over there and I am afraid that there might be some kind of backlash against you.
In a related issue, do you guys think that illegal downloading will increase now that Scans daily is out of the picture? I hope not because my local comic book shop dealer, who has been in business for over twenty years, is convinced the torrents are going to the final nail in the coffin that kills distribution of comics as we know it.
“As far as fair use goes, no one has to ask the copyright holder’s permission with fair use,”
Oh, you’re absolutely right there. You don’t have to go ask Mother-May-I if you use just enough to fall under fair use. It would be a nightmare for the copyright holders if every person doing a review did that. But, again, there is a general rule of thumb for what falls under fair use when printing pages from a comic book as a part of a review or discussion and it has never ever to my knowledge been half of the book.
Again, there’s probably a good reason why most professional sites and publications keep it down to three to five pages.
I am one of the people that are trying to ‘get back’ into things. Music, comics, ect. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of money to blow on things, especially if I don’t like 99% of it. I’ll also let you know I’m NOT a S_D member. But I COULD’VE been. I’ve found sites that offer ‘samples’ be they full pages, reviews, single songs, ect (NOT full books, albums, ect) allow me to explore different artists and mediums and then invest in those I find I like. And I’ll add my voice to the others saying times are changing. These things are expensive and there will ALWAYS be ways to obtain them for free. But if S_D wasn’t even posting the whole darn thing what was the big deal? It’s free publicity. Our media is very expansive. Now we have media from other countries, other times, and grassroots sources available. It is impossible for things to stay the same. It sounds more to me like someone said something you didn’t like and you took it personally. Whoo. Grow up, as a professional writer IT HAPPENS. People are going to disagree, it’s called life. They are allowed to review for better or worse, and may even help you refocus on what you are writing. What I will personally take from this incident is your name and attitude and actions presented towards this. Which is negative. I understand the frustration of fans feeling entitled to your work, especially for free. I would feel upset. But you also seem to feel entitled to your fans. Which you are not, they are allowed to disagree and review your work. I’m pretty sure from other sites links and even other writers including S-D in reference that Marvel knew about the site. It will be hard to prove S_D’s contribution either for positive or negative but it seems that a lot of people need it for referring to new series which as a main focus for people to gather, will be lost. And that is a loss for me as well. I was looking forward to caching up with old friends like Spiderman and X-Men, but with the constant stream of stories will be hard and expensive as well as frustrating on my own. So here is a sarcastic gee thanks to people like you. I will note your name to avoid. Artists like you do not need ~my~ support.
UGH! My favorite writer got my favorite community on live journal shut down.. who should I be mad at? HELP!
Rob: “BTW, I visited SD everyday and I can’t ever recall seeing that situation. “
i wasn’t saying that it was done on purpose or maliciously, Rob. The few times I saw anything like that it seemed to be the case of one person posting the first half a book and talking about how great it was and what a cool fight/twist/whatever happened later on, someone else separately raving about the same book and posting the buildup and cool fight/twist/whatever by posting the second half and then a third party somewhere finding them and linking to them with a ‘Hey, you don’t even have to buy it now’ type of post. Poster A and poster B weren’t working together to get around the rules.
But if others found that and posted links then others may have seen it and that eventually started some bad attention. Combine that with the fact that lots of people, as users of the site have said themselves, put up a full half of a book… Not a good combination. It wouldn’t have taken much to get it zapped.
Keep in mind as well that a link to a post including half of a brand new book was put on CBR just before this happened. The odds of the people who would take action at seeing it was greatly increased by that.
mj: This response was not warranted or applicable to the situation.
What response is that, mj? Shutting down the site? PAD didn’t do that. PAD alerted Marvel that someone was violating the copyright. That’s all he did and it was completely warranted and applicable to the situation.
If anyone doesn’t like what Photobucket did, they have every right to be angry with them. But don’t blame PAD for something that someone else did.
Rob:
So as a writer, even a part time one, you of all people should understand the feeling behind this entire conversation.
Per your example, I have to go back to what I stated earlier, how much of the beginning and end, how much of the detail? When you’re literally bordering on giving the entire song what’s the point in buying the song itself? Where do you draw the line between previewing and taking liberties? I don’t know.
And yes, actually, you do have to ask permission of the copyright holder. The quote I gave you was from the U.S. Copyright Office:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
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…”
It’s not that it’s the only place to learn about new comics, but why shouldn’t someone tell the truth if S_D was the reason they bought more comics and now they probably won’t? Not everybody is specifically seeking out sites to tell them what new comics are out. There are other ways to find out about movies coming out than seeing previews before other movies; that doesn’t mean if they stopped running those coming attractions everyone who would have seen them will run to the proper web sites.
If something’s illegal, it’s illegal and I can deal with that reality. But the fact is, the set up and conversation there did draw me more into comics in ways that other sites. That’s just true for me. Although having more scans is sometimes more helpful because there’s more to talk about, I have no trouble with the only things posted from current issues being, for instance, the previews put up elsewhere. That doesn’t cover the many older comics that got posted, sometimes to give context to modern stories you couldn’t get otherwise. The conversations that I had there–apparently completely unlike the horrible experience PAD had (which I didn’t see) is what drew me into the community and made me want to read the comics.
I do find it a little odd that spoilers are being considered copyright infringement. Can’t people on the internet have conversations where they say what happened in a book, for instance? Or a movie? People do that on other comic boards I’ve read that have no scans at all.
To sum up: I didn’t find my new and old comics to buy because S_D was the only place that talked about new (or old) comics. I bought the new and old comics because S_D, however much it’s being dismissed, really does have a unique way of making the comic experience more enjoyable.
I think it could still do it with smaller numbers of actual scans allowed. I think it’s silly to suggest nobody on it can talk about what happened in the comic they just read, however.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
You do realise, Mr. David, that 90% of the comics I currently purchase are comics I was introduced to on scans_daily? So by “putting Marvel on the scent” you have effectively killed one of the best advertisements for your product.
I do have to admit I had no idea who you were until this all happened, though. Another thing I’ve learned thanks to S_D is that there are other publishers than Marvel and DC who don’t put out rather banal and dull comics. Having perused your resume, I find you wrote several ST:TNG books I read as a teenager. Now I understand; you really aren’t interested in appealing to my demographic seeing as I am a female aged 18-34 with postgraduate education and no children and you from what I’ve seen you cannot write a female character to save yourself.
Okay… I’ll say two things one last time and then leave the discussion alone for a bit.
1: Peter didn’t get the forum shut down. Neither did Marvel for that matter. When people are posting copyrighted material on a website and the legal copyright holder takes action (at least for the first time) it is usually in the form of requesting that the offending material be scaled back to acceptable levels or removed entirely. That does not mean killing a website completely or shutting down and deleting a forum outright.
If you wish to make a complaint or hold a grudge; take it up with the site owners for taking the lazy way out.
2: A number of you people showing up here for the first time are making yourselves look really stupid. If you think that this was about someone saying bad things about Peter or his work; how is it that posts like that still exist here form years ago and that forums still exist all over the web that he is very much aware of?
Hëll, how am I still here on his site? I like most of his work, but I’ve said before that some of his work just didn’t do it for me. I’ve agreed with his opinions, but I’ve flat out stated before that some of his observations were anything from a little weak to flat out dumb. Somehow, despite my not being 100% universally supportive and full of praise I’ve never been banned from the site or had my a, e, i, o or u’s taken away from me.
If you’re focusing your anger on him under the idea that he did it because his ego won’t allow for negative comments about him or his work to remain in electronic print if he can do something about it… You’re talking out of your áššëš.
Green –
As for people being rude? It’s the internet. That happens. But if you thought that being Peter A. David gave you an automatic level of respect in a place like scans_daily… man were you wrong. I didn’t get a chance to read the exchange you had there, but I can tell you that if you don’t have a relationship with the people there, anything remotely negative you say will be returned at least a dozen times over.
Being PAD doesn’t give him an automatic level of respect – being human does. Or apparently we’ve all sunk so low on the internet that it’s perfectly acceptable to tell someone to DIE IN A FIRE simply because of something they wrote in a comic book that you didn’t agree with.
If people want to freak about this, maybe they would do well to talk to that original poster who started the storm?
That poster never in a million years would have had the guts to say something like that to PAD’s face, but for some reason the internet it’s business as usual.
S_D got shut down because of copyright violation. The CV was brought to the attention of Live Journal or whomever was responsible because someone couldn’t put a stop to the stupidity coming out of their fingertips.
Honestly people, if anything is to be learned from this it’s take a dámņëd minute to THINK about what you’re saying before you pop off.
I would have NEVER bought many of the comics I own now if not for that community.
You know, I’m hearing a lot of people saying scans_daily was a pirate site. I’m going to have to disagree with that . I’m sure we can split hairs, but honestly? There are pirate sites out there. They’re not very hard to find, actually. With S_D there was a definite effort from (most) people posting to get people to go out and buy stuff. It was also a place to get people to try new and lesser-known things by way of samples. The reality of the situation is that very few people were using it as a way to get “free comics”. Why would anyone go to a guy that will give you at most half a song, and describe the rest, when there are places where you can get the full thing?
People just interested in getting “free stuff” are going to find pirate sites to get it. But when they do, it won’t be from a site going “you’ve never heard of this book, but you should try it” or “this book is struggling, please support it” or “I’ve heard some people are having trouble understanding this latest storyline, so here is a collection of relevant older scenes. Read this and you should have no problem following what’s going on”.
Anyone patting themselves on the back over the successful defeat of “those pirates”? You have no idea what you’re talking about.
tru2myart,
Once again we’re talking about the fair use doctrine, there’s a whole body of case law on fair use and none of them require the copyright holder’s permission.
And as a part-time writer is someone published half of one of my stories, and it encouraged others to buy more my works than I would have no problem with it. Likewise if they published half of my story to show what I hack I was, I would have no reason to complain.
Jeane Marlowe has it partly wrong. As long as I’ve been there, Scans Daily has had a firm policy against posting any more than one-half a given issue. I’ve seen that broken once for an out-of-print book, & I believe the poster had to take it down in the end.
There used to be a community called Fullscans Daily that was more illegal.
Andrea said:
“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.”
Andrea, Peter just correctly used this same phrase in the past week. Perhaps today’s error was just a typo?