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
• 
Some of these comments are just flat-out evil, and I’m positive the SD mods resent being lumped in with people who would say them.
You can defend SD without crucifying those who disagree with you. You’re making the cause look bad, and doing SD no favors.
“Hi Peter,
I represent a group of comic lovers (23 and rising) from SouthAmerica which will upload all your comic books and novels, in english and spanish, and boycott your work by no buying anything with your name on it
until you apologize for the šhìŧ is coming out from your mouth..
If our web gets shut down, we will create another five clones. One in each continent.
Wellcome to the 21st century, my friend.”
Well, you might as well do the same with my comics, as well, because that is incredibly obnoxious. I think the SD community would be ashamed of you.
Welcome to human decency, my friend.
So, having said that, it seems clear to me that the people who are most up in arms about Scans Daily’s demise are people who a.) are fully aware that the posting of complete or semi-complete comics that aren’t public domain is illegal and Not Right and b.) have decided that they don’t care, as long as it means they get to read comics for free. Repeatedly pointing out that this is wrong isn’t going to faze those people. They’ve already decided that they’re okay with it, and dámņ the laws or any sense of what’s fair to the publishers and creators.
You are an idiot. As may people there go to books they already read so they can talk about them as do the one they don’t read. While we occasionally get reactions where people are glad they don’t read the book, more often we got “Why aren’t I reading this?” The only time I go to a book I don’t read is when it’s a major crossover that I would never buy but want to keep up on continuity, such as Final Crisis. That way I know why the Martian Manhunter isn’t in Justice League. Something I could do just as easily by standing around my comic shop and flipping through the pages.
anyone who actually goes there to read a comic that they won’t buy just to save money is a moron because they’d never know everything that happened.
Yes Gail, there’s a few people who I wish weren’t fighting my corner.
How that leaves ME holding the internet douche bag, I’m not quite sure, but c’est la vie.
That’s a great line. Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor over this foolishness (and yeah, folks, some of you are acting foolish, like a kid caught cheating on a test who tries to make it the fault of the teacher. S_D may have been a terrific community of great people but to someone who was never there reading the posts from members here sure doesn’t give one that impression. I feel badly for the good folks from the community for having to be lumped in with the haters.)
Jessie at March 1
Thanks for that. Well, if any comic book owners are reading this (I mean real ones, not guys claiming to own one that will never ever ever sell a Peter David comic again) here’s some very good tips on how you might survive the next few years; try to make your store a bit more female friendly than your average 25 cent Pørņ Arcade. Hire clerks who have talked to a real, noninflatable girl on more than one occasion. Have enough lighting so that someone doesn’t feel like the might get assaulted behind the stacked boxes of $1 Image comics. Half the population is female and about 90% of the manga readers are as well, from my unscientific research. getting some women into your stores might make up for the losses you’ll take when parents are forced by hard economic times to raise the rent on their basements.
(I apologize for my attempts at humor via broad stereotypes and hope that I have not greatly offended nerds, women, manga readers and pørņ arcades)
One, most comic book stores tend to be creepy and dark, or two, guys in the store stare, if not approach you with a creepy come on,
This describes most bars in the US. A great many women willingly and regularly go to them for hours at a time. In many cases, disappointed if the men there don’t stare and/or approach them with a creepy come on.
Men who probably have an idea of what a real girl looks like naked. (I’m sorry. I really can’t help myself.)
But you just made her argument for her. If comic book stores can be fairly compared to seedy bars…that’s not good. I’m not sending my daughters copies of Scott Pilgrim so that they will go to the local Captain Bizarro’s Comics Am Us store to be hit on by doughy lechers.
Nytwyng, I think you are being way to harsh with Jessie. She makes good points. And I’ve known more than a few comic book stores that were unfriendly to everyone, so her experience rings true. Many have failed, as they should. But the industry can’t afford to have too many go down.
The sad thing is, I think a site like S_D could have been a genuinely great thing for the industry and it’s unfortunate that it ended up this way. maybe something better will rise in its place.
I represent a group of comic lovers (23 and rising) from SouthAmerica which will upload all your comic books and novels, in english and spanish, and boycott your work by no buying anything with your name on it
until you apologize for the šhìŧ is coming out from your mouth..
How dare you call me a thief! I will steal from you every week until you apologize!
The case here is actually more like lying on the railroad track for hours on end, and instead of the 4:05 taking you out, the 3:23 does instead. You can play the martyr card if you want, but I ain’t buying it, and I honestly wonder if anyone actually is.
Mike H shoots and scores.
Mr David,
Your honorary membership in RIAA has been approved. Welcome to the band.
Sincerely,
Lars Ulrich
Wow, I go bowling one night and there’s an entire novel’s worth of posts I missed. For the record, my top score for the night: 90. Beat THAT, PAD!
I’ve never been to Scans Daily (had, in fact, never so much as heard of it before today, which somewhat makes me question the claim that it was a great marketing tool), but even the people defending it make it sound like it was going way too far into copyright infringement territory. I mean, only half the issue at most? If I posted the first half of Duma Key online — even if I went on about how great it was and was one of Stephen King’s best novels — I don’t think King would be very appreciative of my efforts on his behalf. Sure, there may be quite a few people that read it and decided they had to buy it to see how it all turned out, but that doesn’t magically transform it from an illegal act into a legal one.
And speaking of Young Justice, while apparently any potential trade sales have apparently plummeted by the thousands, I can vouch that I, at least, would buy it. Sadly, though, I’ll pretty much have to get it from Amazon, as my local comics shop closed down last month, no doubt in anticipation of the lost revenue from Scans Daily fans that now have absolutely zero ways of finding out about comics now.
So, I heard your name mentioned with the S_D thing and popped it into google. What did I find?
An old man.
Jason,
Your commentary might hold more water (though I doubt it) if you phrased things in English instead of gobbledy-gook.
“As may people there go to books they already read so they can talk about them as do the one they don’t read.”
One, that should be “as MANY people.” Second, I never commented on whether or not the majority of people going to Scans Daily do so in order to talk about books they do read as opposed to being able to read for free ones they don’t buy. What I said was that the people who seem to be the most up in arms about S-D’s being shut down knew perfectly well, or should have known perfectly well, that the people who were posting near-complete issues of non-public domain comics were breakin the law…*and* that they didn’t care because to them, getting to read free comics was more important. And as yet, I have seen no evidence that this is not true. Simply pointing out that posting near-complete comics scans was not the only thing S-D had going for it, really doesn’t matter. The main point, if ever there was one, is that it was illegal for S-D posters to do that. And regardless of who reported what,
those posters shouldn’t have been doing that. Everyone that was going to S-D and enjoying those near-complete scans for free…and not reporting it to the copyright holders or protesting it to the S-D mods…was aiding and abetting in that illegality. So the observation that those members of S-D who were doing it knew it was wrong and didn’t care is totally valid.
“While we occasionally get reactions where people are glad they don’t read the book, more often we got “Why aren’t I reading this?”
And that matters why? Are you saying that the only way in which S-D members can get the idea of whether or not they want to support a comic is to read more than half of it for free online? That’s asinine.
“The only time I go to a book I don’t read is when it’s a major crossover that I would never buy but want to keep up on continuity, such as Final Crisis. That way I know why the Martian Manhunter isn’t in Justice League. Something I could do just as easily by standing around my comic shop and flipping through the pages.”
So why don’t you, then? Why is it so hard to understand that going to the store and flipping through the pages is better…and perfectly legal…as opposed to letting someone scan in the pages online and bootlegging them?
For that matter, why not just go to the DC message boards and ask fellow posters for updates on what’s happening in the crossovers? There is no shortage of people there who’d be happy to tell you. And that wouldn’t cost you anything, either.
“anyone who actually goes there to read a comic that they won’t buy just to save money is a moron because they’d never know everything that happened.”
More or less true. Since it’s not the entire comic being posted, you don’t get the full story. But it still doesn’t make it right to do that, and the fact that you think anyone who does so is a moron doesn’t mean that the publishers and creators don’t have a right to make sure no one does it. So what exactly is your point, here? Is it that you don’t believe there are people out there who would go to S-D for exactly that reason…to read comics for free and thus save money? How simple-minded is that? And you call ME an idiot?
Gail: Thank you for your clarification, your support, and also your spirited response to the South American guys.
On the other hand, in the interest of international relations:
I represent a group of comic lovers (23 and rising) from SouthAmerica which will upload all your comic books and novels, in english and spanish, and boycott your work by no buying anything with your name on it
until you apologize for the šhìŧ is coming out from your mouth..
Very well. I apologize for any šhìŧ that came from my mouth.
There. Crisis averted.
Now I’m off to the Middle East to solve that whole Israel/Palestinian thing.
PAD
So, I heard your name mentioned with the S_D thing and popped it into google. What did I find?
An old man.
Yeah, but getting old beats the alternative.
PAD
I’d probably be better off sticking my finger in a lightsocket than getting more deeply involved in this conversation, but no one has ever accused me of having good sense…
Some of these comments are just flat-out evil, and I’m positive the SD mods resent being lumped in with people who would say them.
I’m not sure if my own remarks in defense of PAD qualify in your view as “lumping in” the good with the bad. I can only say that from my admittedly limited POV, even the most temperate defenses of SD that I’ve read are coming up short.
Still, I was overgeneralizing when I said that “all” defenses of SD were driven by feelings of entitlement. It would have been more accurate to say that most of the attempts at defending SD that I have read can be boiled down to that motivation.
These people are not the enemy. They’re the good guys, and the alternative is SO much worse. You think what S-D is bad?
Watch and see what pops up in its place.
I’ve seen that argument used in defense of similar sites, and I’m a bit dubious about its merits. What leads you to believe S-D was preventing other more egregious activity, rather than simply adding to the already significant amount of copyright infringement taking place online? What would prevent someone from both taking part in S-D and other, more flagrant violations of intellectual property rights elsewhere?
These questions are not intended to be rhetorical, by the way. I always retain an open mind but I can’t evaluate someone’s POV without first understanding it, and I can’t understand it without asking questions. That was the spirit in which my questions were intended, and if you are so inclined to respond I hope you will do so with that in mind.
“This is just one of those times where I’m left shaking my head going, “I know I was in the right,” and it’s good to know that at least a goodly percentage of people can see that.”
I doubt this…you believe your are right as much as the s_d community believes they are right. Your claim that there were no reviews but rather only blow-by-blow recounting is simplification supporting your bias. At some point in the blow-by-blow a comment “and this was dumb” or “served no purpose” or similar commentary would serve as review. In looking at definition of review, it’s not quantifying or qualifying what the review must or must not include.
This is a dispute between you (acting as creator/copyright holder) and community of fans (acting as entitled fans). Both sides have significant elements of truth and it is only the hubris of both sides claiming the higher, moral, legal or whatever stand.
I personally have a problem in the shutdown of the site because it throws the baby out with the bathwater. I’ve never been to s_d, I’m not part of the community, but it clearly was a community mostly comprised of folks promoting what they were fans of, indirectly seeking to entice more to become fans.
The majority of those posting on s_d did more to promote a book than the vast majority of the creators of books (or the publishers or the stores selling), and this is a shame for all books, creators and publishers. I’m not making a defense of copyright violation or attempting to want creators/publishers to look the other way. It is an attempt to point out that creators, beyond writing a script or drawing a page, on whole do very little to share in direct risk of the failing of that project or making it successful once on the street. Now those willing to do such efforts, such as s_d, are smacked down. That’s something of a shame.
And honestly, Mr. David, the actions of LJ and PhotoBucket and the shutdown of the community appears to be the result you sought when reporting it. That you did not have a direct hand in the shutdown doesn’t absolve you that in reporting it as possible copyright violation you pretty much got what you wanted.
Google “Monty Python DVD sales soar thanks to YouTube clips”
Fortunately for everyone, they understand how business works online in the 21st century.
Gail Simone and Warren Ellis get it too, and good for them because thanks to Scans Daily, titles I was never aware of from both of them ARE on my pull list.
The reason PAD will no longer be there isn’t because his actions let to the removal of that site, but because he’s clearly shown that he doesn’t get it.
All this talk about copyright is irrelevant. This is all about the bottom line. Scans Daily was getting people into comic shops, comics onto pull lists and dollar bills into cash registers and you’ve essentially told a legion of consumers that they’re thieves because the catalyst for that consumption was breaking the letter of the law.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my favorite shop opens in an hour and I’ve got some buying to do.
Wellcome to the 21st century, my friend.
Where the John Gabriel Internet Dickwad Theory has been proven several hundred times over in this thread alone.
Even so, DIAF, while a not nice thing to say, is a standard Internet insult you’ll find anywhere on the Net.
Huh. I’ve been on the internet for 15 years, and I’ve never seen this phrase uttered before.
Apparently scans_daily WAS the internet, and those of us who never heard of the place were just floating in limbo.
I’d like to point out an example though: Z-Cult FM. It was, for several years, a pretty heavy comics bittorrent site. Eventually, Marvel and DC got around to them, and instead of giving them the finger and risk being shut down altogether, they worked WITH Marvel and DC to have their stuff removed from the site.
What this pretty much means is that, overnight, they went from a pirate/discussion site to a discussion site. Granted, I don’t know if the site truly thrives, but 16 months later, the site is more or less still going on discussion alone.
SD was not the only website on the internet; there are literally thousands of sites about comics, with reviews, with discussion. And they don’t have to be breaking the law to do so.
So while I can believe that SD leads many people to finding certain comics, it’s BS for those claiming that SD is the be all, end all of their comic book existence. I mean, dámņ, if you need to know Marvel is going to publish next month, it’s not that hard to type in Marvel.com into your browser.
In the end, nobody has any excuse to not know what is being published by the major publishers, at least. As for the ‘little guys’, SD probably should’ve tried to work WITH them, rather than doing whatever they want. After all, even some independent publishers recognized that they were getting more exposure with Z-Cult’s torrents than they were without.
“Wow. What part of the copyright law is unclear?”
At this point, I’d hazard a guess to say that at least half of the posters here are pretty unclear on the issue. And it doesn’t really help when pretty much NOBODY HERE comes off like they’re experts on the subject. Even PAD reads like he’s essentially clueless whenever the subject is what constitutes fair use on the Internet. National law and international law in these cases is still a slippery slope.
“Does no one understand how fragile the comic book industry is today in terms of sales? I find it quite possible print comics may almost cease to exist in the next 10 years due to an inability to make money.”
This sounds like the standard fear hyperbole the record industry always trots out whenever they’re trying to stop file sharing. That “Home Taping Is KILLING THE RECORD INDUSTRY” mantra from years back was merely boilerplate for the fact that they had essentially LOST the ability to make money off of non-stop mediocrity. File-sharing is merely the new ‘Home Taping’.
“Publishing in general is a fragile business.”
Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t justify anyone being militaristic about what is allowed to be read. That approaches the dubious idea of book burning whenever published works aren’t being processed in the way ‘the authorities’ originally intended.
“I don’t get why people are so up in arms for PAD doing what is the right thing to do — not just for himself or even Marvel Comics, but really, for the industry.”
Is it REALLY in the best interest of the industry to make a medium only available to a select few? That’s been an argument against the Direct Market going on for decades now, and that makes it an equally weak argument here.
“But then again, how is this any different than sharing music ripped from CDs and distributed for free on the internet.”
Get back to me when you discover ‘the music industry’ is on the upswing, as that notion remains elusive. As I understand it, I believe what little is left of the traditional marketplace model is currently waiting with baited breath for U2 to save their sorry butts this sales quarter.
As for PAD’s role in this matter, I’m rather sorry he accidently stepped into this ‘cow patty’, but I’m afraid that the stink is going to be rather hard to get off those boots.
That you did not have a direct hand in the shutdown doesn’t absolve you that in reporting it as possible copyright violation you pretty much got what you wanted.
Where do people get the impression that shutting down the site completely was what Peter wanted? If the only thing they’d done was remove the offending material and left the community intact, I can’t imagine Peter would have felt in any way deprived. The fact that he’s not up in arms about the suspension doesn’t necessarily mean he was gunning for the place to go down.
People might not be so annoyed at this if you were a nicer person. Just chill the eff out.
“I’m not sure if my own remarks in defense of PAD qualify in your view as “lumping in” the good with the bad. I can only say that from my admittedly limited POV, even the most temperate defenses of SD that I’ve read are coming up short.”
I was talking about some of these “Peter David should explode and be eaten by weasels” posts. I believe the SD mods (and I’m sure, most of the SD community) would be ashamed to be lumped in with some of the people who have commented here, as they ARE pretty darn good folks. Simply put, they are making Peter’s case, not their own, with that sort of toxic stuff.
I’d never heard DIAF, either, by the way. It might be common in some circles, but it’s new to me, certainly.
It is kind of sad and funny that I learned about you and your comics from s_d and it encouraged me to buy the whenever I could. I am a true fan of the things you have done, but sadly, I have to say it is in the past. You have lost a fan not because you supposedly caused the end of s_d but because of the way, you are behaving in your own blog.
A self-righteous Prima donna who is continually whining “but my work!” Sorry friend but the times they have changed, media has changed and it does not function in the nice little box it has been in for years.
Frankly if I could get a job in your industry I would be flattered to get bad comments because that indicates people are really reading the crap I pump out and feel the need to make a bad comment.
Son in conclusion, on Monday your name and the preorders I have made for your comics will now be canceled and I am requesting a refund. Artists of all kinds are supposed to be touchy, so maybe next time instead of being an unproductive member of the internet you can be a productive one like say, Gail Simone.
“All this talk about copyright is irrelevant.”
Fail.
“Sorry friend but the times they have changed”
More fail.
“Publishing in general is a fragile business.”
Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t justify anyone being militaristic about what is allowed to be read. That approaches the dubious idea of book burning whenever published works aren’t being processed in “
OMG, I can barely stop laughing enough to actually type this. Am I glad I finished my Pepsi One before reading your comment! If being militaristic is expecting people to buy something that is created for sale, then yeah it’s pretty much justified. Oh god, I wish I knew you in real life. There just isn’t laughter like this often enough.
Peter: The notion that it’s impossible for your complaint to Marvel to have been the precipitator here is absurd. As others have pointed out, the fact that PhotoBucket deleted the images in question has nothing whatsoever to do with LiveJournal’s decision to suddenly pull the plug on a thriving community with a years-old archive.
Marvel was certainly aware of – and clearly tolerating – Scans Daily, even if you weren’t. To claim there’s no possibility that your complaint to Marvel is the main reason the site no longer exists – and that is your claim, is it not? – smacks of deliberate obfuscation.
That changes little, if anything. If you were reading Amazing, you would have been aware of FNSM’s impending launch, as that launch was begun with a crossover to the other two titles. Likewise, I believe that, following said crossover, the letters pages of each Spider-Man book had blurbs teasing upcoming issues of the other two titles. Yet you claim you would not have even known about FNSM’s existence were it not for s_d.
I don’t think you understand how this works.
When I say they mostly published Amazing, I mean that they published this under one title, namely Spider-Man. The only way you find out which parts come from which specific comic, is if you do the effort to check somewhere on the bottom where it says: “reprinted from… with the title of the original comic”
On top of that, by the time I was hearing about civil war, the dutch comics hadn’t even gotten to ‘the other’.
If it hadn’t been because of Civil War, and my looking for specific American issues, I would not have been looking for specific American titles in the first place.
I would just have bought the Dutch version, which just printed some of the issues of FNS that happened to be part of ‘The Other’ and not have realized that not even a fourth of the issues of FNS were being printed. And even then only when they were absolutely necessary for the arc. Or when they were running ahead and needed more issues to fill the book. With no specific mention, other than in very small print at the bottom of the book, saying from which issues these pages came.
In fact a lot of dutch Spidey-readers would probably be unaware that they missed FNS 23, one of the best issues to come out of Spidey in the past few years. But then that’s how Marvel wanted it, since Quesada made sure to have no attention fall on it. Hëll even the cover they put on the actual issue was as boring as possible so no one who wasn’t already picking out the book would realize that it held the confrontation between Jonah and Peter.
If by this time I had not already been subscribed to FNS thanks to Scans Daily, I might not have known that. Like a lot of other fans who didn’t know about the issue.
Thing is though, the difference between Scans Daily and other forums, isn’t the scans. It’s the fans. Scans Daily had thousands of mostly female fans, which is a rare thing in most comic book forums. And is one of the reasons the community was so beloved with so many of us. It’s rare to find a comics group where women are the majority, rather than a minority. and it’s that what is a huge part of what made the forum so welcoming. I didn’t need the scans, but it helped to have a visual depiction of what someone was talking about, when they tried to tell the rest of us why a character was worth following.
It takes a lot more time to explain why Bart Allen was so cute and adorable, when you could do the same by showing a couple of scans of Bart being cute and adorable. It’s a woman thing, as a man you probably wouldn’t get it.
It wasn’t about reading the comics as a whole, it was about focusing on a character and showing why this character made the comic as a whole worth reading.
If I wanted to show people why Spidey was loveable and adorable, sure I could say so, or I could give proof of this by showing Peter talking to Flash. Words often don’t say nearly as much as one page of a comic does.
And once people saw those pages, they most often got the reaction, “I have to have this comic”, which would then mean that they then bought the title in question, while they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Previews are often only the first five pages of a comic, but those aren’t always the reason why someone would want to buy a comic, since they don’t always show those points of the book that makes it worth buying in the first place.
Marvel was certainly aware of – and clearly tolerating – Scans Daily, even if you weren’t.
So, let me see if I get your logic.
Marvel obviously knew about SD but did nothing.
PAD says something, so *only then* does Marvel take action?
I’ll repeat what Steve said in the post prior: OMG, I can barely stop laughing enough to actually type this.
Artists of all kinds are supposed to be touchy, so maybe next time instead of being an unproductive member of the internet you can be a productive one like say, Gail Simone.
Hahahahahaha, productive on the Internet. So’re you working out the kinks of the Unified Field Theory in between looking at funny pictures of cats?
I’ll repeat what Steve said in the post prior: OMG, I can barely stop laughing enough to actually type this.
Could you maybe stop laughing long enough to explain why that reading of the situation is so funny? I’d honestly like to know.
Are you suggesting that the folks in charge at Marvel were unaware of the community’s existence? I’d find that very hard– which is to say, pretty much impossible– to believe. So maybe you’re suggesting that Marvel doesn’t exactly have a history of responding effectively to creator’s concerns? That’s a bit more believable, I suppose, though my understanding was that the company’s been better about such things in recent years. So are you saying, then, that you don’t think Marvel acted on Peter’s “tip”?
It could be that I’m overlooking something obvious here, and that once it’s pointed out to me, the humor will be apparent. But if that’s the case, I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
I find it funny that Das Booch felt the need to speak for Gail Simone even *after* Ms. Simone posted on this thread.
Das, if you’re still reading, go back through this thread and read Ms. Simone’s comments. You don’t know what she thinks.
“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.”
Is it the printing of the scans that makes it a copyright violation? Is moviespoilers copyright violation since it publishes detailed and specific plot breakdowns of films? How about the websites that host threads where the major plot points are bandied about and discussed?
Your point is certainly correct – there’s a Line somewhere, and the farther you are past that line, the easier it is to recognize it. no one can say where the Line for being overweight is, but dámņ near everyone will agree that 800 pounds is over it.
(I should post a panel of a Steve Ditko Mr. A comic here where a guy is dancing along the edge between white and black on one of A’s signature cards)
The people who maintain that S-D was on the white side of the card will rant and rave, and use you as their Emmanuel Goldstein. Those who maintain that it was an evil band of thieves will hail the day as a triumph of intellectual property, ad will never dream of assigning you any of the credit.
And both sides will be wrong, to a degree.
Are people really trying to justify breaking the law? I knew the internet could do amazing things.
I can’t believe Peter David has the power to shut down a website, I knew the man was a god but now I am in even more awe of your incredible skills!
I look forward to reading all about this brouhaha tomorrow in “Lying in the Gutters”.
R-
Dear David,
As a creative person of another sort (composer), I too am concerned with folks stealing our intellectual property. And downloading copies of music or artwork or prose or whatever without the permission of the creator and/or copyright holder is stealing, as you well know. The amount of vitriol generated by some of the other posters shows a profound lack of knowledge (as to what property, including intellectual property, actually is and means), respect for others and their work, courtesy, as well as common sense…and maybe a bit of maturity as well.
That said, I looked up the term “Fair Use” on the Copyright Office’s official website (www.copyright.gov) and came up with the following information. I quote here legally, as quoting publicly-disseminated federal government information is allowed according to U.S. Copyright law.
“Section 107 [of the Copyright Act] contains a list of…purposes for which a particular work my be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.” In addition, four factors are to be considered in determining fair use:
“1. the purpose and character of the use….” (Commercial versus nonprofit educational purposes, etc.)
“2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or the value of the copyrighted work.”
Items one, three, and four are at issue here. Based on the information you (Peter) supplied, you had every legal right to inform Marvel of what was going on, particularly with regard to the amount of pages and the “substantiality” of the information provided. If SD had requested permission to reproduce the material from Marvel and done all of this legally, there would have been no issue; the folks at Marvel would have told you not to worry, and that would have been the end of it. As it happens they decided to look into it, with the results in discussion here.
The point is, folks–I address those who still don’t get it–Peter informed Marvel that, in his opinion, SD was putting too much of the comic online and that it could cut into the sales, and therefore the value, of his work and that of Marvel’s investment in that work. You, as the consumer, have the right to purchase Peter’s work (or my music, or someone else’s widgets), or to borrow a (purchased) copy from a library, or borrow or obtain it by any other legal means. I’m sorry, but you are not entitled to simply read, listen, or use that work for free, unless it is with the permission of the creator of that work or that of the copyright holder.
Personally, I have no problem giving away a little of my music if it promotes interest, but only if I choose to do so. To have someone just take my hard work, without permission and/or compensation, is stealing, pure and simple.
Steven Rosenhaus
“The only time I go to a book I don’t read is when it’s a major crossover that I would never buy but want to keep up on continuity, such as Final Crisis. That way I know why the Martian Manhunter isn’t in Justice League”
So she’s only a little bit pregnant, because you only do it when it’s something you “want”, therefore it’s OK?
Well, good thing we cleared up that irritating bit of copyright law…
Sigh.
Cheers.
So are you saying, then, that you don’t think Marvel acted on Peter’s “tip”?
That’s exactly what I’m saying. But then, at this point, there’s nothing to show that PAD or Marvel had anything to do with SD’s shutdown.
It sounds like if anything it’s Photobucket (as images had been removed) and LiveJournal themselves.
Maybe Marvel went to LiveJournal, finally having had enough. But this garbage of making it sound like PAD brought SD down? Give it a rest. SD had obviously been pushing it for some time, regardless of whether or not the moderators were trying to keep the community in check. If they were, they were failing.
Even if they weren’t, it sounds like LiveJournal isn’t worth dealing with if they (LJ) is going to be this over-reactionary. I know I wouldn’t put up with it if I were running such a community.
After YouTube gets sued for $1 billion by Viacom, I would think a number of user-content sites like LJ would be freaking out over the possibility of their getting sued as well.
I’d like to see how many of you who are more than willing to lash out at PAD are going after LJ, or the moderators who allowed too much content to be posted, or Marvel for, perish the thought, protecting their product, which they not only have the legal right to do, but the legal obligation to do. Yes, you can lose your copyright if you don’t make efforts to protect it.
>I represent a group of comic lovers from SouthAmerica which will upload all your comic books and novels, in english and spanish, and boycott your work by no buying anything with your name on it
Never mind how will they upload if they don’t buy, how will they scan/upload if their boycott were successul and PAD stopped writing?
Fortunately, I doubt we need worry about that latter happening any time soon, but I wouldn’t blame PAD for wondering why he bothers sometimes, when his fans include, among others, such twits.
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
Okay.
Maybe Marvel went to LiveJournal, finally having had enough.
This part contradicts what you said at first– you said that you don’t believe Marvel acted on the information Peter gave them, but now “maybe” they did. I’m not trying to be rude here– I’m just trying to point out that, obviously, this is a complicated issue, and it’s only made more complicated when people suggest that they “know” things that they don’t.
I’d like to see how many of you who are more than willing to lash out at PAD…
I’m going to assume that, at some point, you stopped responding to me with this comment (hopefully, before you typed the phrase “give it a rest”). At least, I’d hope that you’d realize that asking for clarification on a vaguely-worded point is hardly the same thing as suggesting that copyright violation is no big deal.
(I should also hope that my own previously-articulated thoughts on this issue might clearly establish that I’m not interested in “lash[ing] out” at anyone).
Artists of all kinds are supposed to be touchy, so maybe next time instead of being an unproductive member of the internet you can be a productive one like say, Gail Simone.
Apparently, “productive” is defined here as “stating opinions that are completely in harmony with my own.”
This part contradicts what you said at first– you said that you don’t believe Marvel acted on the information Peter gave them, but now “maybe” they did.
I said maybe Marvel did. I don’t believe that they did, but I’m not discounting the possibility in the end. No contradiction at all.
Meanwhile, it appears most people believe PAD can single-handed bring down the internet. And those same people are probably using LiveJournal right now, still bìŧçhìņg away, when LiveJournal and their own site, SD, are the ones most at fault here.
sistermagpie: Yes, I get that that’s the whole point of the copyright issue and why it was taken down. I wasn’t arguing that. I was just responding to comments where people seem to not believe that the site could encourage people to buy comics as well.
Luigi Novi: Who here expressed this idea? I only recall people expressing disbelief at the notion that some people had never heard of titles like X-Factor or Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man until they saw them on SD, despite being existing comic book readers.
sistermagpie: Whether or not it encourages people to buy comics doesn’t make it not a copyright violation. Being a copyright violation also doesn’t not mean it can’t encourage people to buy comics.
Luigi Novi: No one said it couldn’t.
Jessie: So yeah, people like me don’t have the time to leaf through comic books at a comic book store. I could go to the one near my house, but it’s creepy. So no leafing through comic book pages there. 9_9 If I go to nice comic book store, I’m on a time limit!…Please do not assume that everyone is comfortable walking into a comic book store. Cuz yeah, it’s never that simple. I wish it could be, but it’s not. For various reasons.
Luigi Novi: This is just excuse-making. First of all, of the two stores I frequent, the really small one I currently frequent regularly here in Jersey, and the large, two-floor one in Times Square that I used to go to regularly when I was in Manhattan on a more regular basis, I can leaf through a comic book without any problem. How long does it take to see who the writer or artist is on a book? And even if I couldn’t do this, or if the book is by a creative team I’m unfamiliar with, so what? There are preview pages of comics on the Net, word-of-mouth on message boards, critics’ reviews, etc. When you’re deciding whether to see a new movie, you don’t generally view it for free on the Net; You look at the trailers, the reviews, the word-of-mouth, etc. This is true of any medium, regardless of whether one is on a “time limit”, something that EVERYONE experiences in their lives. You make the time for the stuff important to you. You don’t whine because you think you’re entitled to illegal material that was formerly made available to you, and has now been taken away.
Das Booch: So quit being such an eager snitch and learn how the internets work please.
Luigi Novi: Quit being a whiny thief, and learn how copyright law works.
You’re not entitled to your free stuff just because someone was handing it to you.
Haro Genki: Nytwyng, I am thoroughly convinced you are a walking example of why fair-use laws exist to begin with.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, creators wanting to protect and benefit from their own work. That and the Statute of Anne of 1709. Shocking concept, ain’t it?
Laevolus, thanks for collaborating on the Wiki article. 🙂
Peter David: Very well. I apologize for any šhìŧ that came from my mouth.
Luigi Novi: That’s what you get for going through an atheist phase, Peter. 🙂
Das Booch: Google “Monty Python DVD sales soar thanks to YouTube clips”
Luigi Novi: Yeah, Booch. Clips. Not the entire films. Clips fall under Fair Use. Posting the entire film, or even half of it, would not, any more than doing so with a comic book.
Pity that dozens of posters mentioning this point dozens of times in this thread isn’t enough to get that point through your head.
Das Booch: The reason PAD will no longer be there isn’t because his actions let to the removal of that site, but because he’s clearly shown that he doesn’t get it. All this talk about copyright is irrelevant. This is all about the bottom line. Scans Daily was getting people into comic shops, comics onto pull lists and dollar bills into cash registers and you’ve essentially told a legion of consumers that they’re thieves because the catalyst for that consumption was breaking the letter of the law.
Luigi Novi: He does get it, and he’s pointed out that the “it” that you’re promoting, is bunk. Posting half or all of a comic book online without the copyright holder’s permission is illegal, period. That’s not the “letter” of the law, that’s its letter and its spirit. This is not mitigated by your whimsical, completely unscientific perception that it was getting people into comic book shops, and it is that anecdote that is “irrelevant”. If you want to post portions of a book online to get people in shops, then do so. If you want to post half of it or all of it without permission, you’re a thief who’s breaking the law. The law does not say “You can’t post half or all of a creative work online without permission unless it gets people into shops.” It says you don’t do it, PERIOD. The “letter” of it has nothing to do with it, and is just hair-splitting.
KET: File-sharing is merely the new ‘Home Taping’.
Luigi Novi: Nope. Wrong answer. Thank you for playing.
Home taping is conducted solely for personal entertainment purposes. It is not permitted for en masse copying and distribution or public exhibition, and indeed, doing this would be pointless, since the quality of taping off TV onto a VHS tape is not something any serious number of people capable of diluting the copyright holder’s business would be so interested in that they would prefer that to buying an authorized copy.
This is not the case with digital file-sharing.
KET: Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t justify anyone being militaristic about what is allowed to be read. That approaches the dubious idea of book burning whenever published works aren’t being processed in the way ‘the authorities’ originally intended.
Luigi Novi: An owner protecting something that they own is not militarism, and with comments like this, you only further underline that you don’t know what you’re talking about. The idea that the censorship and persecution of other people that is typified by burning their work is in any way comparable to protecting one’s own works from being stolen is such an intellectually dishonest analogy that one can only marvel at the mental hernia necessary to come up with it.
“Yes, you can lose your copyright if you don’t make efforts to protect it.”
Quite so.
But for how long?
I suspect part of what’s happening is a backlash against the increasingly ridiculous copyright/intellectual property laws out there.
Consider, when I was a pre-teen I went under the knife a couple of times. For all I know, one of those times may well have saved my life. Yet, decades later I’m not still paying money to the surgreon and his team thanks to whose work I am able to enjoy that continued life.
Yet, according to the new laws, I should pay some copyright holder for a computer program I may be using FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR???
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Yes, PAD works hard and turns out good products and he should be well renumerated for it. But in perpetuity? Unto the nth generation?
There’s a reason why public domain exists. Without it, culture runs aground on the shoals of copyright suits – as writer Spider Robinson wrote in MELANCHOLY ELEPHANTS. Whereupon everyone loses in the long run.
The question is, how long?
Authors/artists understandably want it as long as possible. But it can easily get out of hand. Here in Canada, where hockey is practically a religion, our much-watched hockey equivalent of Monday Night Football featured an instantly recognizable theme. Not any more. After over FOURTY YEARS of paying $500 a game for it, they cancelled the contract and bought a different one outright. The fans were upset and I can understand that, but I can also see the broadcaster’s point of view when they were still forking out cash for something done decades (and probably over a million dollars) ago.
So what’s a happy medium? (Feel free to insert cheerful soothsayer gags here.)
P.S. Interesting, isn’t it, how not even the most divisive political comment here managed to raise anywhere near this many replies in as short a time. Talk about touching a nerve, and what does that say about those making with all the comments?
But in perpetuity? Unto the nth generation?
Umm, I’m more than happy to argue this (and I hate the notion that Disney is trying to change the laws so that they get rights for infinity), but that’s not the argument for this thread.
Especially since X-Factor v3 #40 wasn’t published 50 years ago but just a couple of weeks ago. 🙂
there’s nothing to show that PAD or Marvel had anything to do with SD’s shutdown
My point is simple: Peter’s claim that Photobucket’s removal of the images somehow makes it impossible for his complaint to have been responsible for the shutdown doesn’t make logical sense. One doesn’t follow at all from the other, but Peter is repeatedly and strongly claiming it does. I call that claim absurd.
Of course, we’d all understand a lot more about this episode if Peter would share with us how he “informed the copyright holder” about Scans Daily. Was it a “Hey you guys should look at this” email or a screaming “WHAT YOU *KNEW* ABOUT THIS AND LET IT STAND??!!” phone call or what? We don’t know, and Peter isn’t sharing. That would be useful information to have in sorting out what really happened here, too.
Bottom line: Peter is obfuscating. That said, the folks who say they know for sure he was responsible aren’t helping clarify things, either.
As others have already said, I ended up buying a lot of comics I wouldn’t have thanks entirely to scans daily. Just as years ago (before Napster) I discovered hundreds of wonderful songs on various MP3 sharing sites, which led to hundreds of dollars worth of music purchases I would not have made otherwise. I do sympathize with the creator whose work is distributed without pay and without permission; if I was in that person’s shoes I would be *pìššëd øff*, let me tell you! But real life is (as always) much more complex.
There are many people like myself whose access to illegal content sharing has resulted in more money in the pockets of creators, just as there are people who bootleg and never pay for anything. To my knowledge there’s no way to prove which group is larger, either. One thing’s for sure, though – you can’t win this fight. First people downloaded files directly off the web; the sites were shut down, so everyone went P2P (Kazaa, Limewire, etc.). Then after that legal shitstorm BitTorrent filled the gap. And now there are so many file sharing sites that people have begun uploading comics onto them, and the sheer scope of these sites prevents their staff from effectively policing them. Some have argued that if the media had gotten on board from the get-go that none of this would have happened. For example, if iTunes was already in place the day mp3 creation became possible, bootlegging music would never have caught on the way it did. But now that we are where we are I don’t think we can ever put the genie back in the bottle. What’s more, there are many new content creators on the internet who make their living despite offering all their comics/music/etc. for free download; perhaps this is the direction artists will have to go?
Note: I’m not claiming Peter is obfuscating because he hasn’t released the full content of the email/phone call to Marvel. I’m claiming he’s obfuscating by repeatedly claiming the Photobucket removal means he can’t have been primarily responsible for the LiveJournal shutdown. Sorry if my previous post confused that.
On a somewhat tangential note, PAD, I was wondering what your position was on the Amazon Kindle’s text to speech capabilities? The author’s guild came out against it, since authors sell the audiobook and ebook rights separately. However, others think that this type of thing is no different that reading a book to your child or building a machine to read a regular book to you.
I hadn’t given it any thought. This is the first I’ve heard of it. My knee jerk reaction is to say that the authors guild is wrong. An audio book is something very specific: An actor, typically, doing a performance with varying voices and such. Kindle provides nothing more than an electronic voice giving a flat reading.
Can the vision impaired simply buy all their books on tape? Sure. But it’s probably going to be a buttload more expensive.
I suppose the argument can be made that authors are getting screwed on this to some degree. But the bottom line, to me, is that people who are vision impaired or flat out blind have enough problems to deal with. If Kindle facilitates their being able to enjoy books for a reasonable cost, I can’t see coming out against it.
PAD
Harukai: “A self-righteous Prima donna who is continually whining “but my work!”
Ah. I see. Deferring to copyright law is self-righteous. Protecting your intellectual property is whining. Anyone who does these things is a prima donna. Who knew? I love the society we live in today.
“Sorry friend but the times they have changed, media has changed and it does not function in the nice little box it has been in for years.”
Oh, it doesn’t? Well, why didn’t you say so? If that’s the case, why don’t you contact Marvel’s legal department right away and tell them? In fact, write a letter that outlines, in explicit detail, how the times have changed, how media has changed, and so forth. In fact, please present it for our perusal as well, since I would love to read something more comprehensive and binding about how this all works these days rather than the condescending “times have changed.” Simply put, I think the Marvel lawyers have tons of precedent and volumes of legalese to back them up, so if you’re going to go toe-to-toe with them, let’s see what you have.
Das Booch: “So quit being such an eager snitch and learn how the internets work please.”
I believe they work as a subset of a thing called “the real world.” I know plenty of people think the net is their own private wild wild west where they can do anything they want, and that may even be true for some people, some of the time. But when you get caught, you deal with it like a grown-up.
sistermagpie: Whether or not it encourages people to buy comics doesn’t make it not a copyright violation. Being a copyright violation also doesn’t not mean it can’t encourage people to buy comics.
Luigi Novi: No one said it couldn’t.
I wasn’t responding to somebody saying that it couldn’t. People have heard S_D people saying “This site made me buy comics!” and replied “That doesn’t make it legal.” So I was making it clear that my saying the former can be true does not mean I think the latter is true, or that the former justifies ignoring the latter.
Plenty of this thread has been about stuff people think is implied by what people argue rather than stuff they’ve said outright. That’s going to happen in a discussion where people aren’t arguing against each other so much as talking about totally different issues. Maybe I read all the “I don’t believe you wouldn’t have found out about this except for S_D” and “This is about S_D members feeling entitled to free comics” and wrongly felt like peoples’ claims that they use it as a preview site that led to buying comics was being questioned.
Regarding the focus on whether or not an indvidual is telling the truth about not finding something out except for S_D, as I said earlier, there are plenty of ways for movie-lovers to find out about new movies besides trailers, but that doesn’t mean an individual movie-lover couldn’t honestly have heard about some new movie from the trailer. I don’t think getting rid of the comm immediately dámņš a huge part of the audience to total ignorance, but I can believe that an individual has lost their main source of information.
Peter, I’d like to apologize for some of the comments made here on behalf of the scans_daily members. I don’t think that being upset makes wankery okay.
I’m upset too. S_D was one of the main places I went to to discuss comics. There were nearly 10,000 members which doesn’t include the non-members who read the posts. I hope you know that some of the comments here by certain individuals are not representative of the whole of the community.
To them I’d say, you’re not helping!
For what it’s worth, I used s_d to discuss and comment on comics. I never intended to illegally download anything. My favorite posts there were panels from the Super Dictionary. The comments were always hilarious. (And, yes, I went out and bought a copy because of s_d. But, no, that’s not an argument for s_d because the money did not go to DC, as the book is out of print now.)
Ok. I don’t know what else to say now. Still sad.
Emily
I personally have a problem in the shutdown of the site because it throws the baby out with the bathwater.
So do I, but no one seems to be interested in that. They’re far too interested in vilifying me for an outcome that I did not foresee, had no control over and–by the way–still have no proof that I or Marvel had anything to do with.
Of course, we’d all understand a lot more about this episode if Peter would share with us how he “informed the copyright holder” about Scans Daily. Was it a “Hey you guys should look at this” email or a screaming “WHAT YOU *KNEW* ABOUT THIS AND LET IT STAND??!!” phone call or what? We don’t know, and Peter isn’t sharing. That would be useful information to have in sorting out what really happened here, too.
I actually thought I’d already answered this. For what it’s worth, phone calls and screams on my part would have been irrelevant if Marvel had no problem with it.
Basically after seeing the postings through the link from CBR, I sent an e-mail to Marvel (to whom is none of your business) that said, “I think this is a copyright violation, so I thought I’d bring it to your attention.” They said they’d look into it. I then got a follow-up that said, “It was taken down before we even approached them.” As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. A few days later, the entire site was shut down.
To quote Inspector Clouseau, “Yew are now up to speed.”
I’m claiming he’s obfuscating by repeatedly claiming the Photobucket removal means he can’t have been primarily responsible for the LiveJournal shutdown. Sorry if my previous post confused that.
It did. This post, however, was simply bull crap. I never said “can’t.” I said I was surprised it happened because I’d been told that the images were gone before Marvel even had the opportunity to take action.
But on second thought, I think it pretty much indisputable that I wasn’t responsible for the Live Journal shutdown because I don’t own Live Journal and I did nothing to violate Live Journal’s terms of service. I didn’t have the authority to shut down the site, and I committed no action under LJ’s TOS that would prompt them TO shut down the site. So in any reasonable measure beyond an internet community’s stubborn determination to foist blame over to anyone but themselves, I actually wasn’t responsible for the shut down.
I was responsible for seeing something illegal being done and reporting it to the people who stood to lose from it. Anything else that happened was the responsibility of the people who owned the site and the people who violated the rules of that site. But, hey…why blame those responsible when you can blame me, right?
PAD
I said maybe Marvel did. I don’t believe that they did, but I’m not discounting the possibility in the end. No contradiction at all.
Sorry. I misunderstood– when you used the word “exactly,” I read that to mean that you felt with some degree of certainty that that’s what had happened; looking over your comment again, I realize the statement could have been rephrased “You’re exactly right, Bradley– that is what I think happened,” but not, “I think that’s what happened, exactly.”
Does that make sense?
Anyway. Sorry for the misread on my part.