Even if Marvel & DC manage to shut Z-CultFM down there are enough other torrent sites to get comics. For example I don’t think Marvel & DC will be able to shutdown the Piratebay when companies like Microsoft & Warnerbrothers (yes i know DC is part of WB) have unsuccessfully tried it for years.

Hail BITTORRENT! Immortal BITTORRENT! Cut off one limb and two more shall take its place!

Y’know, there’s different ways you can approach this outside of treating potential new readers as the enemy. There are great ways one could use this as promotion for new books. And I’ve read a number of posts online where people have stated if it weren’t for digital downloads they wouldn’t read comics at all (or have started reading comics in the first place).

Find a way to present this audience with a feasible alternative (and no, MDCU’s DRM-wannabe model is NOT that alternative) and I bet you could not only see this audience happily pay for what they are getting (see for example, Radiohead’s new album download where people could name their price) and see an actual Renaissance in the comic market. With the dying Direct Market system I would think the big publishers would be more interested in scooping this audience in, instead of getting them obsessively controlled content options (MDCU) with legal threats rolling out directly behind it.

Yes three days means three business days. However a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are all Business days. The rest of the world doesn’t run to an American holiday calendar.

Also DC managed to answer the phone so Marvel could have done the same.

Update: the SLG message is a hoax. More here.

This is just anecdotal, but:

I buy more comics because I download comics. I’m a better consumer of comics because I’ve read em online first.

The following writers would appreciate that I downloaded their books, because now I buy them:
Kirkman, Spiegelman, Morrison, Giffen, PAD.

Not Byrne though. Never Byrne.

Jason, the burden would be on DC and Marvel to explain that they were going on a holiday. It’s irresponsible and unprofessional to assume that a party from a foreign country would be privy to your working schedule.

“Just saying, there could still be a silent majority out there who rips off comics but don’t buy them, which is what I’m sure Marvel and DC are afraid of.”

You make a good point. But like someone said theres no proof that this people represent a danger to the money earned for the dc and marvel (they always are saying how good things are for them financily in contrast to 5-10 years ago) , besides i dont think any publisher, record labels or anyone for that matter has a right to decide wheter people can share their files or take something someone is sharing online.
I know its a risky statement but there it is. Its all about freedom (with responsability, i know)I mean, Hell! thats why i was on Captain America side during the civil war(until he surrender, thing that i undestood but i still felt betrayed)
Sorry for my english. Not from the states

Well, looks to me like a certain anonymous freelancer is going to have trouble paying the bills for a while…

The more I download the more comics I buy…
I’m from Europe and there’s no way that I’m going to buy single issues, one by one.
When comics that I want to read come out I download them first (not from torrent but there’s other means). Afterwards I buy them on amazon. Every comic ever published can be downloaded from the net and that’s how you come in contact with comics I never heard of (hi invincible, hi TWD :- ). Now I’m a huge fan of both and without downloading I would have never bought them. All 3 HC issues of both are on my shelves and all single issues are on my hard drive. Long live comics on the net!

Hi Jason:

Dan Buckley addressed your question in his recent CBR interview:

“Digital comics will become a part of our incentives package in the near future. We are at present discussing the calculations and implementation of this package. It may take several months to implement. However, the first thing we need to do is make sure that the offering is profitable.”

“I see nothing wrong with treating thieves like the thieves they are.”

Same here. Of course, copyright infringement isn’t theft, anymore than jaywalking is murder.

If you are taking something for free that is normally paid for, you are a thief.

Copyright infringement is a separate issue.

Quit dodging the fact that BitTorrent downloaders are nothing more than common thieves.

Well it’s 10 years later, but essentially Napster all over again. It’s not just comic books; it’s torrent technology in general that’s under attack. For the last few weeks I’ve been writing about this.

Major producers/suppliers of media are involved, involuntarily, in a game of whack-a-mole. They thought they finally had a handle on all this “downloading” when they managed to either shut down, incorporate, or scare people away from all the original P2P systems like Napster, Gnutella, eDonkey or Bearshare. But they KNEW that people were still downloading stuff somehow, and now they’ve got a-hold of a word, “torrents.” And they don’t understand HOW it works, but they know there are websites they can threaten (hence Marvel telling Zcult to hand over files, and Zcult having to explain they don’t HAVE any files).

So it’s evolution. But it’s in reverse. Normally producers/suppliers provide something to the public AND control the means of distribution. But now they’re in a weird position of not having 100 percent control over distribution-and lets be realistic; the number of people who CAN deal with torrents and the number of people WILLING to deal with it is still pretty small. But those producers/suppliers are trying to curtail the growth of the number of people willing to do that. Because if the number gets too large somebody will invent something like TIVO that makes it easy enough for grandparents to do and then they’ll be freaking out-like people who make TV commercials are now.

Where there is a demand, people will create a market. Comic publishers can meet that demand or just continue fist-wagging and shouting “not fair” and “thief” at those who are already doing it themselves. Trying to create another system where you completely control the distribution of your content doesn’t really ever work on the Internet. That would be how business used to work when the audience had no power. The way it works now is different and the audience has MUCH more control on what they get and how they use it. Apple is trying to control exactly how people use the iPhone but the funny thing is that they keep getting around it by hacking it. And they will continue to piss in the wind until somebody comes along that better understands how to cater to today’s market , meet their demand, and eventually take Apple’s business away from them.

Throw blame where you will. Try to recreate the market to best suit your company (like say the comic industry did with the direct market, and we know how well that worked) but the real market is already there and waiting for the right person to make it work.

18 – wow, so it would be unethical *not* to commit a criminal act? You think your $5 could be better spent on a college fund well, fair enough, but the necessary consequence of that is that you’ve chosen not to purchase your comic books, *not* that you’ve chosen to illegally take them without paying. That was something else that you chose to do, not something that was forced on you, as you imply.

The copyright infringement is to theft as jaywalking is to murder would have a little more weight if jaywalking involved any form of homicide, by the way. Perhaps copyright infringement is more like manslaughter.

As I understood it, DC & Marvel’s “cease and desist” order was intended to force them into shutting down their entire site, of which the torrents are only a part. There are also many message boards on the site, which they were loath to shut down since they’re used by hundreds of members. (IMO, they shouldn’t have to.)

In any case, Marvel has now followed ZCult’s procedures and requested that all Marvel comics be removed from the site. ZCult’s owner agreed to remove all Marvel comics from their torrents within seven days and Marvel is apparently satisfied with this. My guess is that DC will follow suit very soon. As for smaller companies, some will undoubtedly follow the example of the big guns, while others follow SLG’s example and actually use the site to promote their work.

Ultimately, the comic book publishers and the scanners might work out some sort of truce and perhaps even benefit from each other. Only time will tell.

Theft is different from “losing” or “not winning”, and those things in and of themselves are also different from what’s happening in the comic book industry.
Any background in economics and a rudimentary understanding of logic would help explain this.
For a company to LOSE revenue there must be an actual decrease in said revenue. But the comic book industry as a whole hasn’t really experienced this yet. Their revenue increases! So perhaps instead of being semantic jerk wads we should be clear and objective with our language, trying to discuss the topic with honesty instead of huge amounts of bias. That seems to be the biggest problem, most people on either side of the debate just want to turn the other side into robber barons without ever bothering to analyze what’s really going on.
So there seem to be two problems I see. The first is that there is illegal downloading going on. That means a law is being broken. No too hard, right? The other problem is that many, some, or most of the people participating in the illegal downloading of comics are not buying those very comics from the industry, hence they are not participating in feeding the industry it’s daily bread. TWO problems, not one big, messy, annoying, emotional problem. One is the illegal download of copyrighted material, and the other is no revenue being acquired through the illegal consumption.
The reason they’re two problems is that fixing the first doesn’t necessarily fix the second. If what illegal downloaders have been saying is true then eliminating illegal downloads won’t really help the industry at all because many people, just like me, already spend thousands of dollars a year on comic books and comic book related purchases/donations/investments, so to suddenly lose access to a treasure trove of copyrighted, digital material at no cost does not mean by necessity that those people will then spend more money on their comic books.
The situation is pretty black and white, but no one who supports copyrights and the comic book industry seems to want to view it in any other light than “downloading comic books is theft.”
Seriously, how do you expect this situation to get resolved when you’re calling the other side a bunch of evil criminals? That ostracized a group of very tech savvy human beings who can hold grudges and who are, in fact, working on new ways to curtail the encroachment of Johnny Law in their efforts to distribute and maintain their collections of digitized comic books.
I’m not trying to defend the practice of downloding comic books because it is illegal and most people around here are obviously too simple minded to understand the notion that ideas aren’t property. Copyrights and patents are disgusting form of thought slavery that we just accept because big brother tells us to, and so I may as well not attempt to persuade you in that sense. BUT, if you’re going to try to fight this fight at least bother being mature about it and using a language and attitude demonstrating at least an elementary understanding of the actual issues at hand.

Old-Timey Usenet Hack: “So Joe, in Seattle, downloads a couple of comics a week, and like most downloaders, buys more comics, on average, than non-downloaders.”

Hey, if people download and then make a purchase, no problem. However, not everyone follows Seattle Joe’s example, as evidenced by the following comment:

Old-Timey Usenet Hack: “I have no interest in buying something when I don’t have to, and think it would be unethical for me to do so: my money is better served feeding my family. Given the option of spending $5 on a comic book or downloading it and putting $5 into my kids’ college fund, there’s no choice at all.”

Hey guess what? There IS a choice! A really really simple one too. Can you guess what it is? I bet you can, what with you professing to be so smart.

You can’t afford to buy it, don’t download it. You don’t need it.

“Calling a comic pirate a ‘thief’ has no basis in fact.”

Sure. Calling a downloader of comics a thief is extreme. But calling someone who downloads with NO intention of paying the asked price a thief, is a wholly accurate statement. You want to have your cake and eat it too. What entitles you to free comic books? The fact that you CAN get them for free? Is that really the strongest argument you can muster?

You chose to have kids that need college money. That was your choice. You can’t afford both your comic book hobby and your children, why should you be allowed to have both without paying for both? Grow up and deal with the ramifications of parenthood. And stop hiding behind stupid transparent hypocritical assertions of morality. By your own admission, you are clearly a thief.

Prem: “But the comic book industry as a whole hasn’t really experienced this yet. Their revenue increases!”

What little increase the comics industry is currently experiencing really only applies to the top tier of publishers. For the most part, the smaller companies are continuing to slip in sales. Furthermore, the costs of producing comics has increased along with (and beyond) the sales increases. That would be part of that whole economics thing you’re talking about.

Prem: “most people around here are obviously too simple minded to understand the notion that ideas aren’t property.”

True. But the individual execution of ideas ARE property. That’s the way the law works. If you don’t like a law, you don’t break it. You try to change it.

Prem: “no one who supports copyrights and the comic book industry seems to want to view it in any other light than “downloading comic books is theft.”

No one? Really? That’s kind of an odd statement, given the recent news reported in this very article where a publisher accepted free downloads from Z-Cult as a form of advertising.

Prem: “Anyone who claims that downloading media illegally is theft doesn’t understand the definition of theft, and the what it means to own something in the first place.”

Acquiring something for free when it would normally require payment is stealing. Artists are guaranteed, by the U.S. Constitution, that their endeavors will be protected as property. This protection is not limited to tangible media but instead extends to ALL reproductions.

Why does it cost more to create comic books these days? With things like the internet and how seamless communication and transfer of information is I don’t understand why it’s suddenly more expensive. And that’d certainly be an interesting study, to determine whether the industry is being as efficient as it should be or if it’s holding on to old paradigms or modern notions of a necessity to grow past ones means. Or perhaps the entertainment industry as a whole is going to have to discover new means of making revenue while entertaining. Without making any strong judgment on the situation, it’s just true that industries have a tendency to entrench out-dated modes of function because they’ve invested capitol into a business as usual. Embracing and attempting to function in a system where information can’t be controlled is risky and mostly uncharted. But that’s my small rant on the economics of the comic book industry.
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L:”But the individual execution of ideas ARE property. That’s the way the law works. If you don’t like a law, you don’t break it. You try to change it.”

Individual executions of ideas are protected as property, but calling a banana an apple doesn’t make it an apple. Actions aren’t property, moment of time aren’t property, so hence an individual execution of an idea isn’t property, only the actual thing created from the execution. However, yes, the instance itself is protect as property by the government, but that doesn’t mean it’s logical.
Concerning laws and why we shouldn’t break it, I’ll only point you to the parts of your US history reference books that discuss civil disobedience, the revolutionary war, the Boston tea party, the civil rights movements. I’m not necessarily saying that the ethics of copyrighting and patenting is as serious an issue as despotism or racism, but I personally think it’s very important because copyrights and patents are essentially idea control. The notion that all good ideas deserve a good profit are another outdated mindset of industrialist capitalism, but the industrial revolution is over, and information is the first thing to break the fundamental fuel of capitalist economy and modern economics as a whole: scarcity. And that’s my rant on economics.
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L:”That’s kind of an odd statement, given the recent news reported in this very article where a publisher accepted free downloads from Z-Cult as a form of advertising.”
Technically, if we’re going to be precise, SLG is a good example of a company that is opposing the current trends and methods of the Industry, embracing a forward thinking, constantly changing business model. They’re recognizing that existence as a comic book business in the future is going to require different methodologies. They’ve probably resigned themselves on the idea of creating good old fashioned comic books because just about no one buys those unless it’s from Marvel or DC. But that’s not really because of illegal comic book downloading, that’s partly because of Marvel and DC, but also because of Diamond. As much as I enjoy much of what they put out, Marvel and DC are like the carcases of dead presidents who refuse to accept the end of their presidency and haunt the oval office in the night as G.W. worries about how he can bring to fruition his dark lord’s glorious plans.
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L:”Acquiring something for free when it would normally require payment is stealing. Artists are guaranteed, by the U.S. Constitution, that their endeavors will be protected as property. This protection is not limited to tangible media but instead extends to ALL reproductions.”

I feel like you’re simply reiterating the one point that, “downloading comic books is illegal,” but I’ve already conceded that a few times. In this time of internet magic alluding to laws and contemporary mores will win you nothing. You’re dealing with a growing number of human beings who don’t care that the Constitution grants copyright holders diddley squat. Not only that, but our ability to control these people and their activities is on the verge of escaping us completely. Government agencies are trying desperately to control the one place where freedom could exist. The information superhighway could soon be a toll road. And that is my anti-government rant of the night.

I think having comic books in libraries are great.
But not everyone likes libraries.
Again, that’s not to say that we should excuse people not liking libraries.
However, if we all went to libraries instead of buying them from comic book shops and the internet, the business would go belly up!
However, I actually like owning trade paperbacks, and individual issues of very good comic books. Nextwave #11 is probably my favorite issue of a comic book ever. But I haven’t been able to find it at any comic book shops so far. I have issue 12 just because it was the final issue, but I really want 11!

Prem: “Why does it cost more to create comic books these days?”

Cost of paper, for one thing. But yes, most costs can be reduced through digital distribution. And I am in favor of this. But you were clearly talking about the current scenario. Not the one that publishers could further exploit.

Prem: “I feel like you’re simply reiterating the one point that, downloading comic books is illegal,”

You’re the one saying that it’s not theft simply because no physical copy is taken. That’s a game of semantics. In the end, it’s illegal. And clearly we agree on that.

You seem to have strong opinions on he way people view what rights the Constitution grants. Have you considered the purpose of Copyright laws? To help encourage and promote artistic growth through the promise of security and compensation for the artist. Are these laws abused? Yes. But that does not make them worthwhile.

Edit: My statement in post 45 should read:

“But that does not mean the laws are not worthwhile.”

@zhinxy

Fair enough. Apologies for misunderstanding.

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Acquiring something for free when it would normally require payment is stealing. Artists are guaranteed, by the U.S. Constitution, that their endeavors will be protected as property. This protection is not limited to tangible media but instead extends to ALL reproductions.

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