Yesterday I blogged about Marvel and DC telling the torrent site Z-Cult FM to take down their material, as well as a message allegedly from SLG Publishing, giving Z-Cult permission to list SLG’s material on the site. It was that second item that really snowballed over the weekend.
Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading contacted SLG Publishing Dan Vado, and he said nobody at SLG wrote the letter. He also left a comment about it on the Z-Cult site.
Z-Cult pulled the thread down and contacted Dan. Someone from Z-Cult then posted a comment here on Blog@ saying they had heard from Dan; it turns out the person who sent the message to Z-Cult was a freelancer who has worked for SLG and had been in contact with Z-Cult before on SLG’s behalf.
That brings us to an email Dan sent me, after I forwarded Z-Cult’s comment to him to verify it was accurate. As it turns out, Dan did give the freelancer permission to contact the site on his behalf some time back to arrange a banner ad exchange:
Looks like I owe a couple of people some apologies on this. Let me break this down for everyone.
1) In regards to the statement on Zcult attributed to SLG. I did not write it. However…
2) Someone whom I have done a lot of business with over the years DID write it. This person had asked me some time back if I would be willing to allow some torrenting of our material in exchange for ad banners on those same sites. This was a few months back and something I thought had already been done. In my mind this was supposed to be a low key promotional opportunity to see if people using those torrent sites could be persuaded to buy legal downloads and not a grand statement on the overall rightness or wrongness of torrent sites.
3) The fact that this took a long time to get done wound up being bad timing as I was now being painted as being pro-torrent, anti DC and Marvel. Those companies have the right to do whatever they like with their property, including threatening legal action. That I might find some promotional use for these download sites doesn’t change that. The timing of the statement was very poor and caught me off guard while I was on vacation and made it look like our decision was a reaction to the Marvel/DC thing and not an initiative we took on our own.
4) I made some pretty harsh comments about the quality of comics journalism. While nobody covering comics is ever going to win a pulitzer, in this case I have to take responsibility for being out of line.
So, with a load of egg on my face I would like to sincerely apologize to Serj at Zcult, to Landry Walker who has been nothing but a tireless and hard-working friend and colleague, and to everyone whom I may have offended in general.
November 25th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Well done Johanna for getting to the truth and well done Dan for having the balls to apologise. Even if his comments about lazy journalism don’t actually need apologising for. Whatever the mix up between Serj and Dan and Landry and whatever your views on the rights and wrongs. By simply using a telephone Johanna really has shown a few people up.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I didn’t even have to use a phone, in this case, just an email that asked Dan a couple of questions. And it wasn’t to show anyone up. It was to explore more about the interesting changing economics of online comics.
November 26th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Thank You Johanna for clearing this up and for being so on top of things in general!
- Jim
November 26th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Amidst all this torrent brouhaha, I’m surprised no one’s wondered about Dan V.’s statement that he’s “not certain what our digital plans are going to be in the coming year..”
SLG was an early adopter in the legit but non-DRM comics downloading business. Am I reading too much into the above statement, or is the future of eyemelt.com (the SLG download site) in question?
November 26th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Anyone else read this as “Dan Didio apologizes for…”