Will you be doing the same to alert the RIAA of people who share music online?

Yea, I’m with Harold. This site isn’t a extension of Marvel and DC Comics, as much as some people here would like. Being a snitch is totally lame, especially when pirating is a hotly debated issue in and of itself. You can claim its just illegal blah blah blah blah blah, for a while so was interracial marriage.

In conclusion, Lucas Siegal, you are a snitch

As Lucas pointed out, it’s not the fact that this guy is posting 19,000 works that he does not own, and does not control the copyright of, and has no rights to do this whatsoever that is news – it’s the egregiousness of it. This isn’t a kid posting eight songs on his myspace page, this is pretty much the start of a major, large, unrepentant pirate site.

And I do understand that many people would chose to sit back and do nothing when something like this comes up. It’s understandable – it’s an easy road with very few bumps (although a heck of a payoff at the end!). I would also guess that Lucas is not one of those people.

Wow, what a little bitchy post.

If it was a well written post and talked about the implications of doing such a thing, (“if this is allowed to happen, this would undoubtedly affect DC/Marvel in a negative way, and don’t we all want to keep reading comics?”) I think it would actually help facilitate discussion about it and how most if not all readers of this site DO buy all their comics and don’t download them.

But Lucas decides against this; no, he decides to write a downright petty and whiny post about it. Good job. And I bet you felt you were clever posting the WHOIS. You know there are always multiple ways to do things, and you chose the bitchiest/lamest/whinest way to deal with this.

Jeez, you were the hall monitor in high school, weren’t you?

“Consider this a Public Service Announcement.”
———————————————

No, I’m mainly considering it exactly what it is–snitching. And short of violent crimes (murder, rape, and, y’know ARMED robbery), nobody likes a snitch.

Like DCL said…trust me, they don’t need your help and the whistle blowing is unnecessary when there’s so much else going on in the comics world to be discussed.

And, having noticed the new post…so posters can sit and tear down creators and editors all day long, but when they get upset about something worth getting upset about…THAT’S a problem?

And someone – anyone, please sell me on this “good men do nothing” rule (urbanized as “No snitchin’”) – I mean, it clearly has variable standards that change from person to person…Sage – if someone broke into your house and stole your stuff, and I saw it happen, I think you would prefer that I “snitched,” even though it didn’t fit into your categories of when “snitchin” is okay.

I’ve always seen it – and seen it practiced as – more posturing than anything else – something said that applies to other people in other situations, but never to oneself if said “snitchin’” will improve or allow for your situation to be returned to its “whole” state, i.e., someone drops a dime on the guy who stole your car so you can get your car back…but that could just be me.

The distinction I made was perfectly clear. I would gladly “snitch” on seeing someone breaking into a house owned by a person.
Especially if that person was known to me to be defenseless, unlike a big company with a well paid legal staff already looking out for their interests, which was a central distinction I was making. If, for instance, the person had been bragging about his ultra-high-end security system and squad of security guards, and being obnoxious about it, I would be rather inclined to not bother making any effort on his behalf.
The size and power of the “victim” DOES make a difference.

(Note also, that it doesn’t translate to “no snitching” and that I did no name calling.)

see, but therein lies the problem – you have your thresholds and standards, Sage has different ones, and Lucas has others.

But – “big company with a well paid legal staff” – doesn’t that apply to say, a city or community with it’s police? Every community has a system in place (whether it’s well paid or “big” and all-seeing is debatable – both for the police and any corporation’s legal team in the days of 10% layoffs) that is supposed to worry about stuff like crime. Do your views about let others worry about it apply to crime, like Sage’s does, that is, up to violent crime?

“Slate Sanchez is Snitchin’” would be an awesome title for a local news consumer protection segment.

I’m pretty sure that Rich Johnston has repeatedly said he is not a journalist, especially when people try to play the “Oh how could you do that” card.

I’m not telling anyone how to behave, just saying “I wouldn’t bother, and here’s why” so saying we all have our standards and thresholds is so obvious that it seems like a non-point to me.

Sure, every “community has a system in place”, but just like in a neighborhood, busybody old ladies get jokes made about them and over-earnest, neighborhood watch zealots are vaguely creepy people nobody wants to spend a lot of social time with.
Violence takes things into another realm altogether, and in fact I believe in a near-zero-tolerance police for almost all acts of violence, even as I believe in liberalization and reduced sentences for other “crimes” with ridiculous penalties.

I can’t believe the backlash against Lucas here. I for one think he did a great job here. I’m sure Marvel and DC honchos have taken noticed.

>>This guy appears to be giving comic books away for free – huge difference.<<

let’s not confuse this with someone say, giving comics to schools or adult literacy programs. This guy is giving away copies of comics that he has no right to copy and give away, as he does not own the copyright on said comics, the company does. Without the internet as a factor, this would be the same as running off copies of a comic on a copier and giving them away.

Given that last, you could say that he’s cheating the company – something which you cite as justifiable.

My point is that he doesnt appear to be motivated by profit as the Art Adams imposter was. You might say that he may have hoped to get some cash from advertising could but to make anything (ie cover his server costs) traffic would probably need to be high enough that Marvel/DC would quickly become aware of him

I think comparing him with that fraudster guy is a bit harsh. There appears to be a minor industry of people out there selling pirated comics on ebay – that seems much more of an apt comparison and probably a story more worthy of investigative exposure imo.

What!? so Troy was just justifying journalistic investigations per se? If thats the case then the examples given were very misleading.

Troy gave two examples to justify Lucas’ piece, both of which involved some sort of profit motivated business fraud. I just pointed out that this story is very diffrent – it doesnt appear to involve a profit motive on Gregory Hart’s part.

Has anyone actually visited the site in question?
Can anyone post an actual link or address so we can check it out for ourselves?

Either way you look at it, what this guy is doing is plain wrong. Posting 20K comics– something that took me 20 years to collect– for free on the net is just plain wrong. I could see sampling and enticing someone to go down to their LCS and pick up back issues. A single full copy used as a review piece. But entire stacks of entire eras? That’s just plain wrong.

Lucas’ post was a bit acid in its tone, there’s little doubt. But all he did was use the best forum he had available to reach the broadest audience he could. With all due respect to Marvel & DC (among others)… how many staffers in their legal departments or even their editorial departments could name any three people from the Mothership here? Matt Brady, Troy Brownfield… and after that, it starts to get a little muddier. (No offense, Lucas, Sarah, and so many others; those are just the names that come immediately to mind.) He tried to do right and regular readers crucified him for it.

Y’did the right thing, Lucas.

I wish whatsisname had expressed some sort of broader ideological view when he made this post (“This is why I think this is wrong…”, even if the answer was a boring “because it’s against the law.”)

That having been said- I really don’t think mass-piracy by cranks inside the continental united states is a good for anyone. even if you’re pro-piracy (in whatever sense,) this paints you into the same corner as that crank. He makes the hard-working industrious, articulate ideologically-outspoken pirates LOOK BAD by going “Woohoo! I don’t have to pay for anything! Lookit me, and you can’t do ANYTHING to stop me!” in such a public forum.

It’s like making an impassioned argument for social justice, and having Barbra Streisand and Rosie O’Donnel immediately jump up to voice their support. Yes– it’s appreciated in principle, But it’s NOT HELPING.

>>Some are rare books that are no doubt unattainable both because of costs are limited availability. <<

wait – people still make this argument? Even in the face of the Rolex and Lexus counter? Seriously?

see – that’s why it’s hard to believe anyone takes that argument seriously anymore, because it’s so narrow, and is completely up to the person making it to set the boundaries. Ergo, it’s pretty impossible to argue against, because the lines are moving for each individual.

But I love the insights that the pro-piracy arguments give. It’s fascinating.

>>Why not talk to some actual creators about how illegal downloads have actually helped their careers and padded their wallets? I’m sure Warren Ellis and Matt Fraction have some interesting stories to tell.< <

I'm sure they do - and they do it with the material that they own, and hold the copyright to, and benefit financially from. Unless they're doing it somewhere that I've missed it, I've yet to see either Matt or Warren post the work of others, or assume that they can say what it right, legal, and ethical to do with material for which they do not hold the copyright to.

>>And a final thought, if copyright is extended infinitely then we wouldn’t have things like Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.<<

You do realize that Copyright Law, Public Domain and Copyright extension are entirely different topics, right? No one besides you has even mentioned them, and I don’t see how they come into play in this at all.

And as for the insights that the pro-piracy arguments give, you’re doing it – by posing the question of “who exactly is being harmed by that?” – which opens the whole “is victimless crime really a crime?” can of worms. But alas, as I mentioned earlier, maybe with you, in discussing this, most proponents of copying and giving away copies of material they have no legal claim to only apply their views on the law specifically to comics, music and other entertainment, and argue strenuously when you try to apply that same logic and ethics to other things.

I mean, within the whole “who is being harmed?” argument, can’t you argue that, as long as the company makes their costs back, uploading comics doesn’t hurt publishers? The company isn’t “out” and by copying the material and uploading it for others, you’re only cutting into their profit and not “harming” them?

There’s also the whole “I wasn’t going to buy it anyway” explanation that I find endlessly interesting, but that’s another line of discussion.

As I said, I find the whole justification of copying and uploading material by those who have no legal claim to do so a fascinating topic.

I’m going to pass on the assertion that, because horrible things happen in the world, there’s a certain level of other things that should be ignored and that because someone is, in your eyes ‘more bad’ than the other guy, things the first guy does should be overlooked, and the whole ‘they caused me to commit a crime!’ claim too…the suggestion that there’s some sort of “hierarchy” in crime and punishment…that’s an unwinnable battle against someone like you, who’s already made up their mind about it. So I’ll get out of your way on that.

As for copyrighted material showing up from users, jeez – full pages, and blatant, egregious violations that clearly fall out of “Fair Use” (and discussions about pirate sites) have always been removed at Newsarama for years.

I guess if you don’t think that physical violence against individuals is worse than “copyright infringement” or that there are limited resources for combating crime, than clearly there is no point to have a convo about it, and I don’t think those are crazy values as you imply. But thanks for totally patronising and misconstruing my position.

And its bad form to answer a claim I didn’t make (That copyright infringement on this site should be deleted). Here is what I actually said:

“And I really feel if if this site is so adamant about cutting down on the pirating than they MUST AS RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS, start informing the RIAA/Marvel/DC of people that post links to copyrighted material or admit to using copyright material on his board (including talk@). Grow some stones, start doing something about it if you care so much, and alienate a huge portion of your readership and community members.”

Deleting things that have what you deem to be infringement on this site is not analogous to what Lucas did in any way shape or form.If it was Lucas would have reported the individual to his ISP so his content would be removed, which is the equivalent of deleting threads/posts, instead of telling Marvel/DC legal departments to take care of it. You should institute the same policy on the site if you feel so adamantly what lucas did is right. If a video or link of copyrighted material goes up, fire off an email to the RIAA (I’m sure there is a hotline of something), if people post saying they have downloaded copyrighted comics, or post links to them, fire off an email to Marvel/DC. Also, publicly shame them, have a forum that lists all of these people and insults them like Lucas did to the individual in question. Apply an analogous policy to this site if you are so adamantly willing to defend it. But it would never happen, because it is clearly so over the top and not proportionate as to be ridiculous, which is why people are upset with the initial blog post in the first place.

The Definition of a Library

It is our understanding that a public library, or any library (i.e. … schools, institutions, social organizations, individual communities, …) is created with the intention of providing free public access to reading material, with the altruistic goal of educational enlightenment and the better welfare of the people. Many libraries are in operation with a specialization of a specific subject or focus (i.e. … law libraries, science libraries, …).

We have created a public resource for reading material, hence we would like to believe that it would be interpreted as a “Library”. It contains comic books, about 60,000 total, and is provided to the public without requiring any cost (tangible value and potentially profit) and also without requiring a membership (which could be interpreted as having intrinsic value relative to today’s marketing approaches, where membership lists can be bought and sold). The “Library” makes use of the internet as a medium of delivery for its reading material. The end result can be reviewed at the website ADDRESS REMOVED. Download of any of the material is not possible, and code is written to prevent such. To prevent download by users that are savvy enough to have understanding of how to retrieve files from the cache of web pages, the structure is such that each comic overwrites the cache of the previous comic, hence; making copying as difficult as is reasonably possible. Because download and save of the books is not reasonably possible, the delivery of the material does NOT constitute distribution.

Please make visit to the website ADDRESS REMOVED so that you can familiarize yourself with the approach and the tool which makes delivery of the comic books to read. The website is fully functional and cross browser compliant, and is written in code that is the most clean (i.e. … it requires no download of a tool for viewing nor does it add any kind of tracking cookies to your computer, nor does it have any code that identifies your computer when visiting the site). We make mention of these facts so that no one feels apprehension about visiting the site. The site is very “family oriented” and contains no material of a sexual nature, nor of a demonic nature (which many more recent comic books have been seemingly following the trend of), nor does it contain any material that would not be appropriate for a child to review.

Since the creation of our library, we have been bombarded by the vendors and publishers of the comic books (i.e. … DC Comics, Marvel Comics, …) which make claim that our Library is an infringement of copyright laws, and must be taken down. We have resisted, and have expressed our position to them.

In an effort to reach fair and reasonable agreement, we have sent to their legal departments a letter which offers for us to make charge of a penny per page, and a maximum of 25 cents per total comic book, of which we also offered to share with them any profit they felt might be duly theirs. To this extent, we offered that, even if they felt they are entitled to 100% of the profit, that we would agree to such a relationship. Both companies rejected our proposal, and were extremely rude in their response.

We believe that the law supports our position and our interpretation of a “Library”, and; because we don’t require membership nor does our Library incur fees for late returns of rented literature, our Library is more of a pure form of non-profit than is a community Public Library, or even the Library of Congress. To this extent, it isn’t possible to make a donation to our Library, hence there are zero dollars transacted.

Additionally, our Library does not contain any material that would be interpreted as advertisement (i.e. … there does not exist links to other web sites nor any other medium to promote profit or any form of revenue for anyone, either directly or indirectly). Hence, there is no financial gain by its existence that would or could be appreciated by any person or organization or corporation or community. We feel that, if our presentation of literature is in conflict with copyright laws, then so too is every library in existence.

Sincerely,
Database Engineers, Inc
Owner of the website ADDRESS REMOVED

“Both companies rejected our proposal, and were extremely rude in their response.”

ROFL Well, I should think so! You’re trying to dictate terms of use to the copyright owners. Copyright simply doesn’t work that way.

As was explained to you over and over again at the FindLaw.com forums, from a legal standpoint you’re operating from an especially weak and vulnerable position.

>>>”Maybe instead of “Rolling On the Floor Laughing”, you may find the energy and competence to “Stand Up and Think”, and; think about something that will benefit humanity instead of thinking of ways to sound “cool” on a blog board.”

Maybe instead of trying to compare yourself to Coperninus and Galileo, you should come to terms with yourself and admit that you’re a guy who posted a bunch of comics online. You are not a great thinker, a freedom fighter or a shaper of worlds. You’re a comics fan who posted copies of books you grabbed off the newsgroups.

“But, it is a not-for-profit library, in its purest form, and; it’s available to the general public with “no strings attached”.”

Except for the part where you suggested charging people for the opportunity to read them. Marvel’s already doing that.

And BTW, has anyone else noticed the irony that while this guy’s site address has been redacted left and right, the DB creator went ahead and posted it and it’s on this page after all?

If this were solely golden-age comics, ones long out of print and with no one attempting to reprint them, I’d at least be willing to listed to the “digital archive” argument. There’s recent stuff on here,and that throws the old “preservation of history” argument into a cocked hat.

>>>”We believe that the law supports our position and our interpretation of a “Library”, and; because we don’t require membership nor does our Library incur fees for late returns of rented literature, our Library is more of a pure form of non-profit than is a community Public Library, or even the Library of Congress.”

Libraries buy their books (or have them donated) and loan them to people, or make them available for perusal on site. They own the books in question. They don’t make copies of them, or if they do, they get permission. This does not match your model.

Expressly setting aside the right and wrongness of the argument, it is hilarious to listed to people paint themselves as modern day Ghandis for trying to change the oppressive copyright system. Puh-lease.

Readers might enjoy checking out the equally hilarious claims by a young lady who thinks it’s perfectly okay to professionally publish new Twilight novels in the interest of busting the restrictive copyright monopoly, as reported on Peter David’s (no stranger to copyright infringement himself) site. ( http://tinyurl.com/cpm8xj )

If you download comics, or post comics, or whatever, you’re not an intellectual revolutionary, nor are you the scum of the earth. You’re a cheap guy who wants to read comics for free. Admit it and move on. It’s bad enough we have to rationalize our hobby at all, don’t bother rationalizing the way you obtain them.

BTW – If this project is intended to be dedicated to the free and open interchange of information, please send me a copy of the programs and scripts created to make the website – I’d like to use it for my own site as well. It’s free, right?

Well, the big difference is that posting scans of a novel is not as important, or even as desired. The text of the novel, yes, but I’m assuming your code does not do OCR, or you wouldn’t be testing it on a primarily visual medium.

Plus, it sounds like your desire to “get past them” implies you wouldn’t have permission to do all this scanning and posting. And I can’t see how you’d ever expect to do it without that.

The website is proof of concept – you can apparently generate the pages from a scanned document. Of course, getting the scanned base of non-comics is not as easy to do. You’d likely have to scan them all, and that requires access, and that requires permission. It’s quite possible the LoC has much of their stuff scanned now, but again, you’d need access to it.

There’s definitely an allure to having the whole thing available, but without the permission of the multiple respective parties, it’s a highly technical pipe-dream.

But of course, since comics are a visual medium, and the copying of the text is not an issue, I have to go back to “Why did you start with comics if your goal was presenting printed books”? There are any number of out of print and/or public domain books that you could have used as a base. I see two scenarios:

1) My earlier idea that the ready access to pre-scanned material made comics a good source for experiment. You wouldn’t have to spend man-hours scanning the books.

2) You just wanted to post a bunch of comics and all the rest is smoke and mirrors. Again, I’m not commenting on the legality of same (as it’s fairly cut and dried) but if that was your goal, SAY that was your goal.

BTW – A check of your site this morning shows it’s no longer there – has this all become a moot point?

I think that the point being made by those against this “snitching” is that the effort would be better spent elsewhere. Why defend huge corporations who can take care of themselves? Why not spend your effort writing an article about something that will help someone? There are lots of skilled individuals who are jobless right now, write an article on one, it’ll probably get them a job! That’s just an example, but the point is that you’re basically “helping” someone who doesn’t need it and doesn’t even care.

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