I’m not sure why it took them so long, but it seems Marvel and DC Comics are joining forces to try to crack down on using BitTorrent to share comics. I assumed a long time ago that they simply didn’t care that people were downloading their comics. That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.
Z-Cult FM, a popular comic book BitTorrent tracking site, posted a message to their website on 21 November explaining that they had been contacted by Marvel and DC Comics and as a result, all torrents had been removed from the Z-Cult FM website.
We got legal letters from both Marvel and DC Comics who have been working together to send us these legal threats. We are currently dealing with the legal issues and they have given us 3 days before they are forced to take anymore action..Z-Cult FM website was put offline last night by me (no one else) after I got the email while in work and issued a code red alert (we have drills also 5 times a year). We decide putting the site offline was best course of action to analyse the situation and decide our best course of action. We have confirmed one of the legal letters is 100% from DC Comics when a phone call was made to DC Comics who confirmed the email and its contents. As of today we was unable to contact Marvel and we are trying again tomorrow just to 100% confirm it.
I can’t help but to think that this is somehow connected to Marvel Comics unveiling their new online comic service. I have to think Marvel finally realized just how great the demand is for digital comics. The site went down numerous times because too many people were trying to access the site at the same time.
The loss of Z-Cult FM won’t stop comics from being distributed through BitTorrent. The same popular torrent tracking sites that are used to distribute music, movies, and TV files are also used for comics. They just don’t specialize in comics the way Z-Cult FM did. The Z-Cult FM site was utilized more for torrents of older comics. The comics that can be downloaded from the other BitTorrent sites are usually comics that came out in comic book shops that same week.
[...] to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!The news that Marvel and DC Comics were finally taking an interest in BitTorrent networks such as Z-Cult FM got me wondering just what effect peer-to-peer file sharing did to their [...]