The popular BitTorrent blog TorrentFreak has posted about Marvel and DC cracking down on the act of using BitTorrent to distribute scans of comic books peer to peer. They also mention that a person that uploaded scans to binary newsgroups on Usenet received a similar warning letter.
Those comic fans who get their fix from Usenet don’t escape supply problems either. A prolific scanner/uploader known as ‘Oroboros’ has revealed he’s done releasing comics on Usenet. He said: “I’m done with the newsgroup. I got a DMCA notice from my newsgroup service. I have no posting abilities. I can’t even post a message saying I have to stop posting. If anyone can get to the group, please let them know that I’m done. They have my IP address in the notice and this is my one stated warning.”
He can’t even post a message explaining why he wont be posting comic scans. That’s just nutty.
I have a hard time getting behind the whole “downloading comics is a crime” notion. I have a hard time believing that it is stealing. Unlike the act of downloading music or video files, downloading comics involves something that is not available to the consumer by legal means. If you want a digital scan of a comic book that you can read on your computer screen, the only place to get it is from other people on the Internet. I would have a much easier time believing that downloading last month’s issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was a crime if I could legally purchase a digital scan of last month’s AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.
Marvel Comics is now experimenting with digital comics with their new paid service, Marvel Comics Unlimited. The name is a misnomer. The service is extremely limited. You cannot download comics and read them using CDisplay. You have to read them online and in your web browser using a clunky interface developed by Marvel.
The overall quality of the scans is limited too. Pages I’ve looked at were blurry and the text was hard to read.
I wish Marvel Comics would try to mimic the iTunes model. I’d like to be able to purchase digital comics like I do with digital music. Why wont Marvel Comics try to sell digital comics for 99 cents an issue?
Until they do, I guess I’m stuck buying comics the old fashioned way.
Woah… 99 cents an issue? Let’s nip this in the bud. It’s bad enough every MP3 is 99 cents (except in Mother Russia); how about if digital comics were much, much cheaper? I would say they’re worth about ten cents. They take about 20 seconds to read, and then are pretty much useless. 99 cents is a third of a ‘real’ comic’s price, and a digital copy sure isn’t worth that much. In theory, a paper comic can be taken anywhere and (again, in theory) might appreciate in value some day. It’s “worth” three bucks. A digital comic? That’s worth about a dime.
I really don’t think any comic is actually worth 3 bucks. Unless it was inlaid with gold leaf or something.
Sloofus, I picked the 99 cents price point because that is what people are willing to pay for music. Nobody knows what people are willing to pay for digital comics because it’s never been tried.
And I think digital comics are more mobile then you might think. I used to put them on a CD along with a copy of CDisplay. I would take this disc to work and using my PC at work, read on my lunch.
If the comic publishers ever got their shit together, they’d realize that they could sell their comics in a digital format on flash drives. That way, customers get a physical thing in addition to the 1s and 0s of the digital comic. Some bands do this already.
Imagine having the whole series of a particular comic on a flash drive- or buying old issues of a series in that format. There is a lot of potential there.
I’m still very much alive and scanning. In fact, as far as scanning goes, nothing has changed around me. Only the means of distribution have changed. Look harder.