Sunday, November 25, 2007
Popular comic book BitTorrent site Z-Cult FM back online
It appears that people that want to use BitTorrent to acquire digital scans of comics still have a place to go to. Z-Cult FM is back online and is once again offering trackers like they were doing before they were threatened with legal action from Marvel and DC. This from the Z-Cult FM website:
Hi all fans and users of Z-Cult FM,
After much debate and thinking we have decided to take the following actions and we hope you will support what we have decided to do.
Z-Cult FM Comic Community will re-open all of its Trackers and locked down sections back to how they were earlier in the week before any legal action. We are carrying out this action for the following reasons:
- I am (We are) based outside of the US and are not therefore subject to US legislation that was present on the legal documents sent to us.
- Here at Z-Cult FM we have always had a clearly explained and signposted policy of making it clear to all comic publishers and copyright holders that we will on request (and reasonable proof of ownership) remove their material from our trackers if they requested us to. Please see: http://zcultfm.com/dmca.php
- Marvel Comic and DC Comics, who confirmed they have seen our site but refused to follow our policy. All other publishers in the past who have followed this policy have been respected and the agreed actions taken.
- Marvel Comics and DC Comics gave us 3 day to comply with their demands and then decided to go on their Thanksgiving holiday. So 2 of these 3 days we have been unable to contact Marvel by telephone to discuss this matter with them. We would like to thank DC Comics who were available by telephone and were friendly enough to talk about the situation and confirm the documents were indeed from DC Comics.
- The pressure from our members– their readers– demands that we do so.
- Chances are this won’t be the last we hear from Marvel Comics and DC Comics but once they have read our email we sent them with out response they will hopefully carefully think about their next set of actions.
- We would like to thank all our users and the number of outside sites on the Internet for their support. Without members like yourself there would be no point owning such a site.
When I first read about this, I wondered just how any legal action by Marvel and DC would play out since Serj, the guy that runs Z-Cult FM, lives in the UK. Most likely the lawyers working for Marvel and DC thought they would only have to threaten the folks that run Z-Cult FM. I guess now they will have to do more then threaten people with an email if they want Z-Cult FM to go away.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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If they have a policy of removing torrents at the publisher’s request, why doesn’t Marvel just ‘request’ their comics be taken down? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
I’m guessing that is just an empty promise. If it were in fact truly their policy, they wouldn’t have put back all of the Marvel and DC Comics torrents after they were contacted by the lawyers.
That is their policy and that is what they are now doing.
Yes and no. Both Marvel and DC sent a request to have them remove their comics. Their response was to shut everything down and then put everything back up. Then they announced that Marvel was going to be banned in a week. They also announced that DC comics wouldn’t be allowed until they’ve been out for 30 days. This doesn’t seem to go along with their own policy. DC Comics asked them to remove their comics and they refused to fully comply.