Bent Corner

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 financial well being. Do peer-to-peer networks such as Z-Cult FM actually hurt the comic book industry? Are comic book publishers losing money because of Z-Cult FM?

We’ve seen what file sharing has done to the music industry. It’s been losing a lot of money because it it. Lots of money. What has it done to comic book publishers?

I found sales charts for the last ten years on Comics Buyer’s Guide. If you look at the overall sales numbers for the North American comic book direct market, you will notice that sales have actually been steadily increasing since 2004.

• 2004 - $328.25 million (5.68% increase)
• 2005 - $352.33 million (7.34% increase)
• 2006 - $395.55 million (12.27% increase)
• 2007 - $429.90 million (8.68% increase)

Z-Cult FM began in 2004. I honestly don’t know when people started downloading comic book scans. I know I first heard of it in 2004. I first learned about it from an article on Ninth Art.

There seems to be a parallel between downloading comics and buying comics. It would seem the more people download comics, the more people buy comics. That’s something not seen in the music industry. Record sales have plummeted with the popularity of peer-to-peer music sharing networks. Record sales continue to decline.

Why isn’t this true with comic books?

Updated (7 February 2008): I’ve added the 2007 figures.

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From the press release:

STARMAN, the acclaimed DC Universe series created by writer James Robinson and artist Tony Harris, will be collected for the first time in hardcover, on high-quality paper, in THE STARMAN OMNIBUS, a series of six volumes beginning in May.

This series will feature new covers by Harris, and will measure 6.75” x 10.25”. Collecting the entire STARMAN series, plus the STARMAN ANNUALS, SECRET FILES, 80-PAGE GIANT, THE SHADE miniseries and much more, these volumes include stories illustrated by Harris, Peter Snejbjerg, Chris Sprouse, J.H. Williams III, Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, Guy Davis, Teddy Kristiansen, Lee Weeks and many others, as well as several stories co-written by David Goyer.

Scheduled to reach stores in May, THE STARMAN OMNIBUS VOL. 1 HC is a 448 page title collecting STARMAN #0 and 1-16, with a cover price of $49.99 U.S.

I’ve been interested in reading this, but the third trade paperback in the series has been out of print and is extremely hard to come by. Amazon is pre-selling it for $31.49 plus another 5% if you place your order before it’s released.

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.

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.