Todd Allen of Comic Book Resources interviews lawyer Darren S. Cahr (AKA Super Lawyer) concerning the intricacies involved with trademark and copyright laws and how they pertain to the use of BitTorrent technology to share comic books. Marvel and DC have recently begun taking steps to stop BitTorrent sites from sharing comic book scans.
From the Comic Book Resources article:
The question is, if you own a physical copy of the comic, is it still illegal to download a digital copy?
“Yes,” says our Super Lawyer, “just as if you own a copy of a comic book you can’t simply take another copy of the same issue from a store. At least that is the position of the publishing and music industries.”
So the touted Super Lawyer is equating downloading a digital copy of a comic you already legally own to going into a store and stealing a physical issue. The big difference is that when you steal a physical comic, that result for the store is one less copy to sell. That is something that doesn’t happen when you download a digital copy of a comic. Another difference is that a digital scan of a comic is not the same thing as a physical paper comic. One is made of ones and zeros and must be viewed on a computer. The other is printed on paper and involves ink and some staples.
A physical comic and a digital copy of a comic are different from one another. They are not the same thing. Even someone who is not a Super Lawyer can easily tell the difference between the two.
I’m not sure why someone would even want two physical copies of a comic, but I can see why someone would want the physical version and a digital version of the same comic.
Also from the article:
Is it really a good idea to go after some of your more regular customers? This is slippery slope on both sides. On the other hand, there’s something the torrent crowd needs to accept, that they’ve been screaming to the hills about, and that’s the cease and desist letter. Did it occur to anyone that someone like Marvel has to send those letters to maintain their trademarks?
Describing the BitTorrent “crowd” reacting to the cease and desist letter as “screaming to the hills” isn’t really necessary or productive. It’s comes across as unnecessarily snarky. Both sides should be able to discuss this issue without resorting to making insulting remarks about the other side.
When will Marvel and DC send similar cease and desist letters to artists that sketch comic book characters for money? There are artists making money sketching characters they don’t own the rights to. If Marvel and DC are going to go after those that infringe on their intellectual properties, they ought to be consistent. People are making a nice profit infringing on Marvel and DC intellectual properties. It’s not the BitTorrent crowd.
One annoying aspect of the article is the author evidently felt the need to dumb everything down so we comic book nerds could understand the concepts involved. He referred to the BitTorrent controversy as “Secret Torrent Download Crisis Wars”. He also tries to describe the lawyer as some sort of legal “Super Hero” when it comes to the subject of intellectual property and the law.
Who is Allen writing this article for, 12 year olds?