no idea, but it's been like this for a few days.
more like two weeks; am having withdrawls; was catching up on so many back issues; love that site. I am hoping it is just a bandwidth issue and they get it fixed; love htmlcomics.com
more like two weeks; am having withdrawls; was catching up on so many back issues; love that site. I am hoping it is just a bandwidth issue and they get it fixed; love htmlcomics.com
Saw on another website that the site has been shut down for good, due to the legality issues.
more like two weeks; am having withdrawls; was catching up on so many back issues; love that site. I am hoping it is just a bandwidth issue and they get it fixed; love htmlcomics.comSaw on another website that the site has been shut down for good, due to the legality issues.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
more like two weeks; am having withdrawls; was catching up on so many back issues; love that site. I am hoping it is just a bandwidth issue and they get it fixed; love htmlcomics.comSaw on another website that the site has been shut down for good, due to the legality issues.
And I just found out about it. That's annoying. Thanks for the head's up, can you post where you found that tidbit?
I'm still pissed. This really burns my (vegetarian) bacon.
But really, is anyone really surprised that they got nailed? I had a good laugh when I briefly skimmed their reasoning of how they were justifying themselves as being legitimate.
To be frank, nailing this guy isn't going to make IRC go away.
Really burns my Turkey Bacon; argh! cant see what the issue might be; they were not selling or charging or making any profits; it is just like letting a friend read you comics;
somebody needs a enem...well; like the Joker said.
I hardly see how it was copyright infringement; with no profit stream how can any gain be shown; I suppose a weak arguement could be for the reproduction format; but without any material gain, there is no malice.
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Actually, the better argument could be that as they were only posting past issues which are not on store shelves anymore that there was no malice intended. If I were to make 100 copies of the new AC/DC Iron Man 2 album and start handing them out on the street corner, I am acting maliciously, intentionally or not, because I am depriving the band and the label of revenue.
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But really, is anyone really surprised that they got nailed? I had a good laugh when I briefly skimmed their reasoning of how they were justifying themselves as being legitimate.
I can't say I'm surprised, but I am a little disappointed. Instead of working to shut them down, I think everyone would have been better served if the industry had worked with them to create a sort of gateway to bring new people into the hobby and bring individuals like myself who used to collect and now don't back.
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I hardly see how it was copyright infringement; with no profit stream how can any gain be shown; I suppose a weak arguement could be for the reproduction format; but without any material gain, there is no malice.
A copyright owner has to defend their copyright protection otherwise they can lose it. For many companies, owners, estates, these works of arts may have value later on down the road, it's just not in publication right now. The thing about past issues, there's always the market of graphic novels that bundles the past issues for sale. What you're doing with this distribution can hurt that market.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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A copyright owner has to defend their copyright protection otherwise they can lose it. For many companies, owners, estates, these works of arts may have value later on down the road, it's just not in publication right now. The thing about past issues, there's always the market of graphic novels that bundles the past issues for sale. What you're doing with this distribution can hurt that market.
Trademarks are lost by failing to assert your rights, not copyrights. But there's nothing wrong with telling a site hosting out-of-print works to knock it off.
yeah; periodicals expire pretty fast; anyone know the copyright rules for comics? I would be surprized if it is more than a year.
yeah; periodicals expire pretty fast; anyone know the copyright rules for comics? I would be surprized if it is more than a year.
Sorry, but the copyright rule is the same as it is for everything else. Some of my friends were in the comic book industry.
I can't get the link to it here at work, but I saw it on Yahoo answers. I'm still waiting on a reply from the webhost too, sent him an email day 1 of the crash.
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Trademarks are lost by failing to assert your rights, not copyrights. But there's nothing wrong with telling a site hosting out-of-print works to knock it off.
Argh, yup, that's correct. My familiarity is in patents and it becomes a blur between that copyrights and trademarks, and it's been years since the classes. Definitely nothing wrong with telling them to stop because quite a few of those issues are still collected as collector's edition graphic novels. That and copyright owners have the right to decide how their work is to be distributed.
What I found to be funny from my copyright class was that the US was a major source of piracy in terms of literature and books in the 19th century. To then see the US become one of the biggest proponents against it piracy... heh.
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yeah; periodicals expire pretty fast; anyone know the copyright rules for comics? I would be surprized if it is more than a year.Sorry, but the copyright rule is the same as it is for everything else. Some of my friends were in the comic book industry.
As per the sonny bono copyright term extension act... term ends 70 years after the death of the author (post 1978 stuff, stuff before it's just plain 95 years). Woohoo... So what y'all gotta do is kill off your current favorite artist/authors and then wait 70 years if you want it to be public domain faster, by the time ya get out on parole, it may be okay. Well... except for any interim extension acts that may occur.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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As per the sonny bono copyright term extension act... term ends 70 years after the death of the author (post 1978 stuff, stuff before it's just plain 95 years). Woohoo... So what y'all gotta do is kill off your current favorite artist/authors and then wait 70 years if you want it to be public domain faster, by the time ya get out on parole, it may be okay. Well... except for any interim extension acts that may occur.yeah; periodicals expire pretty fast; anyone know the copyright rules for comics? I would be surprized if it is more than a year.Sorry, but the copyright rule is the same as it is for everything else. Some of my friends were in the comic book industry.
Copyrights actually expire x years after the death of the creator, where x the number of years since Walt Disney died + 20. ;-)
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I hardly see how it was copyright infringement; with no profit stream how can any gain be shown; I suppose a weak arguement could be for the reproduction format; but without any material gain, there is no malice.
Neither profit nor malice are required for an infringement claim.
So much for legal free online comics
Thank you, Matthew Morris, for the link.
Why in the world would anyone living in the US even try this? There are other countries for this sort of thing, right?
Why in the world would anyone living in the US even try this? There are other countries for this sort of thing, right?
Having read the supporting material, I think the answer to your first question is "because he's a loon."
It sounds like he was trying to "rules-lawyer" copyright law. Trying to define a library in such a way that "if what I'm doing is wrong there are thousands of other illegal operations" might work at a game table, but not in court.
I have no comment on the second question.
It sounds like he was trying to "rules-lawyer" copyright law.
Choke! Gargle!
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It sounds like he was trying to "rules-lawyer" copyright law. Trying to define a library in such a way that "if what I'm doing is wrong there are thousands of other illegal operations" might work at a game table, but not in court.
Giggle, giggle, quack. Based on a few blogs I have read since written by people who had dealings with him he had a pretty overinflated sense of self. It has been said that he was basically trying to pull a Napster where he would work out a deal with the industry and then sell the site off for a big sum of money.
Well, I am not going to go out and buy those back issues to read; doesnt make to to happy with the comic industry either.
Well, I am not going to go out and buy those back issues to read; doesnt make to to happy with the comic industry either.
+1.
Well, I don't know if I could blame comic book publishers for protecting their copyrights...
...but then again, I might add that when I first heard about that website, I told my kids about it, repeatedly offering to read them issues whose contents they were wondering about. They kept saying no. They wanted to see a real, dead-tree comic book. Somehow, it just wasn't the same on a computer screen.
And I, too, barely glanced at htmlcomics.com (except once, briefly, to glance at a couple of pages of a "Zero Hour" issue because I was curious about a continuity question.) I decided that I'd rather spend my free time reading paizo.com posts, Golarion books, Pathfinder RPG, and Planet Stories. The few times I read comics, myself, these past few months, were in situations when I didn't have access to a computer.
So I don't know if htmlcomics.com was really costing publishers any business.
But then again, if I had known that htmlcomics.com's days were numbered, I might have given up all unnecessary activity to make time for it... like eating and sleeping.
Just kidding.
Sort of.
It makes me quite happy with the comic books industry. From what I can tell, the person had no intent to stop and suggested several times that it would only grow. Left alone, I believe that it would have been only a matter of time before he started moving to upload other books whether or not the publisher was selling digital versions.
He wasn't going to stop until he got sued into the ground. I'm glad that it was dealt with.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Follow up article here
I'll admit it was nice to re-read the Fall of the Mutants w/o having to dig out my comics.
I'm glad that it was dealt with.
I'm quite the opposite. I don't know what the guy was like, and I don't care. What I do care is that I got to read some off the old stuff that is just so hard to find, even on the deepest bowels of torrent. I care that I could read stuff that is never going to be published here in Brasil.
And it was completely for free and without virus.And now it's gone.
For me that site was awesome and I really hope something like that happens again, though I know it won't.
I salute to the guy who made that site. A botle of rum for one the coolest and most unashamed acts of piracy this side of Black Beard.
And it was completely for free and without virus.
And now it's gone.
For me that site was awesome and I really hope something like that happens again, though I know it won't.
If by "something like that" you mean "completely for free," then you may be right. But if you're willing to pay, I quote from that article to which Matthew Morris linked:
I guarantee you, sometime in the next 12 to 24 months, you are going to see big publishing companies put up sites like this with great hi-res images and good readers and you are going to pay for it.
I salute to the guy who made that site. A botle of rum for one the coolest and most unashamed acts of piracy this side of Black Beard.
Unashamed. Yes.
Cool. Not so much. I mean, I can understand how people might see that, especially if he wasn't stealing your stuff. I personally don't find the idea of him pirating issues of Pathfinder as "cool." Not sure why other things would be different.
Either way, I doubt that it would will be that long before a legal subscription or such site shows up with the comics. It wouldn't be free, but people generally expect to be paid for their work.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I don't mind paying for something like this, but, so far, the comic publishers aren't offering it. I think Marvel offered up a limited selection of their back catalogue on a subscription basis, but it was far too limited for me to justify the expense. If they put up their entire back catalogue through, say, 2008 or so (to avoid cannablizing the comics currently on shelves), charged a reasonable price for it, and made it as easy and quick to use as html comics, I'd be all over it. Heck, they could even put a little button on the pages saying "if you liked this storyline, why not buy the trade paperback from our super awesome store!"
But, I don't think they'll do that. I think they'll do what most other content producers do in the face of technology that makes their old distribution methods and pricing obsolete - shove their heads as far up their asses as they can until their business fails. And then blame pirates for their failure to offer a product people would buy at a price people would pay.
Paizo is by far the best rpg company in regards to this issue. I can't say how much I love their policy of giving free pdfs to subscribers.
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This book goes into detail about how the recording industry managed to cut their own throat after they shot themselves in the foot they had in their mouth and then let Steve Jobs convince them that the other leg was useless so they should pay him amputate it.
I'm pretty sure that it outlines the pattern that every corporate content producer will follow until every single one of them has collapsed into a decaying pile of obsolete business models and irrelevant distribution methods.
I would jump on something like Sebastian suggested like it was a hand grenade and I was trying to save my friends' lives. However, I don't think that the corporate content producers have the competence to come up with an even half-ass system that isn't laughable at best or insulting at worst. The indie producers are the ones who will innovate and survive. The rest are zombies who don't even know that they are dead.
Paizo you are a shinning example of how to do it right. Keep up the good work. You don't treat all of your customers like thieves because some of them might be. You reward your customers for their loyalty. Even though money is tight I always find some for you.
SM
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I'm actually glad someone brought up Paizo. Now please correct me if I'm wrong but if someone were to do to Paizo what this fellow was doing to comics putting up entire books art, fluff, Crunch and all most of the people here would be condemning the guy for ripping Paizo off.
Also the other thing is it wasn't just the great big comic publishers the guy was putting comics up from it was from smaller ones as well the ones were the writers cant afford to lose revenue as this thread shows
I suggest reading the comments as she makes some interesting points.
well, I hope the comic site wins the case so we can get back to it.
I'm actually glad someone brought up Paizo. Now please correct me if I'm wrong but if someone were to do to Paizo what this fellow was doing to comics putting up entire books art, fluff, Crunch and all most of the people here would be condemning the guy for ripping Paizo off.
Also the other thing is it wasn't just the great big comic publishers the guy was putting comics up from it was from smaller ones as well the ones were the writers cant afford to lose revenue as this thread shows
I suggest reading the comments as she makes some interesting points.
Well, that's just the thing, isn't it? There's the Pathfinder wiki and pfsrd20.com - While they don't exactly put up stuff scripture and verse they put up enough so I can run a pathfinder game. I don't think Paizo is a very good example for this, because it's a different type of company. Now if someone started putting up their novels up for reading for free, that might be a little bit different.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Well, that's just the thing, isn't it? There's the Pathfinder wiki and pfsrd20.com - While they don't exactly put up stuff scripture and verse they put up enough so I can run a pathfinder game. I don't think Paizo is a very good example for this, because it's a different type of company. Now if someone started putting up their novels up for reading for free, that might be a little bit different.I'm actually glad someone brought up Paizo. Now please correct me if I'm wrong but if someone were to do to Paizo what this fellow was doing to comics putting up entire books art, fluff, Crunch and all most of the people here would be condemning the guy for ripping Paizo off.
Also the other thing is it wasn't just the great big comic publishers the guy was putting comics up from it was from smaller ones as well the ones were the writers cant afford to lose revenue as this thread shows
I suggest reading the comments as she makes some interesting points.
I think there's a difference. I mean Uncannyxmen.net has synopsises (synopsi?) and character bios and the like. I can read their detailed summaries and get the gist of the story, but I don't get the art, or the exact details or anything. the wiki and pfsrd20.com are the same. I can play Pathfinder (in theory) w/o the books, but it's the books and the art that make the complete Pathfinder picture.
A better analogy to the current comic industry would be if the month after the adventure path completes, Paizo release a deluxe hardbound version of the AP, all six parts put together with extra bells and whistles. (comics vs graphic novels). That Paizo makes their RPG material (and their Pathfinder Novels) in PDF format, and gives an incentive for subscribers to give them a steady stream of income, is an example, to me, of adapting to changing technologies.
National Review is another good example of embracing this media. The Comics industry isn't. If the industry sues this guy for every penny, I hope they get his scans of their magazines... and use them to make a for profit model.
Now if someone started putting up their novels up for reading for free, that might be a little bit different.
You mean like Rich Burlew putting up his Order of the Stick comics on the web for free, and then releasing them in books for sale? People are still demanding those books, and several people on these messageboards have recently been thrilled at the news that a couple of those books are getting reprinted again.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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All I know is that Marvel has the audacity to sell issues of Iron Man from 1968 for $1.99 per issue through the iPad comic app.
How about no.
I hate to break it to you Marvel, but a random issue of Iron Man from 1968 is not a collector's item, likely not a "must read" issue, and, were I to go to a comic book store, is something I could likely pick up for a buck or less. I'm happy to pay you, but you're f%@*ing insane if you think that's the correct price.
It's like you want me to be a pirate.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Now if someone started putting up their novels up for reading for free, that might be a little bit different.You mean like Rich Burlew putting up his Order of the Stick comics on the web for free, and then releasing them in books for sale? People are still demanding those books, and several people on these messageboards have recently been thrilled at the news that a couple of those books are getting reprinted again.
Difference being, Rich put his own content up on the web.
Baen Books has done the same with some of their novels.
Neither case would be the same. It would be more along the lines of me posting my PDFs of my Pathfinder purchases as a 'library'
Ah, I see. When Freehold DM said "THEIR novels," I took that to mean "novels they wrote and to whose rights they haven't sold." I guess the intended meaning - or, at least, Matthew Morris' interpretation - is "novels someone bought and whose rights are owned by someone ELSE." If that's what Freehold DM meant - and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it is - then yes, that's obviously against the law. I retract my statement.
I guess I was just trying to make the point that putting one's material on the web for free and selling a dead-tree edition is not necessarily financial suicide (although I'll admit it is very risky.)