HTML Comics

[KW!!]

Yeah I've been up on this for a while and every time I go there I'm shocked to see it's still up and running. I don't think their little legal blurb there protects them all that much should a publisher choose to drop the hammer. Though I can appreciate the measures they've taken to "protect" the work - ie image locking, no direct downloads, horrible site design that probably chases 93% of the population away right off the bat. I just wish there was more Golden Age/Public Domain stuff, as that's the one thing they could focus on without stepping on any toes.

In summation, it's probably illegal, most certainly unethical, and should be completely shut down. Just as soon as I finish reading Hellblazer.

[Jance]

I had lent a friend vol 1-14 of the Lone Wolf & Cub trades (because that is all I had). He love them so much he ran out and found this site by himself so he could continue reading. My friend actually like reading from this site better because he "doesn't have to squint" to read the books.

He let me know of the sites existence and my head asploded when I checked it out! My first thoughts were this can't be legal and then I proceeded to look up titles and read them. Everything I saw/read was well scanned and made me look forward to the days of digital comics and a good reader.

And here I am filling and storing long boxes like a sucker.  

[Spooky]

Welcome Jance!

[Lawrence]

 

[Bobgar Ornelas]

but, but it has boys ranch...

[dademan]

The other main use of this site is for out-of-print or unattainable series such as Flex Mentallo.  

That would be awesome. I may be looking into reading the Doc Savage stuff....Oh my gods, the Golden Age House of Mystery *drool*

[David]

From Caped Crusader's Compulsive Collector.com:

You Can't Do That On The Interweb

There's been plenty of online chatter over the last couple of months about htmlcomics, a site that hosts thousands of scanned comic books. The debate is whether or not the content constitutes copyright infringement, and the owner of the site has participated in several of the discussions across the interweb. While coming across as both a weirdo and an asshole, he insists that if libraries don't violate copyright law, then neither does his site. Some people have chosen to accept this argument. Others reject it, but read the comics on the site, anyway. I'm in the third camp. Not only will I not be reading comics he hosts, but I have difficulty believing anyone could be so ignorant about what he's doing.

He claims that the code on his site is written to prevent downloading and saving. That's a crock. The average surfer who doesn't know how to do anything more than right-click and "save as" may not have any luck, but the images can still be saved, and it doesn't take long for more savvy internet users to get past his silly trick (and no, I won't be sharing the how, just as I won't link directly to the site). The guy is a bit too impressed with the "code" he mistakenly believes protects his activity from being classified as distribution. It doesn't matter if the content can't easily be saved, because the act of delivering it to other computers electronically, which is what happens when people view pages on a web site, is by definition distribution.

The meat of his position, however, is The Library Argument. According to him, they make books available for readers, so what he's doing is no different. The Library Argument is patently false, and it doesn't hold water for two very obvious reasons that he failed to consider.

First of all, public libraries are not free. They're "public" because the public pays for them with tax dollars. It's not charity when you go to your local library and check out a book; you pay for that right when you pay local taxes. No public service is free, not libraries, recreational centers, police or fire departments, trash collection, or road construction. The same goes for private school libraries. Tuition helps to fund them, so again, nothing is free. If a collective wanted to build a community comic collection from which they could all read books, and they did it by actually buying the titles they wanted to include, that would work under The Library Argument. This doesn't, and it's not even close.

Secondly, books in libraries are either purchased from publishers or donated, and then the library lends out those books. They do not make copies, digital or otherwise, so they can offer them to more readers. They loan out only books, music, and movies that have been obtained legally. There's nothing illegal about scanning your comics for your own purposes (the clown behind this site even tries to compare what he's doing to backing up ones own collection), but making an archive of a collection freely available to the public is an unequivocal example of copyright infringement. There's no crime in loaning the most recent trade paperback you bought to a pal, but if you made color copies of every page and gave them away, you have infringed on the publisher's rights. When you cheat the publisher, you cheat the creators whose work you claim to enjoy. That's a dick move, period.

The owner of this site claims to have no interest in comic books, and maybe that makes it easier in his mind to justify theft. On the other hand, he's a self-described database developer, so I have to wonder how he'd feel if someone stole his code without compensating him for the work he put into it. You'd think someone in that sort of profession might have a bit more respect for the concept of intellectual property, but that's apparently not the case with this guy.

There's no debate to be had about The Library Argument. It's bogus, and glaringly so. The only thing left to debate is whether or not it's okay to visit the site and take advantage of what he's providing. I've seen the same, tired excuses we always see when this sort of topic arises. "I wouldn't buy it, anyway." If you wouldn't buy it, anyway, then why are you so determined to read it for free? "I'm broke, so I can't afford to pay for comics." Welcome to The University Of Real Life. We have your course schedule ready, starting with Tough Shit 101. I'd like to have lots of things I can't afford. Hell, I'd love to run out and buy one of these, one of these, and one of these right now. The fact that I'm not sitting on thousands of dollars to throw around for luxury items doesn't make it acceptable for me to just help myself to whatever I want. The sense of entitlement some people have can be overwhelming at times.

And yes, the notion that comic book publishers should make available titles that are no longer in print is a legitimate one. If you're not printing it, and you have no intention of printing it in the foreseeable future, you won't be losing any money by hosting digital versions on your web sites. If anything, you'll be providing a valuable service that your fans will appreciate. You might even introduce them to a writer or artist whose work is currently for sale and generate some revenue from the endeavor. So yeah, I understand where people are coming from on this aspect of the debate, but what htmlcomics and people using torrent sites are doing goes so far beyond that.

It all comes down to one very basic idea: If you like the work, then don't be a dick to the creators whose efforts made that enjoyment possible for you.

[juan castro]

wow, works great on my iphone, will bookmark it and enjoy it until it gets taken down,lol

[MajorBSE (John)]

I've got sooo much in my regina pile right now, why waste my time reading a comic online when i can get comfy and read the real deal!

[MajorBSE (John)]

Out of curiosity, I just checked to see if the site was still up, and as expected, I could not access it.

[InspectorSpacetime]

Slide -Back Sunday

[zack kruse]

Out of curiosity, I just checked to see if the site was still up, and as expected, I could not access it.

Awesome.

[Scott C.]

It sounds like the site has been shut down for good:  http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/publishers-get-together-to-beat-down-pirates/

[lugaru]

I'm glad to get some follow up on this. I poked around the site, ironically I mostly checked out the content of the sites author. He struck me as the sort of nutty dude I would meet a lot in the RPG community. Lo and behold he was a real character, based on some of the info you can find following the links.

[KW!!]

HTML Comics might be down but he's still bringing hours of free entertainment to the internet, now in the form of batshit ravings.

http://boards.answers.findlaw.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=fl-small_busine&tid=54640

A few "choice cuts" I found:

"The end objective is to create an online library, of EVERY book that has EVER been published. My code has the ability to accomplish such a task in about 2 years time, if I employ 2 other developers to assist me, which I have resource to, being that my job position with my employer is the IT Manager, and also that I have 15 years of connections through my tasks that I've completed for clients. This is REALLY HUGE. It means that America may go back to reading entire books again, and not merely bits and pieces from blogs and other forms of postings. It also means that anybody could have access to books at anytime of day or night, and such may propel America back to a level of education such as other countries are achieving, and we are falling behind on. An example is the nations of India and China, where more and more citizens are acquiring Master Degrees as a standard of educational achievement, while America still has issues with High School dropouts!"

(See? All the man was trying to do here was SAVE AMERICA)

Also:

"As a little side note: I'm not a "Comic Book Fanatic". "

(As if this somehow helps his case? Also, he ran a comic book site, and seems pretty fanatical in general, therefore I posit that he is in fact a comic book fanatic)

"I know - I'm going "against the wind". But, thus far, there has been no one anywhere who is able to prove me wrong. Only a lot of opinions, and references to copyright laws. I have made review of the copyright laws. They are relatively easy to understand and very clear. At the end of my story about them, EVERY LIBRARY IN THE COUNTRY IN VIOLATING THEM. Period! And yet, we embrace libraries as something positive for our society. "

(The libraries must be stopped. They're the real enemy here)

Oh, and when the publishers asked him to stop, his first response was telling them he was going to start charging for their books, and they could share some of the profit with him if they wanted to. What a stand up guy.

Sorry, I know I should just let this die and K.I.M. but I got a kick out of this.

[LA Rabbit]

Thanks to KW!! for posting that link.  I think the one commentor hit the nail on the head when he noted that mr. Html was looking for a fact pattern that would allow him to analogize his situation.  I think it was an interesting discussion posted there.  While I can appreciate the sentiment of the quote from King DAP, I don't think his counter-arguments demonstrated any better reasoning that Mr. HTML's reasoning. 

Clearly Mr. HTML guy is screwed because of the sourcing of his material.  However, if someone else was to legitamately acquire a digital copy of some copyrighted work, there is one bullshit hypothetical that did interest me.  The posted material is set up so:
1. that they are not able to be copied (realize that this actually is a whole bunch of issues that I expand on if anyone is interested in the hypo, which I doubt); and
2. only one person at a time could read it.  This is the key distinction.  The viewer only allows one user at a time to view the content.
That seems to be an identical analogue to the library except digital.  Not sure if legal but a heck of an argument.  If anyone else cares, I would totally expand this out a little. . .

[lugaru]

I think a big part of the library argument is that nothing is being reproduced, only donated and borrowed. The difference between this and a pirate streaming site is non existant... the only problem is that he tried to legitimize it with a flawed argument and publisized it too much. Meanwhile dozens of pirate sites that barely try to hide the fact that they are pirates keep chugging along.

Now how would a digital library work? I would say it would be stuff that publishers are cool seeing out there for free, although perhaps they could limit it in a way. In other words old public domain comics, recent stuff by creators who know that giving the copy away for free might net some trade sales and notoriety and maybe watermarked Marvel/DC. But the companies would have to donate and say what they are comfortable with.

[LA Rabbit]

Hey, today is my own flashback Wednesday (see other post about comics no longer a visual medium).  Bleeding Cool had a link to a company (Overdrive) that treads the same ground as my thought-experiment posted above. 

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/comics/article/44394-overdrive-offers-single-issue-comic-downloads-for-libraries.html

I hope I don't dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back.    

Obviously they could license to do anything but I wonder if someone bought digital comics, set up a website with the same function (only 1 person at a time) without any direct license, if there would be any problem. . .  If they bought it electronically, then I think they could lend it out as such (no copying issue) . . .

Still good to see LA public library is getting in on the digital action.  I already check out physical books there, so karma to them getting into online comics as well.  Good deal for them as the copies don't get abused, destroyed, lost, etc.  Also while they have to pay for internet website/bandwidth but they don't have to pay staff to interact live.  Glad to see digital comics getting pushed.  Maybe there is a future in this computery stuff.     Good day to you all.  I know this piracy stuff is a hot button issue so my apologies if it offends.  Not my intent but I enjoy discussing this stuff.