Legal

Counsel for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund have submitted four motions to dismiss the charges against retailer Gordon Lee, owner of Legends in Rome, GA. Last February, the Fund initiated Lee’s defense against charges resulting from accidentally distributing Alternative Comics #2, a Free Comic Book Day book from 2004, to a minor. The anthology includes the story “The Salon” by Nick Bertozzi, which contains a segment depicting Picasso in the nude. The Fund has already spent in excess of $20,000 defending this case.

CBLDF filed four motions on May 2. The first motion seeks to dismiss the John Doe counts. The second seeks to dismiss both felony counts under the rule of lenity, which requires that when a defendant is charged with a felony and a misdemeanor for the same conduct, the lesser penalty must apply. The third motion seeks to dismiss the felony counts on the grounds that Georgia’s Distribution of Material Depicting Nudity or Sexual Conduct is unconstitutional on its face and as applied. The fourth motion seeks to dismiss the misdemeanor counts of Distribution of Material Harmful to Minors on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional on its face and as applied to this case. Continue Reading →

PHPComic 2.0 is a POSTpn module for grabbing comics from the web and displaying them in a POSTpn managed site (Comixpedia is a POSTpn managed site btw).

Although this raises all of the issues debated during the Comictastic news stories, this module, for what it’s worth, does seem to include a link to the comic’s website. It also has a somewhat active support forum which might provide an opportunity to suggest creator-friendly improvements to the folks behind this piece of code.

Or to learn if there’s a way to block it, if you don’t want your work displayed via this means of publication. Continue Reading →

Mike Krahulik reports that the legal difficulties surrounding the Penny Arcade brand have finally been worked out.

It is likely that this is related to the situation where Krahulik and Holkins inadvertedly signed away some of the rights to their work to an internet marketing firm, as outlined in the NY times article profiling Penny Arcade. Continue Reading →

Digital Strips has the story on a court ruling that a school could not suspend students for the publication of a webcomic on their website. Continue Reading →

The latest case of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is the arrest of a comic book retailer for “distributing material depicting nudity” and “distributing obscene material to a minor.” The offending material in question is a part of Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon, available online at Modern Tales sister site Serializer. Continue Reading →

If you, webcomic creator, are ever in a position to get your work published, never, never, assume the publisher is your best buddy and that a “standard contract” is somehow fair to both of you. Companies are not people and most of the time a contract is between you and the company (not the people who work for the company).

This sad story of contract stupidity involves not a webcomic creator but a brilliant mathematician who wrote a book based on his website. You may not be able to calculate differential equations, but you can certainly be smarter about contracts. Continue Reading →

Lawrence Lessig writes an interesting article at Wired about corporate copyright-holders pitting Europe and the United States against each other to continue the extension of copyright terms.

By law, once the limited monopoly granted through copyright expires creative works are placed in the public domain. Under current U.S. law, nothing will enter the public domain until 2019 although that date will change if Congress again extends the copyright term on creative works. Continue Reading →

Newsarama continues its coverage of P2P trading of comic book scans. Part 2 includes interviews with a group of individuals involved in facilitating the downloading of comic books. Continue Reading →

This handy guide provides a good reference sheet for copyright issues with regards to comics.

Brad Templeton’s webpage is also a good cheat sheet for copyright issues, particularly with regards to the Internet. Continue Reading →

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund welcomes the November 16 ruling of U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele of the federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas who ruled that Act 858, amending the Arkansas Code, is unconstitutional. The amendment criminalized the display of books which are inappropriate to younger minors but constitutionally protected as to older minors and adults. Continue Reading →