Legal

In the Chicago Sun Times, Andy Ihnatko writes an article comparing TIVO to a few shareware programs that grab webcomics from their sites and load the images alone in the shareware viewer. Better lawyers have debated the legality of such programs because of the fact that they essentially use copyrighted materials in ways which the creator has not granted permission but Ihnatko doesn’t mention that at all. To the contrary he encourages his readers to use these programs no matter the financial harm that might be caused to the creators:

The only downside to all these apps is the fact that as Internet “scrapers,” they divorce the strips from their original Web pages, including the ads that make their distribution possible. But just like dropping LSD in the ’60s, you’re free to enjoy these apps in the time we have before we understand the true cost to society and the gummint makes them illegal.

One of the programs mentioned by Ihnatko is Comictastic a program for which Spiny Software is charging $15.00 a pop. Right on Spiny’s homepage for this program is a picture of its program ripping a Wigu image. Paging Jeffrey Rowland! Continue Reading →

Neil Gaiman blogs about the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upholding his victory over publisher Todd MacFarlane in the district court below. Gaiman and MacFarlane are now officially co-copyright holders in some of the Spawn characters. Gaiman also clarifies that MacFarlane probably does not hold any interests in the Miracleman/Marvelman character.

Link via Monitor Duty.

update: link to Judge Posner’s opinion. Continue Reading →

Distribution of comics doesn’t have to be through websites obviously but there is always a tension between readers and creators with these third party created distribution tools. Journalista! points us to The Comic Burrito which takes a look at Comictastic, a program that grabs webcomics automatically and as TCB notes, would easily allow one to build up a collection of a comic using the Modern Tales business model, like American Elf.

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A Tokyo court has ruled a Japanese manga book obscene, in a landmark court case that sparked debate o­n freedom of expression and the position of the country’s ubiquitous “manga” comics. Continue Reading →

Just in case you missed it, PVP’s Sunday Comic references the Modest Destiny/Penny Arcade story covered earlier this month in this interview with Sean Howard. Continue Reading →

Sean Howard's A Modest Destiny webcomic site was shut down temporarily today, in an odd twist of events brought about through Howard's unhappiness with some Penny Arcade forum-goers.

According to the PA site, Howard had written to the PA boys asking (demanding?) them to crack down on PA forum-goers who were using AMD characters as avatars. Included in this letter was the statement that Howard had already "shut down six web comics that were using his art", thus potentially implying that the same could happen to the PA site, if this alleged copyright infringement was not dealt with quickly.

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Actually this is another story about Disney vs the Air Pirates and the subsequent Mouse Liberation Front. But it does shed some light on why comics have struggled to enjoy the full protection of that the First Amendment provides to other mediums of expression. Continue Reading →

Dirk Deppey writes an interesting piece in today’s Journalista! on the potential spread of P2P file-trading to books and comics and publishers’ to-date head-in-the-sand perspective on it. Continue Reading →