Yet Another Webcomic Reading Piece of Software

Re: Software itself is neiter good nor evil.

by RPin - 09/18/2004 - 22:36

Oh, and as for your affirmation that those softwares do not infringe copyright -the users do, there's a very controversial law trying to be approved on the US congress, the "Induce Act", which will file for copyright infringment any technology that allows or induces the public to infringe one's copyright. It this law's approved, authors of those softwares can be in deep shit.

As will the I-Pods, Cd burners, file sharing networks...

Re: Software itself is neiter good nor evil.

by RPin - 09/18/2004 - 22:41

"The site downloading software does nothing to "circumvent" any mechanisms."

KeenSPOT and KeenSPACE actively employs anti-hotlinking systems that prevent agents that won't send correct referrals. Any software that tries to circunvemt that system is violating copyright, sir.

Anyways, I'm on your side. I'm not against comic-rippers, at least not as much as I once was. I'm just saying, none of us has arguments to say this is or isn't copyright infringment.

Re: Software itself is neiter good nor evil.

by FractalDragon - 09/18/2004 - 22:47

I know about that proposed law, and I oppose it for the exact reasons list it above. "Things" (i.e. objects, data, ideas, etc) themselves should not be illegal. Labeling them as such is absurd. It's the usage of those things that should be deemed legal or illegal.

-FD
Writer for Eidolic Fringe

Re: Software itself is neiter good nor evil.

by RPin - 09/19/2004 - 07:37

"I know about that proposed law, and I oppose it for the exact reasons list it above. "Things" (i.e. objects, data, ideas, etc) themselves should not be illegal. Labeling them as such is absurd. It's the usage of those things that should be deemed legal or illegal. "

I do not quite agree with your affirmation. Well... I DO agree that hammers can be used for good or bad and that computers do not violate copyright, their users do.

But you seem to be wrong from a philosophical point of view, which is the fact that in those cases essence preceeds existence. When a factory produces a hammer, it already does with its use in mind, which is to hit nails, etc. A car is made with the intention of taking people to places and gun, to shoot projectiles and kill people.

In case of softwares, their essence too preceeds their existence. Microsoft Word was created with the purpose of processing texts, Firefox was created with the purpose of accessing internet sites and cracking softwares are created with the purpose of registering softwares illegally. In the case of Comic-rippers, well DUH!, they're created with the comic-ripping in mind.

When Napster was brought to court, judges didn't care it in the end the copyright infringment was perfomed by the users. Because the software did not provide other uses than that, it didn't stand a chance from a legal point of view.

This actually reminds me of a joke I did a while ago. I once sent Adobe an angry letter warning I was going to file them for lawsuit because some kids photoshopped "my daughter's" face into a bunch of pornographic pictures. The reply I got from them was indeed quite funny.

Re: Software itself is neiter good nor evil.

by FractalDragon - 09/19/2004 - 13:05

Ah, you want to take into accout the intentions behind the existance of an object. If you do so, you set foot onto some really shakey ground. How can you really determine the intetions of a person? Legislation on intention starts to sound a lot like instituting the "thought police."

In the specific case of Napster, the program itself was never declared illegal. It was the actions and proceedures of the company that were deemed as such. The company acted in ways to encourage illegal acticvities using their software for their own financial gain. That is illegal because it's exploitation, the software itself was never deemed illegal. Last I checked, you still could not be charged with anything for just posessing a copy of napster or any other P2P program (although the RIAA and MPAA would love to try to charge you with something). You actually need to commit the act of piracy to be charged. Also, if you hadn't noticed, the Napster software and company still exists. The company does so legally now because of the way it operates now. The software itself has undergone some minor modifications, but the base technology in the program is still the same as before.

I point to that evidence and reassert that objects (including software) themselves should not be labled "good" or "evil," and any legislation that attempts to lable them as such is folly.

On the surface, such a lableing may seem like a good idea for some black and white cases, but it sets dangerous legal precedents and sets foot into the territory of impinging on civil rights.

Writer for Eidolic Fringe

Re: Yet Another Webcomic Reading Piece of Software

by Uncle Ghastly - 09/19/2004 - 17:23

The arrogance with which the authors of comic rippers proclaim that "the ad revinue model is dead" never ceases to amaze me. Keen generated well over $100K USD with the ad revinue model last year. My own humble comic generates ample profit from it's own advertising model. Having some guy write a program to rip my comics from my site, steal my bandwidth, and then tell me he's doing me a favour because the ad revinue model is dead would be laughable if it wasn't screwing artists over.

My comic is not free to view. The cost for the reading public of viewing my comic is they have to view it on the site with the ads that are displayed. That is the subscription price for reading Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. Nobody is forced to read my comic. If you don't want to accept the terms of reading my comic then that is fine, don't read my comic. That doesn't justify carving my site up and stealing my bandwidth and it certainly doesn't justify hacking the security measures I have in place to prevent people from doing just that.

Some artists may be fine with their work being distributed in this fashion and that's great. If the authors of these comic rippers had even a shred of respect for comic artists they'd contact each and every one of them they want their ripper to support and ask for permission to include them on the system. They don't do this though. Some of them won't even remove you from their system even when the artist contacts them personally. That is wrong.

I think it's going to take some lawsuits against the authors of these comic ripper programs in order to change the attitudes of people that anything put on the internet is fair game and bandwidth theft isn't really a crime.

Bandwidth is getting cheaper by the month but it's still not free. Everytime a comic ripper grabs the images off a website and hotlinks them that costs that website owner money and once stripped from the context of the page any compensating revinue models have been lost. Sure, if everyone who read comics with comic rippers also visited the websites and either paid every artist they're stealing bandwidth from $5 a month or bought a T-shirt this wouldn't be a problem, but if a person is already getting all the comics they want from their ripper there's no incentive for them to do this and one or two people buying a T-shirt isn't going to cover the costs of thousands of people stealing bandwidth. The "steal the bandwidth from artists" business model just isn't going to work. Period.

To me it's very simple, if you don't feel the artist's work is good enough to merit visiting their website then don't read it. Don't steal the artist's bandwidth and don't redistribute their work. If you're creating your own webcomic you're well within your rights to distribute it through any method you wish, however that does not give you the right to distribute anyone else's work in ways they do not wish it to be distributed. That just shows a complete lack of respect for the artist's work and the artist's rights.

People who would have so little respect for my work are not the people I want reading my comic.

Re: Yet Another Webcomic Reading Piece of Software

by Chris Cantrell - 09/19/2004 - 18:43

The major problem with most of these rippers is that the programmers release them THEN say, "Hey let's make a deal so we can all be happy!". At that point, you've already done the damage and the code is out there. If you stop producing it, I guarantee that within a few days some "revolutionary" coder will tweak it and rerelease it in a bootleg version and the process starts all over again.

At one time I actually supported a comic ripper called iComic because in lengthy discussion with the author I was assured that it would be an opt-in only system and that options to show ads and newsposts in the stream would be available to all artists. Well, the next thing I know, the guy decides to open source it and then everyone and their mother is making plug-ins for any comic they can find. All without the promised features that still aren't there as far as I know since it seemed like development had all but ceased on it.

Programmers can promise what they want to get the content but there really isn't an effective recourse if they violate the terms of the "agreement" other than completely changing the comic archive system which makes us look like the bad guys.

Come to the table BEFORE you release your software and control your own program and I think you'll find more artists willing to deal for that much needed exposure.

Re: If I may weigh in...

by Gianna - 09/24/2004 - 05:43

Is there any way to protect ourselves from these stealing sharks? I wonder if anyone is good enough at coding to make up some kind of code that would stop the ripper from stealing the image? Maybe display a warning message saying that the comic was being ripped without the author's permission? Maybe display a drawing of a butt with a 'kiss my ass' logo? Any ideas o­n how it could be done? 

Re: Software itself is neiter good nor evil.

by gwalla - 09/26/2004 - 17:19

Intent is very important in the law. Ever hear of the term "motive"?