To Bit torrent, or not to Bit torrent....
If you have been coming here now for the last couple weeks, and I know there are some of you out there, then you obviously want to hear what I have to say. Now it's my turn, I need your opinions: Digital Comics Yes or No?
By digital comics, I don't mean Marvel's Digital Comics. I discovered those a while back and they were great, but never in succession, rarely encompassing an entire story, and for good reason. If they gave you everything, you wouldn't go buy the back issues, right? Wrong. It never once made me entertain the thought of going out and buying a ton of back issues I can't afford anyhow.
So I looked around, hoping to uncover the magical comics Itunes. Never found it. In fact, I found an absolute lack of any other type of digital comics anywhere. I was prepared to pay. I literally spent three or four days looking for anything. I have to admit, I had no clue what I was about to discover.
I stumbled upon a blog article about comic torrents and it more or less pointed the way to the digital comic motherlode. I am not going to link to it myself for my own reasons, but if you want to find it, it is out there. These sites have essentially any comic you want, all in scanned digital form. There are specialized readers, downloaders, sites full of everything you could want, and even forums for requests.
The first thing I downloaded was "The 100 Greatest Comics Ever". It had pretty much every comic you could want from a historical standpoint. First appearances of every one of the major characters in comicdom and plenty of offbeat, but influential comics too. Download after download, miniseries after miniseries, creator run after creator run. I was in comic heaven. Missed part of Infinite Crisis? It's right there. Missed the Moon Knight issues of Civil War? Click here to download. The first 800 or so appearances of the Legion of Superheroes? Got it. I was now 80 gigs deep in comic history.
Then came the problem. I felt bad about it. I felt like I was cheating someone, but couldn't figure out exactly who. I didn't download new comics, I still go to my local comic shop every Wednesday like a cow to financial slaughter. My pull list is 15 comics deep (counting Countdown 4 times), that's around 50 bucks a month, and that does not include all the specials, Civil War tie-ins, 52, Countdown, etc.
I can hear it now, "Suck it up, it's only a few hundred dollars a year, if you can't afford that, you need to rethink your hobbies." That's great and everything until your wife tells you that she is pregnant with your third child. And your unemployed (gainfully though!). A job is not a problem for me, the ones I want just don't pay more than my unemployment check I am guaranteed for the next 5 months.
So, yeah, I can afford my pull list, but it gets harder and harder to justify buying the plethora of other comics that come out each month that aren't on it. Especially now with my daughter coming into her own as a comic fangirl. She's 5 and asks about the "Fantassick Fo" constantly, her favorite easily being Thing. Action figures, Archie comics Wolverine bobbleheads add up pretty quick, too. I love Wizard mag, she loves ToyFare, so I get them both. I spend upwards of $60 to $80 a month on comic books and related items. It is totally worth it.
So where is all this rambling going to? The multitudes of damn near necessary comics that I can't afford every week are sitting there free. I refuse to make excuses about being able to read classic comics I would otherwise be completely incapable of reading. I was too young to read Neal Adams on Green Lantern. Batman: The Dark Knight escaped me at the time as a cultural milestone. I have read both of these now and am a better and bigger comic fan for it. But downloading the new ones bothers me.
For example:
Teen Titans #47
I enjoy Teen Titans but just not enough to have it on my pull list. It agonizes me sometimes because I have always followed them and would love to continue but I just can't afford to add any more. Issue #47 however, crosses over with Countdown. Now I am fully aware that it is the type of story that it is not necessary to read to comprehend Countdown, but we all know that it is difficult to knowingly ignore a comic that is tied into an ongoing series like that. DC and Marvel know it too.
So I decided I was not going to buy it. I downloaded it. And I still can't figure out who I am cheating. Adam Beechen, the writer? I don't think they get paid per comic sold, and besides, I wasn't going to buy it. DC Comics? As I said, I wasn't going to buy it. Myself? In a small way, yes, there is something about holding a comic in your hands and feeling the paper and seeing the richness of the color, something the scans have a hard time reproducing on a laptop. But I can get over myself. So who got cheated, who got robbed? The way I see it, no one, in fact, I can almost see a benefit to all this.
If you could preview a comic (other than standing at the rack) for a small price, would you? I know I would. Why can't the comic companies come up with a simple interface, like Itunes, and use it to allow us to either (1) preview a comic in hopes we would buy it or (2) outright sell back issues online?
(1) Simple, with digital rights management setup in a number of other industries, the comic industry can too. Music labels are able to allow you to download a track or even an album full of songs that "decay" on your hard drive. They come with a preset amount of time that they are available to you. After that, they erase themselves.
What people generally say to denigrate this is "Those hackers will always come up with something to defeat anything we do". And you know what, they are right. Hackers will always come up with a way to defeat something. But if they are willing to do that, they won't be paying either way. So why not ignore them, and concentrate on the people who are willing to pay?
(2) If that isn't what would work, and if the technology is too much or something, then just sell back issues outright online. Come up with a user friendly interface, a user friendly comic book reader (or use current formats available and buy them out) and offer only comics that are (upcoming arbitrary number) 3 weeks old. Keep them available for another 3 weeks or longer, but take them offline eventually.
Me personally, if I do want to read a story that intersects with another one, like Teen Titans #47, I don't really have a problem waiting a couple weeks or so. Not being able to read it though because of my personal financial situation is unacceptable to me.
For option (1), charge $0.99 for one week access to said comic. Watermark them or something so they can't be reproduced and pirated.
For option (2), charge $1.99, put the adds in there, offer digital specific adds, whatever floats your boat. But don't charge the full amount. For one, they are back issues at this point, and two, I would have to believe that the amount of work you put into it would be cheaper than distribution across the country. Give us a break.
Now I know that some readers are comic shop owners and see this as an attack on there business, but I don't believe it is at all. If I go download Teen Titans #47 and enjoy it more than another comic on my pull list, I will replace it, or wife willing, add it. If the option is not there though, there is no way I will/can do that. Also, I simply would not pay 2 to 3 dollars every month to buy a comic a few weeks late that is available to me instore. Like I have said, there is an intimate experience in reading a comic book that is in your hands.
So, what say you, The Comic Rack faithful (all 5 of you! I kid, I kid.)? I know you are not the most commenting people, but I would love to hear what you have to say about this. I personally think that digital comics, done the right way, could be an important part of the future of the medium.
If you got this far, thank you.
CG
24 comments:
it is a really tough case you are trying to argue about and all credit to you for giving it a shot. When I had greater availability of choices in London I wouldnt download (only recently I became aware of it anyway). On the other hand, some comics I really like have usually long stretches of runs that suck(either artistically, the writing or both,lol). So why should I buy them if they are unanimously crap (that is why comic reviews sites are out there to find out right?). I have come to a kind of compromise at the moment. Comics I enjoy and they have decent current runs I try to buy to the best of my ability. The rest will be downloads until they clean up their act.
One thing the industry could do was to provide some of the oldest comics of past runs of titles (who the hell would buy witchblade 3 now unless he was a huge fan) for free along with unique (once in a year) free comics of current runs of titles. Then the sceptic readers would have a first introduction to characters and arcs and they could make up their mind better.
Conclusively, there is no substitute for the "in your hands" original comic book but with so many comics around, publishers will have to stop tossing some meaningless titles around just because they can. Enough bad titles out there can put someone off from purchasing comics and then the downloading starts...
Interesting suggestions you make by the way!
I cannot pretend to be an afficianado of comics but its great to see something written so concisely and with such enthusiasm!
I rather respect the loyalty you've shown toward the world of comics. 90% of Internet surfers don't give a second thought to the ethical dilemmas which arise when choosing to download any number of things available online which, legally, shouldn't be available at all.
I'm a rather undeniable comic geek, I visit my local comic book store every Wednesday, and then check their upcoming shipments for the following week every Friday. I will gladly purchase any NEW issue. The way I tend to see it is like this, if I notice an issue of a series on the rack that I've never read, and say it's issue 14, I can't afford to buy the previous 13 issues all at once, and in most cases I don't have the option anyway. The store owner will tell me that most of the back-issues in the series are sold out from the source provider and are not scheduled for re-print. My options are dramatically cut down at that point, so what do I do? I go home and read scans online.
I felt like you did, bad. I wondered who I was cheating, and if I could really call myself an appreciator of the comic book art form if I actively steal them.
I ended up accepting that I had no way of reading the previous issues, unless I wanted to find them 2nd hand and pay a large chunk of cash I didn't have. So, I read the scans, but after I get caught up, after I read issues 1-13 of whatever series it may be, I then purchase every subsequent issue.
I'd have no interest in buying the newly released issues if I have no idea what's going on in the story. So after I read the scans and understand the story up to the most recent point, they've got a loyal customer, willing to pay.
I hope that makes sense, I consider myself to be a fairly moral person, and the way I handle this situation doesn't make me feel like I'm cheating anyone.
This is a very interesting subject that I come across many times before and after spending a rather large or entire paycheck on comic books.
No matter what anyone says and however much they try to convince themselves nothing beats the smell,feel and atmosphere of having a physical comic in your hands.
I find that reading a comic on a computer makes you feel somewhat cheated. If you were to buy that comic (be it new or a back issue) you can always go back to it easily and you have a physical piece of history, a collectable if you will. Downloading, and then reading that comic, I find is less enjoyable, but a fair bit cheaper.
The last few months I have been spending incredibly large amounts of cash on comics and now I am thinking should I have just downloaded and read these comics on the computer?
I don't know.
I don't buy new comics anyway so I am not cheating the comic creators/company. But i feel like I am cheating myself and the whole aspect of comics and their many forms of enjoyment. I take much enjoyment after buying that hard-to-find comic that has been eluding me after so long, and after reading it and gazing longingly at the cover I feel satisfied, a feeling that is absent when reading a comic on a computer.
I haven't read a comic on my computer for over two months and am finding it hard to quit collecting and reading physical comics. It would be so much easier if I ceased to buy comics and just download them. But then again I am excited by all the boxes and comics all heaped in my comic book room and the fun that awaits when I peek inside them.
I apologize for my ramblings but the question for me is not one of morals but one of whether I will work my guts off just to have a little extra enjoyment and a feeling of nostalgia or cheat myself but spare my pocket pain?
I personally have Downloaded a MULTITUDE of older comic books that I would never be able to afford. Such as the ENTIRE xmen chronology from year 1 to around 1996 or so. I actually owned a lot of those early to mid 90s comics back in my childhood, and unfortunately sold them along the way to adulthood.
I do stay away from the newer comics as they are initally coming out, but comics in downloadable fomat is a GREAT way to see the history of the comics that you like, that you would possibly never experience otherwise...
Thanks to everyone for the comments, more than anything, I am glad I got people thinking. I know there are people who don't agree with me, and there are some who do, but either way, I think it is important for comics to move on to the digital age.
CG
Hey there, I'm the owner of one of the sites mentioned in the blog artcile I believe you're referencing with this article, obviously I won't post any links here though.
Anyway, I just wanted to put across my thoughts about the whole digital comics issue. First off, I make no excuses for running a site which makes it easier for people to obtain digital comics. I should point out that I don't scan anything, or make anything available for download myself, I merely maintain a searchable database of comics other people make available for download. I believe that I have the best online search functionality dedicated to digital comics, and basically if it's available my site lets you find it. Anyway, enough blowing my own trumpet.
My stand on digital media (all digital media) is that it should be freely available. I'm not making excuses for people who break copyright law, or saying that they are sopme kind of brave pioneers.... but current copyright law is ridiculously outmoded. I firmly believe that anything that can be made freely available in digital form should be. Intellectual property owners need to find new ways of making money, and even now I doubt that Marvel or DC make the majority of their income from comic sales. Advertising and merchandising probably make them more, and making comics freely available digitally would just increase the audience for those adverts. Also, I'm not even sure that making comics freely available would impact sales that much... most comic book geeks are happy to shell out money for the actual, physical product as it's a piece of art.
Anyway, just wanted to stop by and give you my perspective, thought it might interest you.
If you have no job, read tons of comics and are on your third child maybe you need to rethink your existance dude.
I try to be a productive member of society and actively advocate self improvement. I love to download all sorts of stuff including comics. I collected comics for years before the prices skyrocketed. Do you support the industry through your website? Do you watch their movies? Do you own several comic related clothing items? Yes I'm sure you do. You support the industry, you need to focus on you, not them. Where should your obligations be my friend?
Cut back on the real comics to just your favorites. Focus on your family and yourself dude. Remember what a "Hobby" means. It sounds to me like you got a "lifestyle" not a hobby.
Please feel free to attack me as a Self-righteous prick like me loves that. And check out my site, or better yet set up a link to it. I will give you a new vision of Social responsiblity is. Focus on yourself and your Family first.
Arestao.com
First off, toss out any consideration of the law when discussing this. Copyright law is a corporate manipulation (regardless of its original intentions) to retain perpetual ownership to things other people created.
1) Downloading new comics DOES hurt the industry. There should be a waiting period. At least a few months. (In this day and age, a comic's shelf life lasts from Wednesday to Saturday. If it's not sold by then, it probably won't be. That's what a shop owner told me.)
2) Downloading comics that the TALENT would profit from (likely in form of a TPB) is also harmful. It won't kill a series, but might keep an artist's kid from getting a new iPod for Xmas.
3) Downloading old comics where the TALENT would see no money from a reprint is perfectly okay. In fact, it's a good idea. Fans should refuse to pay money for such content. That publishing practice should be wholly discouraged.
4) Downloading "back issues," particularly issues that have never been reprinted (or don't provide royalties to talent), is 100% justifiable. I accept no obligation to fork over money to second market speculators. You want to read the first appearance of Richie Rich? Download it. Not a dime of the hundreds/thousands of dollars for an original would go to either the copyright holder or the talent--so it's a waste to just give it to a speculator.
I 100% read my comics through torrent downloads. I live in Japan, and when I see comics (manga) here that sell for $3.00USD for 1000 pages, then I see a 30-odd-page spiderman comic (with ads!) for the same price, I get disgusted at the American comic industry. That goes for the English manga industry as well. $9.00 for a book of manga when the Japanese version sells for $3.00? Thats extortion if you ask me, and the sooner these companies die, the happier I'll be. I'm completely content with the fan translated/scanlations I get. I dont fee bad about stealing content in the least bit.
There are literally a thousand and on reasons why comics should be digitized and downloaded for free - and I will just mention a few:
* access : for those people who don't live in the city - hell, I have lived in my present city 4 years now and I have never seen a single 'comic shop' during this time.
* Medium: its never as good when a comic medium changes from hardcopy to e-comic - so it should be free
* Advertising : the comic companies should consider it a free advertizing service when the public decides to archive any of their comics.
* Cost/Benefits : It would cost them far more money to hire people to undertake the onerous task of scanning all their back issues themselves than to give them away
* Archiving : This is another free service (as well as storage costs in perpetuity) that the public is providing to these companies and for other members of the public
* Extending the size of the publishers' potential markets: this applies to the smaller companies in the USA / UK as well as the larger companies where their copyrights are not valid in 80% of the developing world
NUFF SAID!!!!
Some great ideas being thrown around here. And very nice job on the blog CG.
I have to say, yes I download comics. I first got interested in comics when a comic shop opened a couple of blocks from my house. I went there and bought a whole bunch of comics including some TBP's like Crisis On Infinite Earths.
After this I was hooked, but it didn't take me long to figure out there was a problem...comics are expensive. How does DC expect me, a 16 year old without a job that goes to school and has very little free time, to spend $25-30 a month on comics?
This is why I unfortunately download new and old comics. I agree with most of you here that downloading comics more that 4-5 years old is fine, as long as they haven't reprinted them in a nice TPB recently.
But I do feel that I am hurting the comic book industry and that it is wrong to download new comics, but, how else am I going to get it? I can honestly say that right now my number 1 dream in life is to be able to get to a position in where I don't need to download anything illegally. Whether that be a millionaire investor or just a guy that works at McDonalds. I realize that might sound kind of stupid but hey, I'm only 16 years old. :)
~John
Hi all
I'm glad i found this post (i was actually looking for a Comic Torrent site). Needless to say i do download comics on a fairly regular basis and i make no excuses for it, i also download music, movies, games, e-books and anything else i like the look of, but before you all label me as a good for nothing, industry wrecking, free loading pirate hear me out. I own over 2000 comics, 1000 CDs, 200 DVDs (plus another 200+ VHS), 150 or so games for various formats and around 150 paperback books. about 1/2 my collection i have bought new and the other half 2nd hand. i treat digital media as a modern lending library and if i like something i WILL go out and buy it.
In the past i have spent too much money on total crap, whether it be a comic, CD or movie.
I think that the iComic (give it a week and Apple with have that copyrighted) idea has merit. Legal digital media is defiantly the way forward. It makes the media more accessible and with more and more emphasis being put on sustainability and carbon footprints we all need to be more aware of the ecological impact of everything that we buy (most items produce twice their weight in carbon to manufacture and transport).
There is NOTHING anyone can do to stop media being illegally published on the internet, regardless of what "copy protection" is put in place (if it can be created some out there can crack it) so the various industries should just embrace the idea of digital media and run with it.
Anyway i'm off now to read some pirated comics and listen to some illegally downloaded MP3s (and to check if i have won the DC "52" back issues on ebay)
See ya
N :-)
Yes you are stealing. Yes you are hurting the comic industry.
The more people download comics the weaker the industry becomes. I am personally affected each time one of my comics is torrented and downloaded. That is a lost sale for me, its a lost sale for the comic shops. It's one more notch closer to cancellation. Don't buy into the BS that "Oh I read it online and liked it so much I'm gonna go out and purchase it now"
You know I was going to make comparisons and arguements but really whats the point. People will keep trying to justify stealing because they are not walking into a store and lifting something they are sitting at home behind a keyboard. The industry will continue its decline till it will no longer be able to support itself.
This is a rather interesting argument.Yeah i can agree on the pretty good amount of whats being said I have a blog of my own that deals with dl cbr files but the the i have are a good collection from the golden age among some limited run series that lasted 3 or four issues then thats last you heard of them.I feel yeah that it is in some cases wrong for to us a Bittorent client to get the stuff.Yeah I do all the time for music and recently other things backing them up onto a data dvd or cd-r and put in a cd lock box or binder for safe keeping and if you got a urge to bring it out do so.
I agree on it being a way to preiw the media and not stealing it . Im blog reads if you ENJOY IT BUY IT
There are some great arguments floating around here and let me say, I struggle with the same moral dilemma every time I view content and don't pay directly for it. You know what draws the line between legal and illegal content? Whoever owns the distribution rights. They make the money. Maybe artists and writers aren't being robbed directly, but we're stealing money from the mechanisms that deliver us our comics which in turn gets back to the artists because the money isn't there to pay them for new content.
My solution? similar to your thoughts CG, but with an idea or two borrowed from Fox and NBC. Similar to their hulu.com approach, sell ad space like every other web site but make the entire archive of back issues free for viewing.
Honestly, almost no one is buying Action Comics #1 to enjoy Superman's first adventures. It's a collectors item. There will always be a market for collectors and those who want current story runs will be able to purchase them, but those of us who want an honest way to read out of print comics will have a place to do so and not feel guilty because we didn't pay an ungodly amount for something we just want to read and appreciate.
Keep pushing the issues. I loved this post, and to think I came across your blog while looking for torrent sites. Thanks for making me think about what I was doing. I think you've just gained yourself a loyal reader.
Check out www.htmlComics.com
It has thosands of comics all for free and all complete. It's without a doubt the best source for comics I've seen anywhere.
heres my current position and reasoning for downloading titles.
i am downloading soft copy versions of all my old purchased titles. i have hundreds, if not thousands of comics in storage. but i am not about to go digging through that goldmine just to read some good graphic fiction. thats just nuts.
Contact the development team at www.htmlComics.com They'll put them up on their internet site for you to browse and read, and in a "Library" format manner so that they are as legal as a public library is. They prefer complete series (or at least uninterupted series with a start and stop date) as oposed to loosley collected ones (i.e. ... they post every Superman issue from a certain point in time to an end point in time, and so the same with all their postings). They have over 60,000 comics to view, and; it's like going to a library because they block downloading them, so you can only read them for enjoyment, but not keep copies for yourself.
Just thought i would add a little bit of that "No matter what someone comes out with someone with beat it" type talk... www.htmlComics.com ... great idea and im glad they are doing it but saying you cant copy it isnt true. With no hacking you can get any of those books they offer saved on your comp. (though a bit of work is needed however). You just load up the book you want and start on the page you want to save. granted you cant right click > save image but what you can do is File > save page as. once you save the page you can stop there or take it a step farther and go into the folder that is saved and open Page_data folder. There is the image file of your comic book, just pull it out of that folder and drop it in a new folder and rename the file, delete the web page data left over and there is page one done. Repeat. You then have a complete comic book in Jpg format, or you can torrent it either way :).
As for my take on downloading comic, i have basically no prob with it personally. As many have said i think the system will be going that way some time in the future anyway. My personal idea of how i would like to digital media of comic done would be a combination of ideas.
First, all old out of print comics should be free on a hulu type site or main company site as suggested before. Put in advertising, maybe update old advert with new releases or maybe leave all original content (some of those adds are great in of them selves) but put a "blank" page every 3-5 pages that could always be updated with new content easily. Maybe even add a slight and i mean slight like 5 sec wait time before you can skip the page.
Second, New releases should be free as well but on a delayed time frame again as mentioned before, Say 1-2 weeks. That would give the Fanboy plenty of time to read and bask in the papery goodness, but would would still let the other people be not so far out of the time line loop with maybe the regular comic they buy (if its a tie in type comic for example). This would also allow the digital viewer some time to hopefully still go to the comic shop and buy the paper comic if they enjoyed it.
Third, Allow first release and older downloads of titles for a price, like itunes of course at a reduced price since there is alot of things reduced in terms of shipping and production. This would allow people that cant get comic stores, or just dont care to clutter their personal space with comics the option to still enjoy the medium that is so great and still reward the Artists of the book (and pay the corp.).
This may end up allowing More comics to be produced with maybe some titles being completely online monthly/bi-monthly/whatever time frame, yet still have the option of Trade paperbacks being sold in comic shops of those titles. Trade paperbacks are my personal fav as i love to have the whole or at least a major portion of story in one book. They are well organized, clean of ads, and durable so i can spend some time with them and come back to with out having to worry about possibly destroying the pages as much or being on a constant cliff hanger waiting for next week (i know, many people love that part, just not me :p) or trying to go through boxes of floppies in order to up together the run.
In many ways this could hurt local comic book store or they could adapt. Add in a bit more of a internet cafe of sorts that gives the space that all the fanboys love to come to geek out in with their friends. Comic book stores may buy less or maybe it would improve growth cuz as we all know nothing replaces that joy of holding it in your hands. Plus if everyone else in the store is reading your new fav book line before you and raving about it that would help push you to buying it too. Also this could possible increase the resale value of printed comics with the possibility of them being reduced in circulation, I never see printed comic ever being totally replaced (but who knows what the future holds).
Anyways thats my 99 cent.
I have to agree with some of the coments made, I cannot afford to buy the back issues. I admit I have downloaded a few myself. most stuff is already on my pull list at the shop, but sometimes I may not make it in but once a month, but still buy what I've already read. Then there's the fact that I subscribed to a few Marvel comics (which I will not renew, because I wait 3 weeks sometimes more for an issue already at my comic shop) I'll put my money into my local shop from now on instead of into Marvels pocket directly. At least at the shop there's a real person to comunicate to and I do enjoy the shop owners company, in and out of the shop. Not many people can say that.
it is amazing to see that things are finally about to change
DC is going to make digital and printed editions available at the same time, back in 2007 we did not have tablets, and you know what, they are great for one thing, reading comics, even downloaded scans
I've been downloading CBR torrent comics for a long time now-mostly old back issues from the 80's and 90's-hundreds of comics I once owned when I was 14 but my mother got rid of because she felt they were too violent or dark. I never thought I'd see them again, and then one day found out about CBR and googled for their torrents.
Occasionally I also do download new ones-only to preview. I have all the Saga's, New 52 Catwoman's, Nancy in Hell's and a few others in CBR-AND I bought them all in the store as well to support their creators and my local comic store. If I can, I will always be morally responsible with such freely available information via the internet.
As far as DRM limitations, like MP3's that make you enter a password to listen to-NO. I can't tell you how many times I can't listen to a track bought from Itunes because I'm not currently connected to the internet. I get them off Amazon, where they can be played anywhere. This is an age where "the man" is increasingly less in control of media, and consumers need to be morally responsible and do the right thing.
Frankly, i couldn't give two shits about copy right. i spent the better part of my life paying for comics films and music and i dont anymore.
if you have a problem, then you should invent a good anticopy.
bittorrenting comics is the best thing that ever hapaned to readers, otherwise how th fuck are you ever going to get that good 'ol detective comics #27, uh?
haters can kiss my ass
peace
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