Oy! Scans Daily MADE comics fans!

[neotoma]

Someone unknown got scans_daily deleted off LJ for copyright violations. One of the mods explains what they currently know, and asks for everyone to refrain from pointing fingers.

However... if it was the work of an industry insider, that person is STUPID -- I've bought twice as many trade collections in the last six months than I did in the three previous years because of stuff I saw on scans daily. It was a wonderful way to get your friends into comics, because you could show them intriguing little bits.

Fortunately, there is an IJ asylum that can be utilized.

Comments

[strangemuses.livejournal.com]

I completely agree that the LJ admins who pulled the plug without checking bear the ultimate responsibility here. The S_D mods would be wise to set up shop elsewhere. They can't use the IJs long term because the IJs cap community membership at 1,000, and S_D had (I believe) about 8,000 members.

I can't speak about the legal/TOS implications but Marvel and DC can release as much as they want because they own the copyright.

They own the copyright, true, but there is a fair use aspect of copyright law that says that others can extract/exhibit parts of copyrighted works for reviews/discussions. There is no legally defined fair use standard for comics, so the behavior of the big two sort of sets a defacto standard until something actually goes to court. In this instance, PAD himself isn't even disputing a fan/reviewer's right to print extracts of his work. What he objected to in this case is that the post revealed the spoiler ending of the comic, and that is something that he personally "forbade" fans from discussing.

It didn't violate fair use in a legal sense. It violated established, known standards of behavior. That sounds like splitting hairs, but legally there is a difference and in this case, the way PAD handled the situation very likely resulted in S_D being suspended. I do think that S_D should have cut back the number of allowed pages a long time ago. Too late for them now.

Had this been a clear-cut case of copyright violation, I would be 100% on his side. I used to work in publishing. I regard the rights of the creators and copyright holders quite seriously. I just think personally, in this case, PAD was wrong in reporting this as copyright violation and most definitely wrong for mis-reporting it and stating that the entire issue had been scanned. The horrible fans who mouthed off at him were also wrong.

I just finished reading all of the comments over in his blog, and I've discovered that I was incorrect in one thing. Buried in the comments, PAD states that he did look at the post before he reported it. He didn't report it sight-unseen. That's better in one sense, but it makes a lie of his statements that S_D posted the entire comic.

It's all just too damned bad for everyone involved.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

It's my understanding that 10% is the fair use standard for review or educational purposes, but I obviously haven't looked into the issue as much as you have.

And even if Peter David deliberately lied about how much was posted -- to give the benefit of the doubt, he might have been upset and been mistaken -- then whoever took his word for it rather than investigating is at fault.

It will be interesting to see how this resolves. If somebody wants to take this as incentive to start a slash-friendly, female-led comics discussion forum that's not predicated on dubious use of copyrighted material, and that doesn't defend name-calling and general nastiness as part of the culture, I'd be the first in line. I'm not holding my breath.

And I'm sorry to those who did not have the experience with S_D that I did. People say that good discussion came out of the community, and I believe them. It was a big community, I didn't take part in all of it, and I'm sorry if by letting my negative impression of a few bad apples poison the whole community for me, I missed out on things.