Comments on: A little more on the shutdown of Scans Daily

By: Iris Beacon

Iris Beacon — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:02:01 +0000

Pop Robot – I don’t know of any other venues offering discussion of scans outside of personal blogs, unfortunately. But it’s a niche waiting to be filled. There are many, many people who are sick and tired of scans_daily’s extreme language policing and who want to discuss scans without having to consider every single word they write for fear it might cause ‘offence’. Nobody wants to consciously offend anybody, but that’s a risk we all take when we write on a blog or a forum, full stop.

By: Pop Robot

Pop Robot — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:13:51 +0000

Three years later, Scans_Daily is now on Dreamwidth, and has degenerated to the point where mods are warning people for using the term “lame” to refer to something uncool. They also refused to explain why “lame” is an “anti-abelist” word while “idiot” has yet to be bann-hammered (although it’s probably only a matter of time).
One guy was banned immediately for complaining about the extreme political correctness.
Most people, even some of the most liberal, got so sick of it that they left the community, and now there’s a posting about once every one or two days, where one must always step very, very carefully for fear of the mods coming down because you used the wrong word or have a wrong opinion– it’s pretty pathetic.

Where are real comic book fans getting scans discussion these days?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:16:52 +0000

The thing I find so funny is that it took Marvel Comics YEARS to file a DMCA claim against Scans_Daily, they were around forever! I wonder what took them so long. Another incarnation of the site will pop up soon anyway.

By: sage

sage — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:35:02 +0000

I don’t mind saying that I bought comics I normally wouldn’t have because of s_d, including PAD’s run of X-Factor and A LOT of TPBs. I know that it will be hard to prove that s_d was a benefit to comic sales (and likewise, hard to prove that it had a negative impact), but for me personally, it was my main source of comic previews and opinions not biased by a publisher or distributor. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful when a consumer like me has bucks to spend on a hobby I absolutely love.

By: Adam Boorman

Adam Boorman — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:21:36 +0000

The problem there is that within Scans_daily (and in fact, within a lot of female dominated fandom gatherings) it IS common.

And given that what was said was DIAF, not Die In A Fire, some knowledge of the context must have been known.

The fandom community has its own terminology (the term Wank for instance has no allusion to anything sexual).

If people were emailing PAD and telling him to DIAF, that’s another matter. But, using common niche terminology WITHIN the niche community is fair game.

Misunderstanding due to ignorance of a culture is on the head of the person wandering into a culture they don’t understand, not the people within the already formed culture.

By: Kevin Melrose

Kevin Melrose — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:10:05 +0000

Until the “World of Warcraft” context becomes common, and commonly accepted, knowledge and the phrase passes into regular usage, it’s going to be viewed as disturbing by some.

Expressions like “eat shit and die” or “go fuck yourself” don’t require a history lesson to grasp their original meaning.

By: Adam Boorman

Adam Boorman — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:02:00 +0000

“Telling someone to “die in a fire” is disturbing and a little sickening, even by Internet standards.”

Only without context. Originally it held no threatening connotation at all, because it referred to situations in world of warcraft where Fire effects were an easy way for characters to die. Thus, when players screwed up, they were told to Die In a Fire, so their character wasn’t around anymore to screw it up for anyone else.

Even now that the original meaning is less known, its only equivalent to the term “eat sh*t and die”, which no rational human could argue is the same as implying that the person deserves to die as a result of contracting disease via fecal contamination.

By: stubbleupdate

stubbleupdate — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:23:38 +0000

As a mod of scans_daily, I’m embarrassed with all of the crap getting flung Peter David’s way.

It isn’t like insulting him is going to undelete the community, or make the laws change or anything that people would to see happen.

Considering that some people have been speaking so well of the community, it’s very disappointing to see some members drag the community’s name through the mud because they’re angry that it’s gone.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:41:04 +0000

Just to clarify, PAD’s blog is still active at its alternate URL, http://www.peterdavid.net/

By: Simon DelMonte

Simon DelMonte — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:05:39 +0000

I will just add that PAD’s blog is gone, replaced by a very old snippet of a blog his host, the Malibu mailing list, maintained over five years ago. And my computer tells me that the page is infected. Whether PAD’s page just crashed under the weight of the controversy or was hacked into, I cannot say. But it’s gone for the moment.

By: Steve G

Steve G — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:53:21 +0000

Unfortunately, I’d have to say that telling someone to “die in a fire” is pretty much par for the course when considering internet standards. Not that that excuses the behavior in the slightest; I just don’t find it that shocking anymore, sadly enough.

By: ejulp (John)

ejulp (John) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:20:48 +0000

Yeah…I wonder if it was hacked too…no link, in any way shape or form connects to his site, just goes to the google search.

Hey Rich, are we going to see any discussion of this in today’s column…or is that a dumb question? lol.

By: Maddy

Maddy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:33:27 +0000

When an online community knowingly exists in that gray area, and then gets “punished” for doing so, who is to blame?

I’ve talked about this on my own blog, but frankly, we all are. With all the thousands of people who were members, and all the people who merely lurked or linked to posts there–any one of those people could have been conscientious enough to report it to LiveJournal or DC or Marvel’s legal department.

And yet, apparently Peter David was the first one to do so. As upset as I am about the loss of my favourite comics community, a small part of me actually admires him for doing the logical, conscientious thing: he saw something that was illegal, and reported it to the authorities. Why didn’t anyone do it before?

And to clarify the course of events: I’m fairly certain that it was either the *images* or the *post* itself that was removed prior to scans_daily’s suspension. And while I am certainly not defending the person who said “DIAF”, the comment was apparently posted *before* Peter David made his presence known there.

S_D did get me into buying comics, and it convinced me to buy more–but I will certainly never claim I was legally justified in posting scans of work that was not mine to distribute.

By: Bob Oldman

Bob Oldman — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:20:22 +0000

There was 400+ comment thread at Peter David’s site this weekend, but his seems to be down at the moment – replaced with some weird Google page and a bunch of numbers for a URL. I wonder if somebody hacked his site and shut it down.