I think I can see why no one bothered to respond to your argument after that post.

Well, let me ask you this: I’m assuming you’re a fan of comics. Or writing. Or SOMETHING creative anyway. If you could get it for free, would that automatically mean you wouldn’t buy it? or support it monetarily in any way?

I can tell you for a fact, that i can get nigh on any creative thing i want for free. I also, clearly, have no moral objection to doing it, and i have no real fear of the repercussions (come what may). I also have a shelf full of books. I have a shelf full of comics that i already had digital copies of. Shelves of dvd’s.

People aren’t nearly as stupid or greedy as people like to accuse them of being.

The penny arcade book seemed to sell OK despite the fact that its all available on their website. NiNs ghosts release did great for them, and the only way to order it was from a page which featured the free downloads right next to it. Cory Doctorow provides totally free downloads for every one of his books, which still make best seller lists (in fact, recently he had to set up a system where he could direct the people wanting to give him money for the free ebook versions to instead buy print versions for libraries.) Phil Foglio says he quadrupled his readers, and tripled his sales by moving to the web.

The concept that people wont buy the cow if they can get the milk for free doesn’t really hold up to well. Especially not when you’re talking to people who love cows.

“do you think you’d win a court case with THAT as your defense?”

Oh, i doubt it. But, if you think the law is wrong, and willingly refuse to obey it, Then the consequences of that action are something you might have to deal with. But that’s not the same as ACCEPTING it. Acceptance requires agreement. There’s very little I personally could do about it if the big wheel stopped on me (something I’m potentially increasing the likelihood of by openly discussing in public, in a famously insular community I’ll admit), but such is life.

Eventually however, i don’t think that defense will be required. Laws bend to the public, not the other way round. And, in a society increasingly reliant on a giant machine that only serves the purpose of Copying and Distributing information, I think they will. Provided of course that the benefits of letting that machine do what it does best are obvious to the majority of people. Apples Itunes arrived two years after Napster was launched by a couple of teenagers, just after they erupted into the public eye due to court battles, and just before they were shut down. I don’t think that’s coincidental.

Nor do i think that the fact that some ballsy, law breaking teenagers managed to bring to the public eye something that changed the face of the entire marketplace is insignificant.

And, nor do i feel that the music business, nor the public are now in a worse position because they did.

They broke the law, and their defense didn’t hold up in a court of law, but i thank god they did it. I truly believe they enriched the entire world.

Say the laws regarding distribution/reproduction rights are changed and manufacturers no longer have this control over their own product: how exactly are they supposed to get reimbursed for the cost and labor of making it?

I mean, say a writer spends x hours a day writing. Writing isn’t as easy as it looks after all, so one really ought to be paid for it, right? And then we consider that those hours are hours that he/she could be spending at a regular job with regular wages or salary. Of course, that would mean that we don’t get to enjoy the product, but it’s a trade off, I suppose. A person has to eat.

Since this is a comic, well, we can also look at the artist, who not only has the same time/labor issues as a writer, but probably uses fairly expensive supplies. Editors probably ought to be paid too, considering how upset we are when people forget things like whether character X is married or character Y is dead. And so on and so forth.

The fact is, these people make money through the sales of their product. These sales are affected through the distribution of the product. They are also affected by the distribution of the product. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, right?

The fact is that people have a lot at stake in the right to distribute and reproduce their property. I’m not saying that the law can’t or even shouldn’t be changed, but if you are going to do so, you really have to keep in mind the competing interests, and that, to most of the people making these decisions, the right of a person to control how they earn money with their creations tends to outweigh the convenience concerns of your girlfriend.

(And as for whether or not a justification is “good”, let me put it this way: do you think you’d win a court case with THAT as your defense? If so, good luck. Personally, I suspect the court will consider the myriad of other ways a person can educate oneself about a community and a product prior to resorting to stealing it .)

The fact that it IS the right of manufacturers to determine whether it happens IS true. That’s definitive.

The fact that it SHOULD be however, is not definitive. Again, the fact that something IS a law, doesn’t make it RIGHT.

I would argue said laws (as they stand now) are outdated, over-reaching, and severely detrimental to society and culture. (I am not alone in this thought, though the degrees of which people agree with me will differ)

“But that is not a good justification for the people involved with scans_daily to violate the law.”

I doubt the people at scans_daily had “a” justification, but to any of them that DID have that justification, I’d argue that it IS a good one.

Personally, i think the right of women (or gays, or blacks, or Asian’s, or whatever) to fully educate themselves about an industry they feel marginalizes them, and publishes works they feel perpetuates insulting, potentially dangerous attitudes towards them completely outweighs the right of publishers to make profit off perpetuating insulting dangerous attitudes.

Whether you agree is entirely your own decision (and one, i feel i can only influence by pointing out my own reasons for feeling that way), but i don’t feel that merely saying “breaking the law is wrong, and that’s that” is a sufficient answer to.

And, i don’t feel that the free samples the publishers allow on places like here or newsarama or anywhere else are suitable to educate people on those issues sufficiently. I also don’t feel my budget stretches enough for me to buy copies of everything to do it either (and, as mentioned, wouldn’t feel comfortable providing the companies publishing them more money.)

I mean, I’m not sure its at the level of “you’re a woman interested comics? you have to sit at the back of the bus” but I’m not really the right person to answer that, all my experience is second hand at best. I do think there’s enough evidence however that if someone was to claim that’s how they felt, It couldn’t simply be disregarded as hysterics (exaggeration perhaps, but not groundless).

because our tastes aren’t the same. I have gotten her reading a few comics that i do enjoy (scott pilgrim, the authority) but the majority of what i buy isn’t to her interests.

It is a shame that your girlfriend does not have easy access to a comic book shop or that she is somehow unable to become interested in material that she cannot illegally partake of beforehand. But that is not a good justification for the people involved with scans_daily to violate the law.

The law is designed to protect the rights of the people who create their product, including the right to reproduce it. While it is true that sometimes it benefits sales to allow people to take a look at the product prior to buying it, it’s also true that it is, and should be, the right of the manufacturers to determine whether this happens, and to what extent.

I’m sorry that this may have a negative effect on your girlfriend’s comic enjoyment, but perhaps you can introduce her to the preview pages that are available at Newsarama or here at CBR. Or you can show her your own comics, instead. That’s not, as far as I’m aware, against the law.

Aside from the fact that the nearest comic shop to me presently is a 2 hour trip, and that my girlfriend generally chose to stay outside because it wasn’t a friendly environment to her. Nor was flipping through the comics actually allowed there. And the closest “feminist friendly comic shop” (a term that’s loaded with Activist leanings) on their map is literally on the other side of the country.

What scans_daily provided that was of benefit to her was the exact same thing people argue made it bad. Both are the act of reading a bit of the comic and then not buying it (exactly what you just described as near as i can tell). The only real difference that made it illegal was the extraordinary ease and availability of the process.

“Right on the side of the page, there are links to blogs and columns themed around what they love about comics, various dissections of gender in comics, and a blog centered entirely around Supergirl.”

None of which she has any reason to care about, unless she FIRST has a reason to actually be interested in comics. There’s a great essay linked there right now on Alias (give or take the horrible pink background, which I’m not sure is helping anyone), but it has as much chance of getting her interested in alias as the similar essays on yaoi she reads has of getting me into yaoi. (and that’s NOT because i have no interest in yaoi. I’m now a huge fan of a few yaoi books, that were introduced to me in the exact same way as I’ve introduced her to other comics)

“And the potential for drawing female fans into discussion is not a justification or defense for copyright violation that any court has yet recognized.”

Again, I’m not arguing that Scans_daily wasn’t against the law. I’m saying the law is flawed. In addition, the argument that the act of breaking a law makes you no different to anyone else breaking the same law, regardless of intent, is inherently flawed. The notion that piracy is piracy, period, is just as ludicrous as the notion that trespassing is trespassing, period.

I’m not a member of the site but dismissing it as just an activism site betrays ignorance. There’s a lot more there and readily accessible and obvious from the front page.

There’s nothing scans_daily really provided that going to a comic book store and flipping through monthlies or trade paperbacks couldn’t provide except discussion, which CAN be found in female friendly places other than scans_daily. And the potential for drawing female fans into discussion is not a justification or defense for copyright violation that any court has yet recognized.

oh, that was just a mistype actually, it was Girl-Wonder i was referring to. In fact, my girlfriends seen it (due to The Planet Karen authors recent fire) Unfortunately, its of no interest to her at all.

Girl Wonder is a comics ACTIVISM site. This is still a great thing, but its a different thing. for a start, In order to want to be an activist, you need to have a cause you care about. you ALSO have to want to be an activist.

2 years ago, she didn’t care at all about “mainstream American” comics, period. Now she has a bit of an interest in them purely based on scans_daily, youtube, and the few American comics i was buying that i got her to read. Everything she eventually started buying (Strange girl, Runaways, My Faith in Franky, Nightmares and fairy tales and everything Johnen Vasques made) was directly the result of free, word of mouth samples that she could acquire and read in a comfortable casual setting.

Her interest in comics(superhero comics specifically) is still not at the point where she’d want to actually participate in a forum like Girl-Wonder. (Nor is her knowledge at a high enough point where she feels she could do so in an educated manner).

Or, to illustrate using an appropriate forum title from Girl Wonder:

Girls Read Comics! (And They’re Pissed)

No, she doesn’t. No yet, anyway. And a place about why they piss other girls off isn’t exactly about to get her to start.

(I’m certainly not saying that scans_daily wasn’t breaking laws btw. I’m saying the laws need to change. Just because a law exists, doesn’t mean a law is right. Or logical. Or Helpful. I could go on.)

I especially applaud the folks going to the torrents. I’m a network engineer who stopped using torrents (for legitimate purposes, such as Linux downloads) because my security software picked up a pattern of exploit attempts related to the torrent traffic, some of it based on the torrent protocol itself. Bad things happen to bad people.

As I have explained to many tune-sharing kids over the years who were shattered because their computer system was nuked or identities stolen by some bit of malware, what made them think that people with a business model based on illegal activity would suddenly develop a respect for rights and property when dealing with you.

Thanks for the “it’s an attack on female forms of fandom” stuff, laughed so hard stuff came out of my nose. And the “male” stuff isn’t well hidden either. Publishers and law enforcement are getting better every day at shutting this stuff down. No thanks to the crooks that run it.

I suspect, if you go to that link and look around a little. Perhaps check out the forum some. You may see why certain parts of your argument do not quite work.

for a long time it was also a header post, I’m not sure if it STILL was when it was shut down. It was the first thing you could read on the site, that it began as a slash community, and that no form of misogyny or homophobic attitude would be tolerated.

“Wait, Adam, so they had to be openly reproducing copyright materials en masse in order to advertise female space?”

They had to be in order to create it. For instance, my girlfriend now understands a bit about superhero comics. She knows that Batman And superman are in a separate continuity to Captain America and Iron Man (and, by learning this via scans daily, she also knows that the homoerotic subtext between those pairs is vast and interesting)

She would NEVER have learnt that in any other way. Scans_daily provided large enough chunks to fall on the wrong side of “Fair Use”, but also large enough chunks to begin to place the characters within a context she could understand. Those large chunks of pages were required to break through both her own pre-existing stereotypes of what superhero comics were about, and also to break through the years of continuity that stands against any new comic fan.

And, because they were easily and freely available, she wasn’t turned off by the creepy stares or immature attitudes she’d been subjected to every time i tried to get her into a comic shop.

Girlamatic is a great site, but she cant learn about batman there.

What scans daily did was REQUIRED to get her interested in those characters. She needed the context, she needed the evidence that there were more complex interpersonal relationships than she’d originally assumed, she needed to have her interest piqued by the subtexts, and she needed a place to do all that, and not feel like 25 nerds were raping her with their eyes. That place does not exist anywhere else.

She also learnt a fair bit about the treatment of women in comics. There was a recent explosion or argument in there pre dating the recent PAD one, featuring Dan Slott, due to some happenings in avengers. The tigra pregnancy thing.

Some people claimed (rather agressively ) that it harkened back to the old Women In Refrigerator’s thing. But here’s the thing, she didn’t know what that was. She didn’t care at all about comics then. She had no context on which to frame that at all.

But she DID have context on this one. Enough of it was posted and discussed. And, it disgusted her.

the original article mentioned this: “But the more vocal of the community’s link referrals seemed to be from the refuse-to-pay-but-can’t-look-away variety. ”

So, in the case of the Women in Refrigerator’s thing, which is better? Look away? Remain ignorant of the whole affair? I cant really see the benefit in that.

Pay for the books to educate yourself, feel disgusted and then realize that not only are there not enough women reading in the first place to make a loud enough voice, but you also supported the companies printing things you felt reprehensible? Doesn’t really strike me as a winning plan either.

What recourse do women have at this point, to point out that they ARE willing to read (and interested in) good superhero comics, but they AREN’T willing to support the system as it is currently?

If scans_daily is a female-friendly space for fan discussion, fine, that’s all well and good. But being a female-friendly place is not an excuse or justification for violating copyright at such a scale.

Moreover, they’re not advertising being female friendly, though granted, the fact was in its profile. Many people never knew that scans_daily had begun as a site for female fans to discuss slash subtext. Notice that their name is “scans_daily” not “female comic fans” or some variation. That’s a fairly clear indication of what they were advertising.

For comparison sake, look at Girl-Wonder.org. They’re a female friendly comic site that actually advertises as a female friendly comic discussion site. Not as piracy-lite.

The reason for such a backlash against the community defenders from retailer-types is not because of the gender of the defenders, but because so many of them seem to be in severe denial about just what they were actually doing on this site.”

On the other hand however, So many of the people attacking Scans_daily ALSO seem to be displaying severe denial as to why Scans_daily HAD to be the most open group on the internet doing it.

It was the ONLY way to advertise to female comic fans that they were a place that was female friendly. Its easy to find places to discuss comics, and its easy to find places to pirate comics. Its also easy to find places to DISCOVER comics. (speaking of american comics specificaly here).

But its very hard to find places to do that, that won’t ALSO make you feel like an outsider just because you’re a woman. (or homosexual)

Scans_daily was a place where that wasn’t the case. But without ADVERTISING that fact, it was incredibly unlikely that it would be found by anyone seeking that kind of place. Primarily because of the assumption that those places didn’t exist.

And why is it that every comic book store must be “struggling”? The store that I have a regular file at has four locations in a small city. There’s also another great shop in the same city that I can also support. I guess I’m luckier than others.

This “comic book stores should be treated like charity cases” mentality is really starting to rub me the wrong way for some reason because I always feel like it’s a slap in the face to great comic book retailers that deserve to be in business not simply because they sell comics but because they do it very well and promote the medium well by doing all kinds of things right so that anybody can walk in and find something they want and not feel intimidated, no matter who they are.

Like the music industry and iTunes, and slowly, the movie industry, publishers and their creators should simply move to get in on the digital action themselves if they’re really losing money and sleep over it. The RIAA “sue everybody” approach has been seen as a rather colossal failure by many so maybe the industry should consider that in their calculations.

And what if someone physically lends somebody else their comics or trades? Or they get their comics fix at a library? etc, etc…

But there’s a perfectly legal way to read free comics online called webcomics that all the kids seem to be talking about. Many traditional publishers are already factoring that into their calculations. Because they increasingly have to.

As for the gender angle, it honestly didn’t enter my mind when I first read about the site being shut down. I am however, working on an advanced synthetic suit that will inhibit the emission of testosterone-intimidation rays that have been off the charts since my toxic waste accident.

As for “fandom segregation”, the historical baggage of the second term makes a discussion pertaining to the enjoyment of an entertainment medium by various demographics and their interactions a bit problematic.

On the other hand, they ARE related, and people have done a lot of thinking and writing (online, in conferences, in dissertations) about the derivative nature of fanfiction, its status as a feminine phenomenon, and the subsequent anxiety that creates for feminism. Lisa is surely familiar with the discussion, but if anyone’s curious I found “How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor” to be an interesting starting point.

Agree with everything else you said, though.