A Convenience or an Outrage?

[Rkolter]

(Although it's Ryan Kolter, not Richard )

I keep taking that R for a Richard, dammit! Even when I recommend RC to my friends!

Ryan...Ryan... Ryan...

Hey, if you're going to refer people to my comic, you can call me whatever you'd like.

[Mercury Hat]

Well slap my ass and call me Sally!

[RPin]

(Although it's Ryan Kolter, not Richard )

I keep taking that R for a Richard, dammit! Even when I recommend RC to my friends!

Ryan...Ryan... Ryan...

Hey, if you're going to refer people to my comic, you can call me whatever you'd like.

Sure, Robert!

[McDuffies]

Well slap my ass and call me Sally!

Sure, Sally.

[Dan Nicholls]

heehee, "Comicjacking".

[Taiwanimation]

Say, is there some way to have a script that autogenerates an HTML page with the picture and an ad banner whenever it is hotlinked? That'd solve the a-href hotlink problem at least.

[Thingschange]

I guess I'm not too fussed about this kind of thing personally. I don't care about people "stealing" my comic or anything, but...

This program isn't fair on keenspace who pay for their (excellent) hosting with advertisements.

It isn't fair on those artists who -do- care if people take their comic.

And it isn't fair on the fans who lose the sense of community that many great comics have, either through forums, ability to contact the author or even just the notices that the author puts on their page.

So while I'm not fussed for me, I know that a lot of people have a right to be pissed off and they've got my support 100%.

[Phact0rri]

If there's anything in this that differs from Kazaa is the fact that downloading Madonna ("What the fuck do you think you're doing?") music won't make her quit her job as a musician. Comic rippers are far more potentially dangerous, as comic artists are far more down to ground than pop-stars. Not only that, but we don't force anyone to pay for a CD with 13 tracks of crap just for one song we like. All of our content is in the net for free.

This isn't always the case with music RPin' bein a musician myself, and being how most of my friends are musicians and knowing other "semi popular bands" I know that sure "madonna" is not going to be hurt, but there are underground bands that it does hurt. bands like Hotwater Music who uses it for a distribution and people rip thier whole CDs, or Anti-flag, or countless other pseudo-popular non mainstream musicians.

Also there is a big deal in the synthpop/ebm community about this. because these guys specifically in america don't make money from thier music, (and this can be said about other punk, emo bands) as well, and when people download the music they are not making any revenue for the hard work.

Music distributed even promos are put out so people will visit sites, learn about shows, and other things. My site for example has tracks on it from my solo project called Phact0rri, and its hosted on a free site, and the same thing applies to me with keenspace as it does to music.

all in all if you want the latest Limp bizket CD or the mega corp stuff where the studios make 70% profit go for it. but I really recommend if you like a band by the cd, go to the shows. support these talented people.

just like you'd support your favorite webartists.

sorry if this is a rant.. and I don't mean any disrespect. just my feelings. and that I know it sucks being a struggling musician. releasing a great album thats popular and distributed by caroline, or even being on a minor label like A diffrent Drum, or Fat Wreck-cords doesn't really count for much, even if you might think diffrently.

Ann beretta ( a great band from Richmond, VA if you like strike anywhere this is where the other half of the band Inquisition went to) had to sleep on the floor of the pizza place me and my best friend worked at cause they didn't have the money for a hotel, (though Fuel for ramen didn't do much agent wise, they are on lookout now, and one of the contract points is a spare floor ^_^). Another example is Pain (out of DC) having to be stuck in my town after playing in my town cause they were broke.

okay my rants over...

[RPin]

Phactorri, I know that. I have a lot of friends who are struggling musicians myself.

I wasn't trying to make an excuse to use Kazaa, stealing is always stealing.

I was just making the point that the 'sticking it to the man' mindset doesn't apply to web cartoonists.

[Joeymanley]

I do NOT advocate what I am about to suggest.

It's just put there as an example of how to "turn the tables," if somebody with an evil mind wanted to do it.

Write a program or even a webpage that will download their software from their website over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Distribute this program widely.

Guess what happens to their bandwidth costs.

I expect that actually doing this might open one up to legal liability -- but, on the other hand, having bandwidth bandits try to sue you for deliberately overloading their bandwidth might be a good way to open up this conversation widely for educational purposes.

Just a thought.

Joey
http://www.moderntales.com

[Rkolter]

I do NOT advocate what I am about to suggest.

It's just put there as an example of how to "turn the tables," if somebody with an evil mind wanted to do it.

Write a program or even a webpage that will download their software from their website over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Distribute this program widely.

Guess what happens to their bandwidth costs.

I expect that actually doing this might open one up to legal liability -- but, on the other hand, having bandwidth bandits try to sue you for deliberately overloading their bandwidth might be a good way to open up this conversation widely for educational purposes.

Just a thought.

Joey
http://www.moderntales.com

Reminds me of my fax-hack.

1) Buy a pack of black construction paper.
2) Tape four sheets end to end (making a very long sheet of 8.5" paper).
3) Feed one end into your fax and dial their fax.
4) As the paper comes out of your fax, loop it around and tape it to the trailing end of your long sheet of paper, making a circle.
5) Go out to lunch, content in the fact that you are making their machine print endless page after page of pure black paper.

[RPin]

I do NOT advocate what I am about to suggest.

It's just put there as an example of how to "turn the tables," if somebody with an evil mind wanted to do it.

Write a program or even a webpage that will download their software from their website over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Distribute this program widely.

Guess what happens to their bandwidth costs.

I expect that actually doing this might open one up to legal liability -- but, on the other hand, having bandwidth bandits try to sue you for deliberately overloading their bandwidth might be a good way to open up this conversation widely for educational purposes.

Just a thought.

Joey
http://www.moderntales.com

Yes, I already pointed out how funny it would be if someone reversed his software against him. It'd be killer to have someone to write a crack for his software.

[Dan Nicholls]

Reminds me of my fax-hack.((etc. etc.))

As a former fax-monkey, I can truly say...*shudder*.

[Phact0rri]

RPin...

I didn't mean to offend you, just a soap box chance so I took it!

On a side note I like this idea to freely take out thier software, but we'd need to know how its distributed... *ponders*

[Thingschange]

I wrote an email to the author of that program...

Subject: Won't someone please think of the webcomics.
"Dear (andy?),

There has been a lot of discussion lately about your program comictastic.

I, like many others, am a user of keenspace. I publish a comic there and read many other peoples' creations. What's more, I can do it all for free and it's fantastic.

Keenspace can afford to do all this for free because they put an advertisement on each comic. I don't like ads at all, but having them appear on the keenspace pages is the price that I pay for using their service.

If people begin viewing their pages through comictastic keenspace's bandwidth costs will go up and their ad revenue will go down. When they are no longer making money from the service it will disappear.

You will have been singlehandedly responsible for destroying at least 4637 (current keenspace membership) small time independent comics, many of whom probably can't afford to pay for expensive webhosting. This includes my comic and many comics I love reading.

If you're writing a program for reading webcomics I can only assume that you must be a comic fan. So why are you so eager to remove these comics from the public domain.

It's not like napster/winmx/gnutella/etc who steal mostly from rich music companies. You are ripping off in almost every case small-time independent artists who draw for the love of it and give away their work for free.

Incidentally your program IS illegal. Reprinting materials in other contexts without the author's permission is a copyright violation. If you've included any personal details with your program (as I imagine you must have in order to get paid) then you can be looking at serious legal issues. That hated peice of copyright law, the DMCA, carries very harsh penalties for the kind of copyright violation your program performs.

I'm sure that you didn't deliberately want your program to be harmful to the comic community, but now I hope you realise that it is. Perhaps you should turn your programming talents to more noble ends.

Yours,
Michael."

I know, I'm not actually publishing my comic yet... but that would be an unnecessary complexity to add to the email. If this guy drives keenspace out of business I will not be happy

[RPin]

He just claims KeenSpace and Keenspot aren't defaults in his comic listing.

Either way, I'm stepping off this discussion. It's better to let the big guys handle it. Also, there's nothing more I could add to it.

[YarpsDat]

How about we changed tacics?

I'm afraid there will always be programs like that - by definition, if something is available there must be a way to reach it.
But we can try and make it so there are no people using the programs.

I have a confession to make... I once stole bandwidth... I was young and stupid, and I didn't know what I was doing, but the computer lab was closing, and I decided to take the whole archive of one comic home, so I made a lttle thingy that let me save it... now that I know it was bad, I wouldn't do that.
So I naively assume that most people, when faced the choice: spend a couple of seconds waiting for the ad to load, or steal from the site, thus endangering it's existence, would take the first option.

So how about someone (like, someone big/official) wrote to the newspaper that made the aricle, to make them make an article about bandwidth costs, and bandwidth thieves?

[Sortelli]

I don't think the issue is interesting enough to get a second mention in a paper, though.

Me, I'll just let my readers know how I feel about it, and then try to stay quiet. I REALLY don't like what these guys are doing, but short of a baseball bat I don't see how to make a convincing argument about it. They obviously have no intention of stopping or even considering that we should have any say in the matter. So screw them.

Actually, I might start making the black areas of my comic transparent so that they are illegible on any different background than the one on my page. Hmmmm....

[RPin]

Actually, regarding Comictastic in particular, I now for a fact that it still cannot display comics like the sunday Sluggy Freelances, so all people have to do in order to avoid (until the guy fixes this) is just cut their comics in several files.

[McDuffies]

Yep, as with AIDS, the only solution is educating people. This guy is a calculated jerk, not a comic fan. He found a way to earn easy money, and he wont give up. Nor anyone who makes this kind of program, ever.

Still, I have a strange urge to hurt this guy by bringing him to allmighty irony. I like manley's suggestion.