Lew Stringer wrote:
I had a run in with the guy behind the site a few months ago. He had copies of Elephantmen up there with all my Brickman pages. As I intend to republish those in a comic later this year I didn't want sales damaged by illegal scans on the net so I asked him to remove them. He got a bit sniffy about it but complied. You CAN beat the pirates.
Harlan Ellison has suggested he had some strong influence in this matter. The entry below is from his messageboard (The Flying Blue Monkey Squad is his name for his readers who help him out on the net; strong words censored as I know some people on here don't like them):
"HARLAN ELLISON
- Wednesday, May 5 2010 21:3:45
IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT
Several months ago, if you recall, we were advised of an internet pirate who was posting -- along with about 30,000 other pages -- DC, Marvel, Archie, Dark Horse, and on and on -- my stories from HARLAN ELLISON'S DREAM CORRIDOR. When we advised him to cease and desist, he essentially told me to go f*** myself, and urged me to sue him. Just like every one of them, all the way back to my AOL suit, he told me he couldn't be found, he was impregnable, I could go f*** myself.
I warned him.
I asked four members of The Flying Blue Monkey Squad to help me. They found him in one day, unsnarled all his shunting devices, tracked his footprint back to his main server, we got his name, his location in Tampa, Florida, and sent that data on to, well, friends of friends.
Look around the net today, folks. You may find a HUGE news event that congratulates Dark Horse (publisher of DREAM CORRIDOR), DC, Marvel, a consortium of dealers and publishers, and a number of attorneys, who have decided to do what I was asked by the FBI to refrain from doing until they'd put out THEIR press release...announce the arrest of a guy in, well I'll be damned, Tampa, Florida on Federal Charges of illegal copyright infringement.
I claim nothing. But once again, and you may smile with naked pleasure again, their are demon-shaped hoofprints all over this reply to the arrogant "do your worst" of the pirates. What they don't ever seem to perceive, is that for some of us, our worst is our best.
Thank you, each and every.
Grin mercilessly.
Yr. Pal, Harlan"
It's interesting, Lew, that he agreed to take your stuff down yet refused Ellison who is well known to be litigious over such matters. Did you have
much trouble?
I think there might be an increasing crackdown in the UK, too. I was told that the council have been in touch with organisers of local collectors' fairs about bootlegs and I noticed the usual tables of bootleg roms and DVDs missing from the recent film and comic fairs.