comics on c-d rom

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Some of you involved in this conversation might like to have a look at the responses on CB+. I thought the subject would be of interest to members there so I raised it and was surprised at the strength of feeling in some quarters. A couple of us felt we should close it before it got a bit out of hand. See what you started!
http://comicbookplus.com/forum/index.ph ... 672.0.html

Paw: I read all the posts on this site you are aso a member of, and I feel the contributers there are all seasoned, passionate comics buffs with very forceful, spirited views on this subject, and the overall tone is more aggressive than on this site, but it made for interesting reading for all that.



I've never seen a comics topic on Comics UK evoke such polarized response as this one has, and it's actually changed the future for me personally, regarding how I will choose to view vintage comics material.

A lot of law-abiding, respectable comics fans seem to agree that the current system in place is not providing adequate vintage material for seasoned comics buffs--the technology to provide affordable archive material surely exists, but nothing is being done to provide hard copies legally, and it's no small wonder that bootlegged versions appear to be thriving.

If the proper channels are not sorted out, I expect we will see a lot more of this sort of thing [illegal copies] as a consequence.

[Peter Gray]

In Classics from the comics one of the last issues on the letter page it was mentioned that D C Thomson was doing something...so it could be round the corner...
technology is certainly moving fast..

[Niblet]

I believe there are websites that allow enthusiasts of various descriptions to collaboratively raise money to fund films etc. Would such a scheme to pay for official comic collections on DVD be viable? I presume someone would first have to contact the copyright holder (admittedly, in the case of Fleetway/IPC titles, this could be fraught with difficulties) to agree an amount needed to fund such a project, but as others have mentioned, pressing DVDs shouldn't be too prohibitive.

One advantage of this money-raising scheme is that all subscribers would be known (at least to those gathering the funds). If there was some way of applying a unique digital watermark to the files on each DVD, were any pirate copies found to be in circulation, the source could be identified. Not a huge deterrent to the unscrupulous, I know, but may make people think twice about pirating.

As Spy mentioned earlier, in an ideal world some extras would be included on the disks; scans of a few scripts if they still exist, pre-launch dummy versions of the comics, any unused art, newsagents' publicity packs, TV ads, and maybe even video interviews with surviving creators. This would, of course, make the DVDs more expensive.

For me it would be important that the files are in a searchable format, so that, for example, all appearances of a particular strip can be located easily without having to trawl through the whole of each issue to find them, or all art by particular artist could be found. This could be done by including such info in the file names.

The companies need to sort this out soon; us survivors from comics' boom years will soon be heading off to the great slap-up feed in the sky - this is their last chance to wring some cash out of the gems languishing in their warehouses.

[swirlythingy]

If there was some way of applying a unique digital watermark to the files on each DVD, were any pirate copies found to be in circulation, the source could be identified. Not a huge deterrent to the unscrupulous, I know, but may make people think twice about pirating.

Such technology already exists, and it's an oft-overlooked alternative to conventional anti-copying DRM which ISPY alluded to earlier.

Its most noted application - in place of any physical restrictions on copying - is on the electronic versions of Harry Potter books purchased from Pottermore. J. K. Rowling got away with that by the rarely-invoked but usually-historic trick of being such a titan in her field (in this case, publishing) that she can basically do whatever she wants without any of the people who would normally object (her publisher) feeling able to cross her, as they know they owe more to her than she does to them.

An example of this technique from a different industry is - funnily enough - Hey Jude. At the time barely anything seven minutes long had been heard on the radio before, but nobody said no to the Beatles.

[DJDogfart]

On a slightly different tack, I am the singer in a local (Dorset) hillbilly/American roots band 'The Mad Ox Brothers', and we are releasing our first EP next week. I had to sign an intellectual property rights form to get the CDs duplicated, although we didn't write any of the songs, the most recent of which was written in 1936 or thereabouts. I questioned myself as I was signing the form, but, as we are only doing an initial run of 150 copies, and the duplicators don't listen to it anyway, I went ahead. Bringing this up to date, as we are a 'local' band, who only make around £40 a gig each which barely covers transport and equipment etc. I came to the thought that I would be quite pleased if someone had taken the time to upload the recording to Demonoid or Pirate Bay et al, becuase it would get our music out there, but then it isn't isn't by any stretch my primary source of income. If I was in, say, Coldplay or U2 I could understand that there would be an issue. So of course, for the illustrators and writers (and publishers) of comic archives, this is/was their income and so must be frustrating to see their material bandied about the internet beyond their control. However, although I fail to see too much problem with the big guns, like Coldplay, who consistently shift millions of units and enjoy a large bank balance to suit, if their music is pirated. I would never condone it, and as we have touched on here, there is nothing like owning the real thing - comic or record, so maybe the pirates are the ones missing out. I would imagine that most real comic/music fans who download illegal files would rather have the real thing, but have either no intention of buying the originals, or could never afford them in the first place, so there is no fiscal transaction that anyone is missing out on - the money was never going to be spent.
Of course, as the advert says 'You wouldn't steal a car' etc.. so inherently it is wrong, otherwise we would all be living in big detached houses that we hadn't bought.

I am also aware with the fate that befell 80's popsters Men at Work and Kookaburragate. I bet they never saw that one coming! And that, to me, smacks of petty moneygrabbing on someone's part.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I often 'buy blind' on e-bay, meaning I order paper comics without being too sure about what I am recieving---my knowledge on comics history is nowhere in the league of someone like kashgar, and as a result I sometimes recieve comics that are not quite what I'm looking for [sometimes this system 'comes up trumps' but it's hit-and-miss by it's very nature]


Perhaps dvd-roms would be handy as a 'basic guide' to help pinpoint the exact dates and issues of the most desired comics you are after: a sort of economical 'browsing system' if you like, so you can track down the exact hard copies on paper you desire-----if someone wants the cream of the TV21 issues for example, looking through dvd-rom 'reference material' first means they can locate---and cherry-pick-------the most desirable items, which inturn would make the payment of premium prices on e-bay more accurate for the buyers------the buyer can 'seperate the wheat from the chaff', in other words.

[Tin Can Tommy]

Perhaps dvd-roms would be handy as a 'basic guide' to help pinpoint the exact dates and issues of the most desired comics you are after: a sort of economical 'browsing system' if you like, so you can track down the exact hard copies on paper you desire-----if someone wants the cream of the TV21 issues for example, looking through dvd-rom 'reference material' first means they can locate---and cherry-pick-------the most desirable items, which inturn would make the payment of premium prices on e-bay more accurate for the buyers------the buyer can 'seperate the wheat from the chaff', in other words.

Isn't that basically what Ray Moore (Kashgar) and other's Comic Indexes are for. Although a lot of those comic indexes are harder or as hard to obtain as the comics themselves.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Fair point, Tincan. A page-by-page cyber-reference would be more detailed, though.......


I wondered why on Earth anyone would want to go to all the effort of scanning thousands of pages of comics,------ a tedious, repetitive task for even the most comitted comics fan.........however, I notice that some of you scan your own collections in order to make back-up copies [or sometimes to put on blogs] and there's nothing wrong with that of course.

I can only assume that some fans have spent months or even years of their own free time transferring all these pages of their collections to computer files on a seperate external hard-drive-----after making up their own personal copies for themselves, it would be fairly straightforwards to produce further copies-------I'm not saying this is legally or morally right [it isn't] but it's about the only scenario where I could see it being practical to go to all that effort.




The only scanning I do is to put on examples of old comics [like I sometimes do on here] or of my own cartoons. I could probably find out how to put together my own dvd-roms of my old comics as a back-up in case of fire etc [actually a good idea] but I wouldn't try and sell copies of this stuff anywhere.


The most novel use of scanning I have discovered is to blow up old yellowing copies of I SPY and make them stark and crisp black-and-white versions, and I can 'clean up' and restore grainy and fuzzy elements, eliminating white specks, etc. This takes a long time, but I dip into it now and again [it takes at least 3 hours to 'clean up' a single page] and after a few years doing this at leisure, I will hopefully have the finest extant version of these strips anywhere, outside of the actual pen-and-ink originals.


A few years down the line, I will likely put these online in the offchance anyone wants to see them.


This is what I usually use scanning for: 'cleaning up' old artwork, well that and sending out sketches to prospective employers:

[Captain Storm]

Niblet wrote:

The companies need to sort this out soon; us survivors from comics' boom years will soon be heading off to the great slap-up feed in the sky - this is their last chance to wring some cash out of the gems languishing in their warehouses.

But they won't Niblet despite lobbying from this and other fora. It is just not feasible both from an economic point of view and the time involved in professional scanning and cleaning. Also the pick up from the public would be so small as to be almost negligible. We are a small niche group , perhaps in the small thousands. The next best thing is enthusiasts sites. For the record , all these paper comics will be dust and so will we in the far future. It does make more sense for the companies to digitally preserve them to enhance their longevity . But the truth is , that even they don't have full complete runs of certain titles. Of course if they asked nicely ...cough...cough...

sincerely,

The Cap.

[colcool007]

I think what sticks in my craw more than anything else is that the majority of the scanning community (who are VERY aware of the copyright minefield they are in) do these scans for the sum of chuff all and we have these so-called fans getting their hands on the data, burning it to disk and then selling it for a very handsome profit.

Scanning is a crime if you are physically profiting from it. While I have no doubt that people much smarter than I could argue that scanning per se is a crime, I am not going to throw myself on my sword for someone scanning the 1962 copy of Victor issue 85 that I don't have and they are helping me out by letting me download it. However, if someone is scanning the latest issue of The Simpsons, 2000AD, Beano, etc then that is beyond the pale for me as each scan that stops a sale is a crime in the moral sense and the physical sense. And our comic industry needs all the help we can give it.

As we can see, it is a very personal viewpoint as to what is and what isn't breach of copyright in regard to scanning/downloading, despite the law being very black and white in any unauthorized copying being classed as a breach of copyright.

Now you must excuse me as I am off to watch Friends with Benefits that I have just downloaded... (Smiley attached for those without the Sarcasm.app activated)

[Niblet]

Niblet wrote:

The companies need to sort this out soon; us survivors from comics' boom years will soon be heading off to the great slap-up feed in the sky - this is their last chance to wring some cash out of the gems languishing in their warehouses.

But they won't Niblet despite lobbying from this and other fora. It is just not feasible both from an economic point of view and the time involved in professional scanning and cleaning. Also the pick up from the public would be so small as to be almost negligible. We are a small niche group , perhaps in the small thousands.

sincerely,

The Cap.

Cap, you're probably right.

However, in my fantasy world I envisaged an approach being made to the copyright holders on behalf of us comic fans saying "If you let us know how much moolah you would need to scan and run off on DVD {insert number of copies here] of the full run of [insert preferred comic name here], we'll go away and raise the funds ourselves and get in touch with you when we've done so". That way, there's a reduced financial risk to the copyright holders as they'll have the cash up front. Additionally, all the subscribers would obviously have to make their identities known in order to receive a DVD, and if the files on each DVD have a digital watermark unique to that copy, should piracy ensue the source could be identified. If you're right that our niche group amounts to thousands (even the low thousands as you say), there must be a fair chance that a significant number would be willing to shell out to support such a project.

The inclusion on the DVDs of some tasty extras from the archives might tempt those fans who already have illegal scans to participate in the funding.

Things that make this highly unlikely to happen;

Cloudy copyright issues (in the case of certain titles) that would probably take huge sums of money to resolve.

The fans most likely to be receptive to digital versions of comics probably already have hard disks brimming with illegal scans so will be reluctant to pay.

Arguments among fans over which title should be the first to get a DVD release would be interminable, with huge casualties.

Fantasy over. Returns (reluctantly) to real world.

[Phoenix]

But they won't Niblet despite lobbying from this and other fora.

Towards the end of November 2009, when I was rather more pedantic than I am now, I took colcool007 to task for his misuse of the word fora. I will give the Cap the benefit of the doubt as he may well not have read my post. As I recall he was in the habit at the time of taking quite long holidays from the forums. Hopefully, other members will indulge me and allow me to repeat verbatim the point I made at the time. Needless to say, nothing personal intended, Cap.

The plural of forum, in its sense of a place, meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged, is forums. The word fora is only used as a plural when referring to the public squares or marketplaces used for judicial and other business in ancient Roman cities (source : The New Oxford Dictionary Of English).

[Lew Stringer]

Arguments among fans over which title should be the first to get a DVD release would be interminable, with huge casualties.

Blimey! I hope things never get that out of hand.

[Captain Storm]

Ah my dear Phoenix , seeing as I have been here from the very beginning , I think it is not unfair to take extended holidays. And the fact that we are now debating the grammar as it applies to the use of a word is time wasting. The topic is about the digital archiving of comics. To go off on a tangent is not really helping anybody. And the fact that you make reference to 2009 suggests an unhealthy leaning towards pedantry.

The Cap.

[Phoenix]

And the fact that we are now debating the grammar as it applies to the use of a word is time wasting.

No, Cap, we are not debating anything, I am merely focusing on a linguistic error on your part. I'm doing you a favour and you should learn from it. Furthermore, I try very hard to keep to an absolute minimum the amount of time I waste.

And the fact that you make reference to 2009 suggests an unhealthy leaning towards pedantry.

All a question of perception, Cap. I simply remembered having dealt with the matter previously and so moved forward efficiently to a successful search for the discussion at the time. I'm going on holiday at the weekend to recharge my batteries. You could do the same thing, get some sun on your back and some Guinness down you. Perhaps we'll both come back less tetchy.