In Case You Hadn't Noticed....

[filkertom]

... scans_daily has been suspended. Moderator schmevil has the skinny.

ETA: A bit of an update from Peter David.

ETA2: There is now a scans_daily group on InsaneJournal. Here's their RSS feed, and here's the LJ version of that feed.

Comments

[aulayan.livejournal.com]

And so PAD kills the one of the best comic promoting tools on the web.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

Proof for that pudding, please, or we shouldn't throw stones.

[aulayan.livejournal.com]

He finds out about Scans_daily less than a week ago. Goes to Photobucket to get scans pulled (Doesn't say it was him, but explains how they were pulled). And then a few days later, SD is gone?

....

Yeah, throwing stones.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

Until there's proof, I won't throw stones.

Hell, I won't even throw any at that point. I mean, did you read his comments in the opening pages of the last few months of X-Factor?

I loved the comm to a ridiculous degree, and I think it was a good thing, but it WAS illegal and a lot of artists don't want people seeing ANY of their stuff for free.

[pabsungenis.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised they got away with it this long. For good or for ill, they were clearly on the wrong side of the law in this case.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

That's what I told a friend who e-mailed me about it last night.

I loved that comm, but they could have gotten LJ sued by over a dozen companies.

[pabsungenis.livejournal.com]

Like I said, "for good or for ill." I'm certain there are hundreds of examples of people picking up books they might not have because of something in scans_daily, and it certainly was a very powerful promotional tool for smaller books, but it was still very much illegal.

This is probably an example of where there are flaws in today's copyright laws. The problem is that the little guys don't have the resources to fight the megacorps (*cough*Disney*cough*) who keep lobbying to make copyright laws even more nonsensical.

If anything should be learned from scans_daily, it's that maybe the publishers ought to adopt its model for their own. If every publisher put, say, the first five pages of every book out online every month (especially if they were to do it at solicitation time), they will probably sell a lot more of certain titles. But it needs to be something they do of their own volition, not something done by a group of right-hearted and wrong-headed individuals.

"Right" does not always mean "legal," and "illegal" does not always mean "wrong."

And for the record, all this is coming from someone who is as aggressive in protecting his copyrights as PAD or anyone else. I'll be the first to fire off a DMCA letter when needed. Yes, I'm a copyright nazi, but even I can see the value of what scans_daily was doing. The problem was, what they were doing was, in one word, illegal.

[kengr]

they could have gotten LJ sued by over a dozen companies

Actually, no. Under DMCA, LJ is only liable if after being notified of a potential infringement they then *fail* to remove it within 48 hours.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

That's splitting hairs, but fair enough.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Well, that sucks as a way to start the morning.

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

2009 is not shaping up to be a good year, no sir.

I've probably heard about more comics through scans_daily than I have through any other single source. In fact, if I had had the money at the time, I probably would have gone out and bought some of those featured comics.

But now it, along with all the links I bookmarked to it, has been destroyed. I'll never remember the names of all the stories I wanted to get.

Oh well, more money to spend on cd's and video games.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised to hear this. After full_scans_daily was pulled for posting full issues, people started doing the same on scans_daily which was supposed to be for scenes, not full issues. Even Peter David agreed that posting a panel or even a full page or two is fair use to comment on the scene. I am sorry to see scans_daily gone but I am not surprised. I saw speculation that it was Photobucket that complained to LiveJournal, that fits what I have heard and even seen Photobucket do (like pulling pics for copyright violations that the copyright holder posted).

[timewalker.livejournal.com]

well scans was supposed to be for less than half of an issue, but when two or three posters would each post less than half it often ended up being an entire issue.
And for all of the people who say "I bought this because of scans daily" I can remember people who said "thank goodness I can just keep up with this dreck (major company crossover) via scans daily instead of wasting my money on it." Yes, it was a good promo tool for a lot of niche comics (e.g. Blue Beetle), but they went well past fair use a lot of times.

[barbara-the-w.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh, Copyright, you old devil, you.

Funny how copyright law can be either good or bad, depending on whether we have anything protected by it. :) I see this at work all the time. :P

Marvel has the right to be absolutely jack stupid about its intellectual property online.
And the folks at scans_daily just need to get a better handle on "fair use." Seriously. Some of the postings were far past Fair Use.

[mnenyver.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting about this. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said something. I mostly skimmed the rss feed and only sometimes commented, but I really liked it and can't imagine what will replace it. Talking about comics without illustrated examples is like trying to describe the taste of food to someone who can't taste it.

And all those posts, including old stuff you couldn't find anywhere else, just gone. Damn.