Forum - View topicColleen Doran on the real victims of piracy, and the Bill :)
|
|
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
|
||
|
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/129741-the-qrealq-victims-of-online-piracy
Interestingly, it's on a newssite devotes to congress news. Not a comic blog, not an art blog, not a copyright blog. Colleen's been putting a lot of work into advocacy for artist's rights on her one time/dime, and I'm grateful she's doing this for all us artists. Also, before you vent about how she just doesn't get it or is grumpy for being unsuccessful [there's some comments like that on the hill, which are very low/dirty in my opinion -why are people always such jerks to artists when they talk about these issues?]- she's been posting her creator-owned comic online for two years at http://adistantsoil.com/ and has been an industry pro for most of her life. She mentions her new graphic novel Gone to Amerikay, which will be out next year from DC Comics/Vertigo. http://blog.copyrightalliance.org/2010/11/artists-rights-front-and-center-as-hill-bill-moves-forward/ Also, the bill she's been promoting has progressed, and is now awaiting a full senate vote- "S-3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, now has awaiting it a full Senate vote. Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the primary sponsor of the bill, said after the vote that “the White House has indicated the President would sign it” should the bill reach his desk." So yeah, glad to see this happening. Crossing my fingers, and hope anime/manga companies will be able to make good use of it too, as from Collen's indications, it's really goint ot be a help for creators. |
|||
|
|||
ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
|
||
|
Do you have a link to the actual bill in question or some sort of details about it? I don't really see much worth discussing here otherwise. It's a passionate and well written editorial but it doesn't really bring anything new to the debate.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
|
||
|
I think ANN posted about it on the main page back when it came up along w/a superlongcrazydiscussiontheadlikealways.
Colleen posted the full text here http://adistantsoil.com/2010/09/28/combating-online-infringement-and-counterfeits-act/ and you can track it here http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3804 [as you can see, the most recent action was a few days ago] |
|||
|
|||
Guardsman Bass
 Posts: 158 |
|
||
|
Assuming it does get passed, it's going to go straight into legal challenge in the federal courts for the next couple of months.
I am going to be amused by the DoJ trying to go after a whole bunch of foreign-owned and foreign-based sites. Because it just works so well when they try it for other forms of intellectual property, right? But let's say that your wildest dreams come true, and they come down on the aggregator sites. Hell, let's say they come down hard on the advertisers and get them to cut off the online ad revenue (unlikely). What will happen? People will just move back towards using torrents and file-sharing. That's not as easy as using an online reader, but it certainly won't cut off the flow of pirated content - and it won't save Doran's comics. EDIT: One last thing. I read her op-ed about the "real victims of online piracy", and there was one thing that caught my eye: her bitching about the fact that others were re-posting her free webcomic elsewhere . . . for free. Perhaps she should be asking why people are going to other websites for her comic even when there's no difference in price. In any case, the simple fact is that technology is making the application of intellectual property rent to non-rival, non-includable information obsolete. Rather than bitching about how the technology doesn't let them operate exactly how they were able to before this was the case, they need to figure out some way to draw readers on their own. The music industry is doing it - they often as not count the number of singles sold online for an artist as much as their CD sales, and the streaming services seemed to have survived (Pandora survived near-collapse). In the process, a lot of artists used to the old model are going to be left by the wayside. Too bad, so sad. |
|||
|
|||
|
Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
|
||
|
Keep in mind that when they read them on her site, she gets the ad money. And they also notice "Oh hey, there's a webstore where I can buy the books! And commission art! And see what else she's published! And hey there's a blog about her upcoming projects!". Colleen seems to have made her running the comic online into a way to get new readers and what not- if you read the piece, and go to her blog, you'll notice that she's not really against Digital, just against digital piracy.
I think Heidi MacDonald made a good point in The Beat's long comment thread on it- artists tend to benefit most from their work being posted online when they are the ones posting it and in control of it. http://www.comicsbeat.com/2010/11/18/doran-launches-valiant-probably-futile-pirate-counter-attack/#comments It popped up when people were wrangling in regards to Steve Liebers recent experiences with his work getting pirated. This quote really sums up the difference of an artist posting their work online vs. getting pirated well- "I think Colleen’s experience in the quote just above this is pretty CLOSE to the Leiber model actually — a creator-sanctioned legit option helps sales, while a pirate site doesn’t. Case closed." When they read them on a pirate site..... pirates get the ad money. And the reader might not know she has her own site with a webstore and stuff, if google's full of pirated links filling up searches for her work. |
|||
|
|||
|
Guardsman Bass
Posts: 158 |
|
||
I know that - I read some of her blog entries on it, where she talks about how her sales dived and dived until she started doing the web comic online and having an overall online presence. But that segues into the point I made in my post: she's posting the comic for free. The pirates are (re)posting the comic for free. So why are more people going to the pirate sites for it when there's no difference in price? I suspect "aggregation" is the reason. Aggregation of information is popular these days. We have RSS readers so that we don't have to go hopping around a million different blog websites. Hulu, Youtube, and Crunchyroll aggregate video content. Has she considered forming an aggregation group with other artists and writers? It might help. Particularly if the legal aggregator can pool money to put their link at the top of Google searches. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group