Comic BitTorrent Tracker Writes Open Letter to Marvel, Ends Up a Target
Written by enigmax on December 02, 2007In November we reported that the ZCult FM comic tracker had been put under legal pressure by the the combined might of Marvel and DC comics. Another tracker, ComicSearch, came out with an open letter to Marvel after this legal action, only to walk straight into the spotlight themselves.
We reported on the pressure the ZCult comic tracker found itself under in November. Site admin ‘Serj’ explained: “We got legal letters from both Marvel and DC Comics who have been working together to send us these legal threats. We are currently dealing with the legal issues and they have given us 3 days before they are forced to take anymore action.”
Just after this statement, another comic tracker ‘ComicSearch‘ found themselves disappointed that Marvel would take this action, so they wrote an open letter to them, a copy of which you can read below. However, following this, ComicSearch itself is now a target for Marvel, as will be revealed in an exchange of emails between them and the ComicSearch admin, ‘Deicist’.
Open Letter to Marvel from ComicSearch
This letter comes about in the wake of several important developments in comics on the internet, and in particular Marvels recent launch of its online comics service.
Up until recently, The ‘big two’ in comics (Marvel and DC) have turned a blind eye to the rampant pirating of their comics and their distribution online via usenet and bittorrent. I’d make the argument that the recent upsurge in the popularity of comics, and the growth of the industry as a whole is due to, not in despite of this policy. A policy that Marvel has thrown out in recent days with it’s cease and desist letter to popular comics website Zcultfm.
Marvel seems to be operating under the impression that stamping out piracy is the way forward, that people downloading scans of comics aren’t buying the print versions and the way round this problem is to clamp down on illegal distribution and point people at their online service instead.
I (and the many other people who use this site) can already see this isn’t going to work. Not only that, but it’s a completely misguided idea to begin with. You only have to look at the example of the RIAA and it’s persecution of music downloaders to see that attacking fans who want to see / listen to your product is not only misguided, it’s downright stupid.
As things stand at the moment, Marvel and DC are in an enviable position. Their fans love them. People download comics not because they don’t want to buy them, but because they want an electronic version they can read, and organise more easily without damaging their precious print versions. Look at any one of the users of Zcult or this site and you’ll find they have vast libraries of print comics neatly catalogued and safely put away, and they keep the scans on their computer where they’re easily accessible. Marvel’s recent online service, while a nice first tetative step into the online world isn’t what people want from electonic comics. You can’t download the comics to your machine (only read them online) and the selection of comics available is sparse at best. The other enviable aspect of Marvel / DCs position is this: Their product has a value above and beyond it’s content. People don’t download comics instead of buying them, they download comics as well as buying them. And then there’s the vast sums of money in the industry that don’t even come from the comics… movies, merchandise etc. That money isn’t going to shrink because a few people download comics, it’s going to vastly increase as more and more people get into comics after checking them out online.
Marvel (in my opinion) has the chance, now, to show the way forward for intellectual property holders in the digital age. Don’t try and stop the pirates, embrace them as the true fans they are and let them do the work of spreading the word about your product. Yes, it’s a gamble…but it’s one that, when it pays off will do your reputation and more importantly your product the world of good.
Far from having the desired effect, Marvel got in touch with ComicSearch with this message (names removed, replaced with ‘Marvel / ComicSearch):
I am going to ask nicely first, and request that you please remove all Marvel comics from the tracker and ask that your members refrain from putting up new torrents containing Marvel comics. You are on notice that if you continue, it will be at your own risk.
Thank you,
Marvel
[exchange of emails to confirm it is indeed Marvel, and not an imposter, are removed]
I’ve already posted notice in the forums that Marvel comics are no longer allowed on the tracker. If you can give me a list of torrents currently on the tracker that contain Marvel comics I will remove them post-haste.
ComicSearch
I trust that you will comply and I will check back in a week to confirm that they are removed. That should give you ample opportunity to remove them in a reasonable amount of time.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Marvel
I understand you’re merely an employee of a large corporation and likely have little authority with regards to Marvels policies, however having said that I have some time to kill so I’d like to get this off my chest: I believe Marvels recent change in stance with regards to online comics distribution is shortsighted and ultimately will lead to dissatisfied fans and a loss of sales.
Your online service doesn’t meet the needs of the people it’s aimed at. The comics are lower quality than available ‘pirate’ scans, you don’t offer a downloadable option and the selection of titles available is small.
Instead of trying to stamp out the pirates, you should be making use of them. Why not set up some sort of licensing scheme? Many of my users have said since the clampdown that they’d be more than willing to pay a reasonable price for downloadable, high quality scans. Marvel should be tapping into that market, not trying to force their own service on people who, at the end of the day, just want to read comics.
Your current strategy may work in the short term, but in the long term it’s doomed to failure. implementing a policy which does little more than annoy your fans will eventually place marvel in the same bracket as the RIAA, and I don’t think that’s where marvel wants to be.
Again, I realise this letter will make little difference, once a corporation the size of Marvel has set a policy, there’s little it’s customers can do about it but at least I’ll feel better knowing that at least one person at Marvel has read this.
Thanks for your time.
ComicSearch
Your opinion is appreciated and I will let people know the various complaints about our service. I will forward on your suggestions to the person in charge.
Again, I thank you for cooperating to remove the Marvel titles from your tracker and I encourage debate on this topic on your forum. Please do not allow members to link torrents on The Pirate Bay or from direct file sharing sites either, you should know better than that. If you support the industry, buy your own comic books. If you want to preview them, there are dozens of review sites out there that show the first few pages.
Best Regards,
Marvel
What follows is an exchange of emails picking over some details of the DMCA, even though the admin of ComicSearch is not a US resident. When asked how US law could affect him outside of the country, there was another brief exchange followed by the customary anti-piracy threat:
Continue to push the issue and I will contact the other publishers.
Thank you,
Marvel
Another custom these days is to respond to threats with a new server location, as explained by admin ‘Deicist’: “I’m now looking at moving my hosting to Sweden.”
Another cash loss for the US, another gain for Sweden.
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58 Responses
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Looks like Sweden may turn into a superpower because of all these torrent sites… :D
Its will end a certain death of all torrent sites.
Move all site servers to Sweden, eventually laws will change there, ALL sites go down like dominoes.
I do believe someone needs to come up with more the one place as a “safe-haven”, its getting a bit ridiculous…
Or the entire BT community is DOOMED.
What a fucking idiot, what does he expect?
WOW right in the lion’s mouth,
as for a “safe haven” for servers, I would go with a country that hates the US of A, so now of their law or bribes would work. Shouldn’t be hard to find.
Al-Quaida would be a great organization ;)
[quote comment="229476"]WOW right in the lion’s mouth,
as for a “safe haven” for servers, I would go with a country that hates the US of A, so none of their laws or bribes
would work.
Shouldn’t be hard to find.
Al-Quaida would be a great organization
;)[/quote]
Since TPB are the only ones battling in courts against copyright laws and won cases this is what happens.
none of the private trackers will fight in court, they always settle outside of court, they do not want to try the copyright laws in court even though they could win.
torrents are jsut meta data, they dont contain copyrighted material, content lies with the users.
Im very doubtfull sweden is the only country that allows linking to copyrighted material, any country where you can link to stuff you can also have a tracker in. AND even if you cant link, you can still have a tracker as torrents are meta data and not links, content cannot be illigal untill a full download, in witch case the users would be responcible and the site would still be up and running.
If more torrent sites had balls like TPB and tested/fought against the copyright laws there would be many places where trackers would be safe.
Google is safe, Rapidshare is safe, a ton of download sites are safe, because they cannot varify the content, and since a torrent can be named anything the content cannot be varified without downloading it completely.
Anti-pirates will not go and download every torrent to varify its content, they will breech copyright laws if they did, and be so called “criminals” and “terrorist supporters”..
Its a shame that torrent sites dont FIGHT against copyright laws, how will the future evolve is copyright is never fought? One day copyright might need changing, but since theres noone to fight it it will remain as is for hundreds of years…
One big change to copyright law would be to adapt it to digital age, movies gets protection for 2 years and music/other media gets 1 year protection from copyright laws. That is more then enough time to bring profits from their product, it will be adapted to digital age, development and creatism will skyrocket aswell as markets will expand.
Fight copyright, if you dont you cant whine about sites shutting down or a movie being protected for your whole lifetime…
[quote comment="229464"]Its will end a certain death of all torrent sites.
Move all site servers to Sweden, eventually laws will change there, ALL sites go down like dominoes.
I do believe someone needs to come up with more the one place as a “safe-haven”, its getting a bit ridiculous…
Or the entire BT community is DOOMED.[/quote]
I highly doubt they will change the law in at least 5 years time..
think its around 26 % of all the computers in sweden download via torrents.. soon their will be a new protocall new safe haven
[quote comment="229464"]Its will end a certain death of all torrent sites.
Move all site servers to Sweden, eventually laws will change there, ALL sites go down like dominoes.
I do believe someone needs to come up with more the one place as a “safe-haven”, its getting a bit ridiculous…
Or the entire BT community is DOOMED.[/quote]
I agree. The Swedish government has been successfully pressured before when TPB was taken offline a year ago. Sweden might be a safe haven today but it wont be one tomorrow if trackers keep moving to Sweden.
[quote comment="229489"][quote comment="229464"]Its will end a certain death of all torrent sites.
Move all site servers to Sweden, eventually laws will change there, ALL sites go down like dominoes.
I do believe someone needs to come up with more the one place as a “safe-haven”, its getting a bit ridiculous…
Or the entire BT community is DOOMED.[/quote]
I highly doubt they will change the law in at least 5 years time..
think its around 26 % of all the computers in sweden download via torrents.. soon their will be a new protocall new safe haven[/quote]
99% of all teenagers in Sweden downloads pirated material. If they don’t, it’s either because they don’t have a pc (very unusal for a swede) or that they have been sleeping under a rock.
The majority of the swedish population supports piracy so it’s hard for the politians to decide anything, hence the debate of including an extra fee on ISPs so downloading will be legal.
[quote comment="229479"]Since TPB are the only ones battling in courts against copyright laws and won cases this is what happens.
none of the private trackers will fight in court, they always settle outside of court, they do not want to try the copyright laws in court even though they could win.
torrents are jsut meta data, they dont contain copyrighted material, content lies with the users.
Im very doubtfull sweden is the only country that allows linking to copyrighted material, any country where you can link to stuff you can also have a tracker in. AND even if you cant link, you can still have a tracker as torrents are meta data and not links, content cannot be illigal untill a full download, in witch case the users would be responcible and the site would still be up and running.
If more torrent sites had balls like TPB and tested/fought against the copyright laws there would be many places where trackers would be safe.
Google is safe, Rapidshare is safe, a ton of download sites are safe, because they cannot varify the content, and since a torrent can be named anything the content cannot be varified without downloading it completely.
Anti-pirates will not go and download every torrent to varify its content, they will breech copyright laws if they did, and be so called “criminals” and “terrorist supporters”..
Its a shame that torrent sites dont FIGHT against copyright laws, how will the future evolve is copyright is never fought? One day copyright might need changing, but since theres noone to fight it it will remain as is for hundreds of years…
One big change to copyright law would be to adapt it to digital age, movies gets protection for 2 years and music/other media gets 1 year protection from copyright laws. That is more then enough time to bring profits from their product, it will be adapted to digital age, development and creatism will skyrocket aswell as markets will expand.
Fight copyright, if you dont you cant whine about sites shutting down or a movie being protected for your whole lifetime…[/quote]
Very interesting comments you make. I definitly agree about the length of time a copyrighted product should be entitled to. As of now all copyrighted material get a lifetime of protection. The owner made their share of profits and now they just want to continue to receive extra royalties for their retirement. How much more do you want? Too much greed in the world. Maybe the world would be a better place without money.
Laws and regulations will need some changing in the future. Otherwise customers will just become disgruntled and continue using torrents from one place to another. This seems to be the usual pattern that will continue for many years until big corporations start to embrace and understand how the torrents are actually helping market their products without the use of advertisements. Maybe one day they will understand.
Well….its that time again. Jellybaby time! Yummy!
Marvel and DC have way too much wax not only in their ears, but also in their brains. Stop closing the doors to new and thriving technologies. Torrents are actually helping Marvel and DC thrive from their graves.
TO Marvel and DC Comics; I leave you with the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: “Of course you realize this means war”.
Deja vu. A whole new industry is shooting itself in the foot instead of choosing to respect its customers :(
That said, I want to CONGRATULATE the ComicSearch admin who wrote that letter to them.
Exactly what they need to hear, very maturely and correctly stated.
It might not be too late yet.
I wonder if Marvel understands that it was precisely this so-called “piracy” that was the driving force behind introducing Anime and Manga — products that were intended only for the Japanese market — to people the world over?
That kind of free advertising and market development would be worth a fortune in any other business. Only in this business the companies attack the very people whose grass-roots promotion developed their market from scratch, and thereby made them a fortune when the companies finally decided to exploit that market knowing ahead of time that demand for their products had already been firmly established.
Had it not been for internet “piracy”, the current fortune being reaped by the anime and manga industry — and we can’t leave out Hentai — would today likely be at the level during the pre-internet era when their market was strictly limited to within Japan.
Some one should try and organize a mass boycott of marvel comics. The torrent sites should ask it’s members not to buy marvel comics for a month or two in protest. See if anything new develops
This is just another example of corporate dinosaur logic. How long did it take for the mainstream big brand companies to realize the marketing power of the Internet to begin with? Unfortunatley I fear the marketing power of torrents and file sharing will take foresight that currently is beyond comprehension of corporate machines. If I were marvel or dc I would set up a private subscription tracker whereby the users pay a licence fee to share/upload that companies data to other users. Then use share to seed ratio for subscription priceing.That way the people willing to scan and share their comics would pay relatively low subscription as they basically take away the need of file servers and the leechers pay the premiums thak keep the corporation’s accountants happy. That way people are encouraged to share more files and with more files available the site gains reputation which brings more users and everyone is happy.
Rant over thanks for reading.
I hate to be picky over this kind of stuff, but the response letters to Marvel may have been taken more seriously if they had used proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The message is there, but credibility is lost because of these errors. I’ve been on both sides of these issues, and I know that following these rules, though somewhat arbitrary, can only help you to be heard.
These are only from the first two paragraphs:
“. . . Marvels recent launch. . .” (Marvel’s recent lauch)
“. . . the industry as a whole is due to, not in despite of this policy.” (. . . is due to, not in spite of, this policy)
“. . . with it’s cease and desist letter. . .” (. . . with its cease and desist letter. . .)
Im not sure of a couple of theories in the first email.They don’t seem to make as much of an impact as they are trying to make. For eg. the part where people have vast libraries (bought) of comics and they just download not to ruin their collection, or even the part that people download and buy as well. I think that is true however not the majority answer. The big answer is if people didn’t download they wouldn’t be interested in comics and thus the biz would be a dieing breed only left for the fanatics. Now the company may say thats lost profit, but the real answer is if its not downloadable via sites then noone would be buying them obviously. So my point is that ppl downloading comics doesn’t hurt the company at all or at least something to think twice about because for sure they aren’t going to buy it if its not on the net, as unfortunately there aren’t much rich ppl as they might think. Next downloading the comics if anything keeps the person’s interest still in the comic biz thus increasing their sales, and they may say its only a small bit, but I’m sure that bit covers the bit mentioned in my previous sentence. So in the end the comic companies don’t gain anything from taking the sites down but will only hurt themselves.
I must say the emails are correct i personally have a large collection of my fav comics (or what i think is large :P) but like most other comic collectors i have them sealed in plastic bags because they are worth a lot more than what i paid for them and the whole point of buying a comic is to be entertained by its content how can i do that if i want to keep mine in mint condition i download them and when marvel only have a fraction of my collection and in crap quality of course im going to resort to “piracy” what else am I going to do ? go out and spend countless dollars buy a second of each copy when some cost hundreds of dollars now ? marvel suck it up and lead the world into the new age you will be more well known and bigger then you could have ever imagined look what happened to Microsoft and Macintosh they bought us computers ( and mac the ipod) now think how rich are they how big are their companies wouldn’t you like to be like them
id never read a comic untill id downloaded a few, now im buying & collecting a few different series’s
I had never bought any comics in my life apart from The Beano and The Dandy when I was very young.
I decided to download a few from a comic torrent site and I found them really fun to read and I admit that I’ve started buying now from a local store.
If I hadn’t used those torrents I would never of had any interest in comics.
I had no idea you could still buy comics until I read about all this.
Dang straight Deja vu. A whole new industry is shooting itself in the foot.
They are taking a situation where they could be making money, and choosing to not make money.
They are taking a situation where their fans love the material and are coming to accept the company, and rejecting those fans.
They are taking a situation where they could hugely increase the size of their fans, their market, and their revenues - and what do they do? They run away, stick their heads in the sand, and send their goons after every one of their fans - after the only people who can make their situation not just as good as the “good old days”, but 100x better.
Yeah, this does sound familiar. The music distributors (not artists) did it. The movie creators (not actors) did it. And now the comic book distributors (not artists) are doing it.
Pathetic. If these guys could just make one simple “Do we sell the people what they want to buy”, yes/no choice correctly, they would be rolling in more dough than they ever thought possible.
Yeah, hey all. I’m a staff member a ComicSearch.
Glad to see our plight has been made known :P
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