Comics Alliance Article - Why Piracy is Not Responsible for 'Ruining' Comics

[briantm]

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/27/comics-why-piracy-is-not-responsible-for-ruining-comics-op-ed/

[The Legendary Shark]

Nice article, Brian. Thanks for sharing.

I wonder what'll be next, though? Will the publishers start demanding their cut from second-hand sales, too? Ebay beware!

[briantm]

I found the bit about the comparative value interesting.

It's sort of a flawed argument in that 12/13 episodes of a TV series is a completely different thing to 5 comics (both costing the writer $20).

A pack of halls soothers will last alot longer than a pack of wine gums.  A block of butter lasts longer than a loaf of bread.


But he is still right... these are forms of entertainment that vie for our attention.  To us, comics are already something we love, so the price/time difference isn't really an issue - we want to read comics so we'll buy them.  But for potential new readers I can understand how they can be viewed as too expensive for what you get.  They don't know or care about how long it takes to produce a comic and what the creators should be paid.

[BPP]

Think BrianTM hits the nail on the head. The question is piracy its making the next generation aware of what comics are and making parents value their creative and educative importance. As industrial policy was wound down in the west its odd that the emphasis on the knowledge and creative economies didn't involve one of the key creative learning devices, comics.

Most people here will have come to comics via parents buying them for a mix of distraction-effect and weekly treat. The distraction-effect (buying a comic to get a kid to shut up a while, beautifully rendered in Nelson, is largely gone - there are way too many other things to distract your kid now. Its superficially cheaper and easier to bung on a DVD or a game. The weekly treat aspect is probably gone too, it was largely a function of the distraction-effect for kids that had subsequently gotten into comics. So now the challenge is getting parents to understand comics are important as much as it is to get kids to read them.  If kids are introduced to comics they'll buy them, sure they'll also pirate them but then they always did - my first exposure to 2000AD was the kid up the streets box of 50 progs...

Cash is always limited, especially for kids, so getting them to value and want comics is the key, worrying about piracy and lost sales is very much a subsequent problem that can always be overcome with a mix of acceptance and ease-of-access for monetized formats. Issues of print/digital, day-and-date, comic shop viability, piracy etc.. thats all secondary. Get the little fxxxers to love the concept of comics and the rest will work itself out.

[The Legendary Shark]

The comics industry is also suffering from the same problem that the rest of us are - The Economy of the World is in the Toilet. At such times, people will turn to theft and piracy in all arenas. Once the economy is fixed (which would be easy, by the way) problems like these will largely go away.

[briantm]

I have another opinion which may not be so popular.

Maybe it's not such a big deal if comics "died".

For as long as the current buyers are around I think someone will be producing them.  I doubt they'll ever disappear totally.  I do believe there will always be some people who create comics. 

Sure, it'd be a shame (in our opinions) if no kids read comics any more... but would it matter?

Before tv, kids used to listen to radio plays.  I'm sure there were people who thought it was a shame that they stopped.

There are still radio plays and people still listen to them.  They're not going anywhere... but they did sort of "die" at the hands of TV.

When we're all dead and gone, maybe the comics "industry" will be even more of a niche than it is now.  I'd love if that doesn't happen, I'd love if they were part of children's lives - but I don't think it matters.

(I do agree with BPP about comics educational value, but for the most part, these debates about piracy [from which I've gone OT] are about comics for entertainment.  I also see the short burst style of modern entertainment as a big problem for children's and adults' attention spans, but again, that's another discussion)

[briantm]

Hmmm, is there no edit function in this forum? (ah, I see. The modify option is removed after a few mins.)

Anyway... after thinking about my last post I realise it doesn't really add anything to the conversation...

Comics exist, and we like them, and there is the potential there for them to do better - so the creative and business people involved should of course do what they can to improve things... whether it "matters" or not 

[briantm]

How about this then...


I own (an love) all of the Transmetropolitan GNs
Is it wrong for me to download a pirate copy of the entire series so that I can read it on my ipad?

I am a member of my local library. They have the entire 100 Bullets series. The library is a short walk away.  If someone else has the book out, it will be back in about a week. Considering these points I have almost as much access to those books as I do the Transmet ones on my shelf.
So again, is it wrong for me to download a pirate copy of the entire series so that I can read it on my ipad?

There is a new Image miniseries that I am interested in.  A 5 page preview is available online. Time passes and the trade paperback is now available.  The only preview of that book available online is still those 5 pages. I don't live near a comic shop.  I can't flick through the physical book.  It was the creators/publishers choice not to make this issue available online.
Is it wrong of me to download the first issue (and the first issue only) to see if I am interested in ordering the trade paperback?

Legally the answer to all of these questions is absolutely YES, it is wrong.

Morally the answer depends, of course, on the person's morals.

Immanuel Kant's opinion on morality (one that I like very much) boils down to this: If everyone made this moral decision would it be good for the world or bad for the world.
Again, this all comes down to personal opinion.
An example opinion: If everyone cheated on their partner it would be bad for the world, therefore this is immoral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_reasoning

Using this form of moral reasoning I personally see nothing wrong with the first and third scenario.  The second scenario with the library has sort of thrown me. I'm not at all sure how I feel about that.


I do understand that there are not many comic pirates who operate under such a moral code.  I'm just finding this train of thought interesting.

[Bat King]

Comics are safe from me pirating them, as are books.  I enjoy the whole turning of pages too much.

[TordelBack]

I brought this up on another thread, but the situation over at Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com/) is fascinating me at present so I'll drag it into this discussion too. 

Here is a very popular webcomic (of which I am a major fan), more than 800 pages long now, which has been free to read since its inception, and is available in its entirety on the titular website.  Rich Burlew has been bringing out printed collected volumes for a while, but has a problem as a small operator maintaining them in print. He supplements these with some very nice but inessential 'print only' tales, filling in backstories and minor characters and so forth - naturally all of these are available illicitly by torrent. 

However, last week he started up a Kickstarter drive to get the longest-out-of-print volume at least a minimum print run, with a target of $60,000.  After barely 6 days of his 30 day kickstarter window, he has $220,000 pledged, enough to fund full print runs of three of his out-of-print volumes, as well as sundry exclusives, and it looks very likely that he will have the full series back in print in no time.  This is for already-collected material from a book that is freely available on the internet, and always has been.  This suggests to me that the issue isn't one of free availability of material cutting off revenue, it's failure to monetise the interest that exists in your product. 

Alternatively it shows a lack of interest in your product - if people aren't prepared to pay, maybe you're not giving them what they want, and nothing beyond radical change is going to fix that. 

No not everyone is going to be able to marshal a nerdly fanbase like Order of the Stick (and Rich usually only gives us a few pages a week at most of very minimalist art, so you could argue that this isn't supporting a typical full-time writer-artist), but you have to ask yourself, for the popular comics families why not? 

If (say) Spiderman was available in daily or weekly chunks, either free or for a teensy micropayment, and then offered as a handsomely printed GN every four months, why wouldn't its fanbase play along?   I don't buy the comic, but I quite fancy reading Spidey in tantalising weekly installments (much as I did Freakangels or Lily Mackenzie) - bearing in mind that I can already get hold of every issue of Spiderman ever produced, up to this week's, with about four mouse clicks worth of effort.   Ditto 2000AD.   Not that I would do that, but even if I did it wouldn't stop me having bookshelves groaning under the weight of Casefiles and collections, any more than having most of the issues in boxes in the attic has. 

I'm a fan.  I want to own this stuff legitimately, and reward and encourage its creators.  The fact that I don't have to buy it is neither here nor there - I never did have to buy it.  If people like your stuff enough, they will pay you to make it.  It's up to you to work out how best to get that done.

[Grant Goggans]

But remember that buying a whole season of a TV series, just ten years ago, was a heck of a lot more than $20.  Remember all those VHS tapes with two episodes per volume?  The cost of other entertainments has dropped, while the value has increased.  Virtually nothing happens in any given issue of an American superhero comic book, nothing that won't be retconned, revisited, rewritten or dropped in a year's time.

[Roger Godpleton]

What happens if you have a photographic memory, eh?

[TordelBack]

Well I wouldn't recommend going near the Cosplay thread for starters.