Well that was quick. A few days ago we brought you news that Marvel had shut down the link sharing site Comics Invasion that was on the Blogspot blogging platform. The comic book company served Google (which owns Blogspot) with a cease and desist to take the website down.
Comics Invasion then moved to WordPress, and now that’s gone due to violation of the platform’s “terms of service.”
Where will it wind up next?
Bleeding Cool was all over the news that Marvel has asked Google to shut down the blog Comics Invasion that was run on their Blogspot platform. The blog which was up around two years provided links for illegal downloads of Marvel comics. After the take down, the blog was quickly up on WordPress with their entire archive.
But why is this shocking? Marvel and numerous other comic book companies have been cracking down on piracy over this past year. Working with the FBI, a coalition of comic book companies shut down HTMLcomics.com along with six other websites and another coalition took down manga.com.
In an industry increasingly moving towards digital distribution, they’re covering all their bases including shutting down illegal distribution networks that directly undermine their ability to sell comics online. Why pay, when you can get them for free?
The bigger news out of Marvel’s visit to Google would be if we see a future venture in a positive direction of distribution or archiving of historically significant comics, but then again, why give something away for free when you can charge.
Below is a copy of the DMCA notice.
The pirate website manga.com is doing an impressive thing and abiding by publishers wishes by removing all scanned material from it’s website. They’ve posted a notice stating:
this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July 2010).
The website had an estimated 4.2 million unique visitors per month and a mammoth 1.1 billion page views per month. Recently a multi-national coalition formed to combat the rampant illegal sharing of comic books online.
This crack down also comes when Manga sales have cooled.
Official Press Release
Media Release — Today a coalition of Japanese and U.S. publishers announced a coordinated effort to combat a rampant and growing problem of internet piracy plaguing the manga industry. “Scanlation,” as this form of piracy has come to be known, refers to the unauthorized digital scanning and translation of manga material that is subsequently posted to the internet without the consent of copyright holders or their licensees. According to the coalition, the problem has reached a point where “scanlation aggregator” sites now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators’ expense while simultaneously undermining foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales. Worse still, this pirated material is already making its way to smartphones and other wireless devices, like the iPhone and iPad, through apps that exist solely to link to and republish the content of scanlation sites.
Participants in the coalition include the 36 members of Japan’s Digital Comic Association, Square Enix, VIZ Media, TOKYOPOP, Vertical, Inc., the Tuttle-Mori Agency and Yen Press. Working together, the membership of the coalition will actively seek legal remedies to this intellectual property theft against those sites that fail to voluntarily cease their illegal appropriation of this material.
“It is unfortunate that this action has become necessary,” said a spokesperson for the group. “However, to protect the intellectual property rights of our creators and the overall health of our industry, we are left with no other alternative but to take aggressive action. It is our sincere hope that offending sites will take it upon themselves to immediately cease their activities. Where this is not the case, however, we will seek injunctive relief and statutory damages. We will also report offending sites to federal authorities, including the anti-piracy units of the Justice Department, local law enforcement agencies and FBI.”
The coalition stated that it has currently identified thirty sites targeted for action.
Participant members of the Digital Comic Association include: Akane Shinsha, Akita Shoten, ASCII Media Works, East Press, Ichijinsha, Enterbrain, Okura Shuppan, Ohzora Shuppan, Gakken, Kadokawa Shoten, Gentosha Comics, Kodansha, Jitsugyo No Nihonsha, Shueisha, Junet, Shogakukan, Shogakukan Shueisha Production, Shodensha, Shonen Gahosha, Shinshokan, Shinchosa, Take Shobo, Tatsumi Shuppan, Tokuma Shoten, Nihon Bungeisha, Hakusensha, Fujimi Shobo, Fusosha, Futabasha, France Shoin, Bunkasha, Houbunsha, Magazine House, Media Factory, Leed sha, Libre Shuppan.
Earlier in the month we brought you news about the FBI going after HTMLcomics.com. Well now you can add a few more to the list. ComicBooksFree.com and PlayboyMonthly.com are some of the other sites run by Gregory Steven Hart doing business as Database Engineers Inc. located in Tampa, Florida.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to order Hart to forfeit his domains due to criminal copyright infringement.
In 2009 the FBI began investigating HTMLcomics.com which received 1.6 million visits per day and had 6,630,021 pages of comic books offered. Throughout the latter half of 2009 numerous publishers contacted Hart and demanded he cease and desist his actions and take down the copyrighted material. Hart moved on and founded HTMLmagazines.com which hosted boasted magazines such as Maxim and Playboy.
In April 2010 federal agents searched Hart’s home seizing records including a cease and desist letter, hard drives, computers and DVDs with copyright-protected images.
HTMLcomics.com is in some legal hot water. The FBI served a warrant on the site and shut down it’s servers. Alleging copyright infringement, the site was shut down and servers confiscated. The law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP issued a press release about it and gives some details about the investigation.
The shut down came after a coordinated investigation by the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice, a consortium of comic publishers and their legal counsel, a team of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP attorneys specializing in the areas of intellectual property, publishing and comics, as well as local counsel in Miami.
HTMLcomics.com was to believed to be the largest pirate site for comic books, with 1.6 million visits per day and 6,630,021 pages of comic books offered.
The full press release is below.
The New York Times is reporting Robert Friedman a columnist for Foxnews.com was fired after posting a mini-review of the leaked X-Men Origins: Wolverine. News Corporation contacted it’s subsidy Fox News which promptly terminated Friedman.
The review was promptly taken down and Fox News has been silent claiming it’s an internal matter. I wonder if he panned it like I did.
You may have heard the news here, here, and so many other places, that an early rough cut copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has leaked onto the internet. Was this leak on purpose by the studio, a disgruntled employee, or my theory, done so at the behest of the director?
There had been reports of rifts of direction on set with actors, the director, writer, and studio arguing about the characters, story, and tone of the movie. Reportedly, Fox wanted a lighter tone reminiscent of the first X-Men movie to make it more family friendly, with the director wanting to stick to the darker tone set by its far superior sequel. My theory is, in hoping for a public rejection and bad word of mouth, the director or someone supporting him, would get the studio to see the light and give us the movie we want to see.
Well, I viewed the film, and have to say the studio won that battle. The movie while at times shows beef, and dark tones, comes off fitting the original X-Men film. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some great action, but no Dark Knight is this.
Overall I was left with a blah impression. If the third X-Men film was ranked a C I’d give X-Men Origins: Wolverine a C+. The story seemed jumpy (which the studio claims will be fixed in the final version), but overall three things stand out that no amount of reshoots will fix.
And one thing that I won’t get into due to spoilers, there’s a strained attempt to tie this film into the first three X-Men movies that ends up in just plain silliness. Kind of cool in a geeky sense to play, “spot the character”, but we’ve already been there and done that. This was just stretching it a bit too far in an attempt to connect the dots.
Now, all that being said, I’ll be there opening weekend (surgery date pending). I hope Fox is serious in saying this was a very rough cut (the cgi, wires, and music from Backdraft indicate that, Hans Zimmer rules!) and that numerous reshoots will address the issues. But the fact remains this was a cut of the film, and a bad one at that, showing us a version of the film that possibly was.
The movie made news earlier in the year when talks of a fanboy boycott of the movie began when Fox sued Warner Bros. about the release of Watchmen. That suit was later settled.
And with this, I just turned into the “Comic Book Guy”. “Oh, I’ve wasted my life…”
