Legality... Morality: A Short Rant Piece

[evilhippo]

Over the past week, something rather disturbing has come up in a community I love dearly. I'm not really a part of this community, because I'm too shy and such, but whatever. Right now though, I'm rather upset. Someone (someone evil) has created a web-browser sort of thing for viewing webcomics that just pulls the image off of the site. And they're charging for it. Now, I would consider most of these cartoonists to be good friends of mine, even though I don't know them. Because my mind works that way. And the idea that someone is charging money to steal hits from their websites and lifting their artwork for the promotion of this service is just... disgusting. The creators say that it makes life easier for those that have dial-up modems, and they created it originally for themselves to make life easier. But now they feel like, in spreading it, they should be compensated. Compensated for allowing other people to see - for a price - what they could see for free. That's quite the half-baked business plan there. I mean, it might have worked out wonderfully if they'd actually included the cartoonists in the planning. But no, apparently their minds didn't work that way, and it took a mention in a major newspaper for most of the cartoonists to even find out about it. I really can't believe this. OK, for example, Jeffrey Rowland didn't even know about it, and it's his freakin' art that's used on the main page! There is simply no justification for that. Perhaps the developers didn't know what they were doing would affect the whole community like it has, but they're doing nothing to make up for it, either. Basically, they've made an enemy of quite a few people rather immediately, and then made it worse. I am super-proud of how everone's been behaving, though. The people in and around webcomics are just awesome. If you ticked off any other group of people on the internet like this, there would immediately be a flame war and nothing would be accomplished. Instead of this though, you've got tons and tons of fans and artists talking to these people, while they basically stand there going "Duhhh." It's frustrating and infuriating. The smaller comics that these people are trying to endorce or whatever with their software will probably suffer the most, too, since they rely on hits to keep their banner ads up and to keep making money. Not to mention the loss people could potentially have on merchandise sales. Great goodness, was there not thought about the community put into this? If this spreads, the whole thing could go ka-put. And that would be a terrible shame, because right now webcomics are about the only thing the internet's got going for it. Keeping in touch with friends, webcomics, and communities of people. That's it. The internet's barely good for research anymore, and everything else is porn. I really would've jumped in on the discussion over on the forums for Comicstastic, but what I have to say has already been said millions of times. So I figured I'd post it here so random passers-by would hear about what's going on. And here is my plea... I know my friends don't really read webcomics. But for this week, do it. Go read Wigu, go read Scary-Go-Round, go read Goats (go read Goats especially, because the story right now is great). Go read whatever. Hit up Keenspot or Keenspace if you want. I love these people, and I've been reading their stuff for years, and though I know this little thing won't kill it, it'll be a huge thorn in the side of webcomics everywhere if it takes off. If I had the money, I'd go buy all sorts of stuff from them to show my support. I hope this whole thing gets sorted out, too. Darn you, Jan.