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Post by jarddavis on Mar 11, 2009 16:21:52 GMT -8
PAD over-reacted. And really, should he not be glad that at least people are talking about the book and it's storylines and their twists? Especially with the way X-Factor has rapidly slid down the ladder of importance this last year and a half, after Messiah Complex? Actually Marvel over reacted. And it's going to cost them. The facts is, they had every legal right to do what they did. They also had every moral right to do what they did. The problem is, it was an incredibly DUMB thing to do. |
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Post by jarddavis on Mar 11, 2009 16:36:47 GMT -8
No, you obviously don't, because if you distribute your newspaper to everyone within a certain geographic area for free, rather than just distributing it to the people who would be willing to pay subscription fees for it, than you INCREASE the number of people who see the paper, AND its ads, which means that you can charge advertisers MORE MONEY to place ads in your paper, just as our papers have done. Also, whatever you might think of the effectiveness of online ads, the fact remains that advertisers still PAY MONEY for them, and even our small-town local newspapers' Web sites have advertisers, both regional and beyond, who pay us money to place their ads on our sites, because with every page hit, they can keep EXACT count of how many times people see their ads online. I'm not berating the online ads at all. It actually proves my point. What I am saying is that between Craig's list and dropping subscription, income to a newspaper has dropped. And yes they do rely on their advertising to survive, but if no one is buying the paper because they can get their news far easier by sneaking off to Yahoo.Com at work and getting it for free, than they will. Therefore, they are not looking at the ads in the paper, and the advertisers start going where they can to get their ads looked at. And they have. Ads be damned. In a small town, you can give away the paper for free. But in Denver, where you have two papers competeing for readership, something had to give, and unfortunately it was the Rocky. Come on, Jard; you should know better than this. I'm sorry, but your analogy is bullshit. Every post on scans_daily placed spoilers BEHIND A CUT, with a CLEARLY-MARKED SPOILER-TAG. That is IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER similar to shouting the ending to a movie to the people who are waiting in line to go see it, because in order to see the spoilers on scans_daily, you had to CHOOSE to click the LJ-cut and READ what the spoilers were. If you have such a weak willpower that you're going to blame SOMEONE ELSE for "spoiling" a story for you, when IT COULDN'T BE EASIER to AVOID those spoilers, then you DESERVE to be spoiled. In fact, let me go back to this ... I will reiterate here that no matter how many people you have choosing to view the spoiler the way it's meant, guess what, there will always be someone willing to spread it around, regardless. Case in point. I haven't touched X-Factor in a decade. And I knew the result of the story. I heard it was a big shock, typed in X-Factor spoilers into Google, and I knew what the big storyline was. You work in the news industry, Kirk. You KNOW this. Someone always talks. Someone always spreads it around. Gossip papers sell incredibly well because of this very fact. It's the internet. That's what people do. What you and I are disagreeing on here is whether Marvel was right or wrong to react this way. They have the right to do what they did. Sorry. Morally and legally. Simple truth. The reality is though, what we both agree on and should be discussing, was the simple fact that Marvel did something incredibly stupid for precisely the reasons you pointed out in the earlier post. |
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Post by K-Box on Mar 11, 2009 18:59:57 GMT -8
I'll grant you that income to newspapers has gone down, but even though it runs counter to my own interests to say what I'm about to say, there's nothing "immoral" about people turning to other sources of information, any more than it was "immoral" that people started listening to radio less with the ascendancy of television. It's simply change, and the fact of the matter is that it's partly the fault of the newspaper industry for not making smart, low-cost investments to get in on the ground floor of Internet advertising, before Craiglist took away at least half the dollars we used to get for classifieds, just to name one example.
I do feel bad for the folks at the bigger papers, not only because I can't think of many people I'd wish unemployment on in an economy like this, but also because they were doing what newspaper reporters have ALWAYS been told to do in their careers - make your bones on some small-town weekly local, then graduate up to a big-city daily regional. If I'd taken my parents' advice and applied for a job at the Everett Herald, after a couple of years in Marysville and Arlington, I'd be laid off now.
"I heard it was a big shock, typed in X-Factor spoilers into Google, and I knew what the big storyline was."
Here we come to problem number one; you still proactively sought out the actual information. However, I'll nonetheless concede this point, because Jesse certainly felt free to reveal the rest of the details here (even if it was only in response to a discussion of the spoilers in question). But that brings me to problem number two ...
"Someone always talks. Someone always spreads it around."
And this is why, even though we agree that Marvel is technically within their legal rights, we also agree that it was stupid of them to try and enforce this law, because IT'S A BAD LAW, for the exact same reason as Prohibition, because it seeks to criminalize EVERYDAY BEHAVIOR. You said it yourself; somebody ALWAYS talks, whether they're armed with scans of the comics or not, and now, thanks to scans_daily being shut down, there's a NEW LJ comm, called noscans_daily, which DOESN'T allow scans of the issues in question, but which catalogues issue-by-issue (and even page-by-page) spoilers WAY more exhaustively than scans_daily EVER did. But guess what? Without the copyrighted page scans, THERE ARE NO LEGAL GROUNDS TO SHUT THEM DOWN, even though they're doing worse spoiler damage than scans_daily EVER did. I mean, after all, unless you're reposting artwork, video clips or direct quotes of the text, you're merely REACTING to their work, rather than "stealing" it.
And that's why I can't agree that Marvel was in its MORAL rights to do what it did, because a) morals =/= laws, and b) past a certain point, STUPIDITY ITSELF IS INHERENTLY IMMORAL. Trying to enforce a law that CAN'T be enforced with any fair consistency, without breaking several OTHER laws in the process? Yeah, that qualifies.
What's funny is, Marvel already went down this road with the Internet in, oh, what was it ... early 2001? All these fans had their own self-started, independently-run fan sites online, and even Marvel WRITERS would use them as resources, since Marvel EDITORIAL was, by those writers' own admission, WORTHLESS for continuity assistance. And then, all of a sudden, Marvel started its Authorized Fan Site Program, where they sent nasty-grams to all the fans with sites, saying, "You're using our copyrighted materials, so either you join our program, and allow us direct control over your sites, or else we'll shut you down. Oh, and this also means you can't say anything bad about Marvel or its products, thanks."
Well, the upshot was that HUNDREDS of fans CHOSE TO SHUT DOWN THEIR OWN SITES, before Marvel even had a CHANCE to shut them down, rather than allowing Marvel any control over them. Legal on Marvel's part? Perhaps, although the fact that they used it to try and silence a number of their online critics is gangsterish at best. Moral OR intelligent? No on both counts. And guess what? The Marvel Authorized Fan Site Program just sort of quietly ... went away, and nobody's ever mentioned it again.
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Post by Anders on Mar 11, 2009 21:47:00 GMT -8
In a small town, you can give away the paper for free. But in Denver, where you have two papers competeing for readership, something had to give, and unfortunately it was the Rocky. Stockholm has two ad-financed papers (Metro and Stockholm City) despite the fact that there are at least four big "regular" newspapers available. (All of those have national distribution but at least two have a focus on Stockholm.) As to the actual subject of the thread, yes, Marvel had the legal right to demand LJ to close SD and personally I think they had the moral right as well. It was still a stupid move. However, they most certainly don't have the right, moral or otherwise, to not have their stories spoiled. People are still allowed to talk and write about things they read. It's not nice to spoil a story for someone who doesn't want it spoiled, but posting something on the Internet and shouting it to someone's face aren't even close to being the same thing. And that's all I have to say about that. |
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Post by jensaltmann on Mar 12, 2009 0:00:35 GMT -8
Anders speaks for me as well.
Marvel had the legal and the moral right to demand what they did.
Kirk, before you scream about moral rights, think of it this way: the comics story is Marvel's property. That automatically gives them the moral rights to do whatever they want with it. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Is it enforcable? No, not really. That doesn't mean they don't have the legal and moral right to want it enforced. Was shutting down scans_daily stupid? To the max. That doesn't change anything, though.
Okay, that was the regular member talking. The following is a message from your mod to everyone participating:
If you don't stop shouting, if you don't take your Prozac and calm down and discuss this rationally, I will close this thread.
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Post by K-Box on Mar 12, 2009 1:01:54 GMT -8
Actually, I thought we were being relatively well-behaved.  Especially since you, I, Anders and Jard have all stated our agreement on two out of the three points on contention here - ie. yes, we all agree that Marvel had the legal right to do what they did, but no, we don't think they were smart to do what they did. I'm willing to agree to disagree on the rest. |
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Post by jarddavis on Mar 12, 2009 16:21:32 GMT -8
All agreed on, I want to go back to something Kirk pointed out.
This was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
I can understand Peter David being angry. You come up with a new idea nobody's ever thought of before, you work it into a story, you pour your heart and soul into it, knowing it's y far more creative than anything Bendis promised was going o blow the head of the internet with... and someone comes along and spills the beans.Sort of a let down, you know. And as I mentioned before, we've seen the kind of reaction this can create. Denny Oneil and Ironman. Shooter spilled the beans on the identity and style of the silver armor. Oneil said screw it, he's had enough and went to DC.
Not the brightest move on Shooter's part.
In the old days, when we had to drive to our comic store up hill both ways in feet of snow, buzz was generated on a title by word of mouth. It still is, but now it's via the internet. And the word of mouth gets spread around and you get people like me, who don't care if the story is spoiled because it sounds interesting enough that I'm going to want to see it anyway, I might have actually shilled out the money for the comic, even though I stopped buying Marvel at OMD. But I'm also in the crowd of "Well Marvel's acting like I bunch of repressive dicks now. I don't want to buy there stuff even more, now. Good more money for DC."
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