Keskustelujen arkisto

in many ways i do agree with Harry's comments regarding copyrights. it
*does* keep people from buying the original product in many cases, but
(do i see shades of Napster here?) something that Harry, and many others
might not realize, is that comics are a dying field in the USA. Kids
simply don't read them anymore. At my local comic shop kids come in,
stand at the counter to buy their Pokemon cards and run out, without
noticing the big white boxes throughout the store. They simply don't
realize what they're missing.

Just like how many music groups don't mind their stuff being on Napster
because it turns people onto music that they may not hear if they had to
pay for it, I view downloading of Barks and Rosa stories the same way.
If 1 person, who has never read Barks or Rosa before gets the chance to
do so because of a story on the internet, it was for a good cause.

Yes it is a copyright violation but there is no way that Disney could
ever keep track of all of the downloaded stories on the web. We need to
keep in mind that we are *not* stealing from Barks or Rosa, or even
Gladstone for that matter, (because backissues sold in comic shops have
already been bought by the comic shop). So who are we stealing from?
certainly not Disney. they have obviously no plans to do anything with
these stories in this country. not the comic shops. if anything i'd
think they'd be grateful that now there might be some kids who would buy
up those stacks of Uncle Scrooge comics that have been filling up space
for 10 years. I have the original stories and would much rather read them
on paper than on my monitor screen, but if I didn't have them, I would
read them and then run out and buy them.

So what's my point? Doing this hurts no one, and has the potential to
help millions. While I question whether this should be encouraged, I
also question whether we should be discouraging this...........

Rodney Bowcock

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APOSTOLIS, HARRY:

> > Do you
> > want for all us to shut down our pages because of a stupid
> > law which saying that only the company have the copyrights?
>
> And the copyright law is not stupid. It's common sense to protect the
> creativity of individuals.

I'll have to agree with Harry here. How would you feel, Apostolis,
if you spent a great deal of effort in writing a story, then selling
0 copies of it, just because an enthusiastic young man like yourself
had posted it to the web, and people didn't need to go out and buy the
actual book to read your story? Or how would you feel if Egmont's sales
dropped significantly, because people would read new stories on the web,
scanned from a copy hot off the press, and they decided that they couldn't
afford to pay people like Don to produce new stories?

Disney may be stretching the interpretation of Copyright laws in their
favor, but fighting this cannot be done by trying to break exactly those
things that these laws intend to protect; you are only giving Disney
extra ammunition to enforce their views.

Kriton (e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
(WWW: http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
-----
"Nobody would have the gumption to tell the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise
he couldn't have his doctor, his dentist, his favorite carpenter, or his dog
groomer at his side if he wanted to, security clearance or not."
-----

Kriton wrote:

>I'll have to agree with Harry here. How would you feel, Apostolis,
>if you spent a great deal of effort in writing a story, then selling
>0 copies of it, just because an enthusiastic young man like yourself
>had posted it to the web, and people didn't need to go out and buy the
>actual book to read your story?

I agree with you. But the stories that I'm scanning (and not only mine
scans) is already published in Europe (or the most of them). So, I think
that any European disney fan have already a copy of these stories. In U.S.A.
there are not disney comics. Where the fans will find their favourite story?
Well, they can order issues from Europe, or they can read the stories from
the web. Finally, a good fan is not the fan who is collecting scanning
stories. I have a lot of Don Rosa's stories from KOMIX and I'll keep buying
it even if Komix publish a story that I already have in scans. The sense of
a story in the paper, the coloring, the quality is much better than the
scanned stories. Apart from quality, all (or the most) the scanned stories
are in English. Someone who can't read english in a right way, he must wait
until his country's disney magazine will publish it. So, not all the scanned
stories are familiar with their readers. All of us want the original copies
from the disney magazines (Komix, Picsou, Zio Paperone, Anders And, Anku
Ankka and many-many other good magazines) we like, not only the scans.
With the scanned stories we're giving a chance to all the Don Rosa's fans to
read some stories that are unpublished in the U.S.A. And think about: we
don't want money for doing that. We only doing that because we want it to
do. Internet is a free world, arts must be free in both real and Internet
worlds. And comics IS an art.
Best Wishes

Apostolis Trikourakis, Athens
E-mail: komix43 at hotmail.com
Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/komixgreekpage
DCML member

APOSTOLIS:

> Apart from quality, all (or the most) the scanned stories
> are in English. Someone who can't read english in a right way, he must wait
> until his country's disney magazine will publish it.

This argument would have been more valid if you were talking about scanned
pages of KOMIX, which few people, apart from Greeks, would be able to
read them. The majority of people on the Internet (and certainly this
list) can read English, which is the de facto language on the Internet.

Kriton (e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
(WWW: http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
-----
"Nobody would have the gumption to tell the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise
he couldn't have his doctor, his dentist, his favorite carpenter, or his dog
groomer at his side if he wanted to, security clearance or not."
-----

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hans Kiesl" <hans.kiesl at sowi.uni-bamberg.de>
To: <dcml at stp.ling.uu.se>
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 1:58 PM
Subject: Swedish Disney writers

> In an old issue of a German fanzine (Nov. 1977) I found the
> translation of an article from "Aftonbladet" which deals with Disney
> comics from Sweden.

Aftonbladet published Donald Duck dailies 38/7/4 to 96/31/12, if anyone's
interested.

There is one additional factor you have all failed to consider in your very
interesting debate on copyright.

In the United States, and I'm sure in most countries, there is the "Fair Use
Doctrine." Material which is OUT OF PRINT may be duplicated and used for
study. Therefore, a person, say a professor at a university, legally may
xerox an article from a journal and use it for research, or send it to
someone somewhere else (somewhere in nowhere?) who needs it but doesn't have
access to the original.

This means that it is okay to upload a story, AFTER IT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN
STORES. If you wait one month, until the next issue is out, it is legal. But
you CAN NOT do this if someone could still buy it. Remember this is for
study purposes -- you can't be making any money on this. Where Disney could
sue you is if they say they are re-printing this -- this is a little tricky.

Another part of the law says that you can quote short excerpts from
something as part of a scholarly study. So if someone wants to upload, for
instance, some of the censored art which Barks (and others) later changed
when it was reprinted, it is absolutely legal to upload the original panels
and then the changed ones. So to be safer, you might not want to upload a
whole story all at the same time.

However, if something is still available for purchase and you upload it, you
are violating the law (and hurting the publisher, who may stop publishing
the stories, thus hurting all of us). In the United States, everything is
out of print (this is why there is not a next generation of readers of duck
comics). So I don't think anyone is violating U.S. copyright law doing this,
especially issues from European countries which we can't buy in the U.S., as
long as they wait until the next issue is in the stores. But whether you are
violating your own countries' laws, you will have to check.

Does anyone know when "Somewhere in Nowhere" will be published? Thanks.

I will be traveling to Scotland on the 19th of October, and staying near
Edinburgh. Does any member know of nearby shops selling Disney material.
Thanks in advance!
Barry.