(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) – In what could dash one man’s dream of being comic book fans’ vigilante hero, six websites providing links to free comic books and other copyrighted material are the subject of a federal lawsuit, which contends they violated federal copyright laws by letting visitors view the content for free without permission from the publishers or authors.
According to an Associated Press report, government lawyers filed the lawsuit in Tampa federal court against Tampa, Florida, resident Gregory Steven Hart, who ran websites including ComicBooksFree.com, HTMLcomics.com, and PlayboyMonthly.com. Stemming from an FBI that began in 2009, the lawsuit said that HTMLcomics.com provided a large number of copyrighted comic books without the permission of the copyrights owners — more than 100,000 issues as of June 2009.
According to comic book message board comments, there is clearly much confusion among end-users about what is legal or not. Prior to the site being shuttered, a thread on The Comic Board showed that some users were convinced that HTMLcomics.com was a legitimate and legal place to read comics. “[A]ccording to a link on the site, it’s legal because it’s a library, not a distributor,” reads one comment. “You can’t download the comics and there are no advertisements. This is just like borrowing graphic novels from a physical library.” Some users were even convinced that HTMLcomics.com had an agreement with the comic book publishers.
In reality, the publishers sent Hart cease and desist notices regarding the copyrighted material on his site, which he refused to honor, responding that he would continue to operate the site without charging users, so long as the publishers refused to agree to a revenue-sharing arrangement.
It must be noted that Marvel Comics, which had many of its well-known titles such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Wolverine, and the Hulk provided free of charge via HTMLcomics.com, in fact, has its own digital comic book service. This shows that the comic book industry, along with nearly all other creative fields, are finding ways to adapt to today’s digital ecosystem, which serve to discourage piracy.
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