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Granted, this is more in line with his writing, but it's another perspective.
I'd love it to go away, but it's not a genie that's ever going to go back into the bottle. Let's see, what do I think? I was delighted recently when I heard that the guy who'd been selling CDs with PDF files of the complete runs of Sandman, Preacher and so on on eBay is currently having close encounters with comics companies' lawyers. The stories weren't his to sell, after all.
Frankly, I think that the important thing is the wishes of the copyright holder in these things. Does it impact my sales when people post my stuff on the web? I've no idea. Probably not. I'm perfectly happy to put stuff up But I think that, for example, posting American Gods or Neverwhere on your website is, apart from anything, astonishingly bad manners.
As for Sandman and the other comics being out there on the web, well, mostly I'm not the copyright holder. I tend to think of it as being slightly more of a grey area -- I'm more sympathetic to people in countries where the work isn't available otherwise, for example. And I'm very aware that what's on screen is not the comic, not in the same way that an MP3 really is the song. (Anyone who's going to read all 2000 pages of Sandman on a monitor has my sympathy.) But I tend to lose all sympathy at the point where the "but it would cost money to buy the real thing" argument gets invoked.
On this note, if I post anything that any of the copyright holders take offense at (or just don't want me to do, please let me know).
Posted by Casper at May 28, 2004 03:58 PM