Holy crap, I read a lot of Image comics. I've always been a continuity/cross-over wonk, but the individual freshness of these creator-owned titles has pulled the majority of my budget and eyeball time over to Image.
#comics #comicbooks #imagecomics
In Album Dave Does the Comics – 2014 Recommendations (Image)
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In a sane world it would be easy and legal to offer up a torrent with them all for the same reason we have libraries.
I'm not sure that I agree, +Brandon Sergent, if you're implying a free torrent of these comics. Someone, somewhere, has to pay the creators (and distributors).
Oh christ in a fucking bucket. Yet another dead mind.
http://torrentfreak.com/how-shall-the-artists-get-paid-isnt-a-question-its-an-insult-130818/
http://underlore.com/one-possible-solution/
Nice knowing you. Uncircled, muted, tired of morons.
+Brandon Sergent Huh.
Ooookay. Well, you probably won't read this, assuming I'm uncircled and muted (jeez, really?) but a couple of thoughts on the two links provided.
1. The premise seems to be ars gratia artis, art for art's sake. Artists who feel compelled to create will do so whether they get paid or not. Artists who are in it for the money are hacks who deserve to be derided.
Aside from the history of music and art showing a lot of creation being done explicitly because it was paid for by patrons and explicit commissions, there's something to be said for voluntary payment for media. Except, of course, that beyond government-sponsored art (which the article so casually dismiss as some Russian intellectual plinking out stuff that nobody is interested in), payment for media is voluntary. Nobody is being forced to pay Image comics to buy copies of Wayward. The only restriction is whether to pay before seeing the entire piece, and that decision remains voluntary.
It could well be that if all comics were offered for free, with Patreon links at the end, that it would be a more sane world and that all the good comics would be made anyway and all the bad ones not made. It's certainly arguable that the same dynamics would apply then as now — people only pay for what they like (and feel ethically obliged to pay for, and are foresighted enough to pay for so that perhaps the creators will do more of the same), and don't buy what they don't like. The question of free riders, vs. the parasitic mark-ups by distribution companies, could certainly be advanced in that fashion.
Of course, that's true today. Nothing is preventing Jim Zub from doing exactly that with Wayward, though he's chosen not to (and has done so in a thoughtful manner). The infrastructure is there. Some creators are taking precisely that model. It will be interesting to see how things look in a decade from now.
And, if so, I think that would be cool.
I reject the idea, by the way, that artists who are in the market in order to make money doing so, are hacks whose creative efforts should be disdained. Not all worthwhile creative actions come about from a pure desire to make something, from the Muse poking the creator with a pointed stick. Aside from all the art that we have today that comes precisely because artists were looking to pay for their food and shelter, getting paid enables artists to create more. Which gets us to your second link.
2. There is certainly a basic appeal in the idea of a basic living stipend. Certainly, looked at just from the artistic standpoint, it would enable creators to create without fear of starvation.
(Though the thesis here seems to contradict directly the "Wants. To. Pay. For." objections in the first article. If the idea is to allow artists to be creative by providing them, and everyone else, a basic living wage, that seems to fall directly into the disdained model of Vladimir Sklyarov being paid by the state for his unappealing guitar plinking.)
That discussion, though, seems quite a bit further afield than "art copying should be free"; once we get to the point of all people being given a living stipend by society collectively, then we can talk about whether that means all creative works, from art to manufactured goods, also become free to all people.
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Going back to your original thesis, that having all comics available as free torrents would be the equivalent of libraries, I have to disagree. First, libraries buy their books, and have restrictions on the books' availability (in the case of physical books, it's a restriction based on the physical presence of the book at only one place at any given time). Libraries are a compromise to make books available to people who might not otherwise be able to afford them, both for entertainment and for research purposes. That's a bit different, I believe, than simply making all books (or comic books) free, or paid for by post facto gratiuties.