I really don’t know that much about Scans Daily. Apparently, it was an online community where people posted reviews, comments, and scans of comic books. I have seen it maybe two or three times (Or five, dunno.)

I’m told it was against the rules to post entire stories, but the couple of times I visited was because someone had posted entire stories of mine and a concerned fan wrote me to inform me of the copyright violation. I chose not to do anything about it because I didn’t want to draw attention to it. As I recall, you could find many of my short stories published in their entirety on that website.

I saw reviews of my works posted there with a few pages scanned to accompany the comments. Fair Use, in my humble opinion. And in at least one case, the poster was conscientious enough to park a link back to my own site. Cool. Others simply do not grant creators even that small courtesy.

I get the impression most of the fans at Scans Daily really didn’t want to do any creators any harm, they just wanted to have a good time. But as always, some people were abusive and didn’t follow the rules or spirit of the rules within the community.

In any case, the community was shut down by Live Journal this weekend and I got a couple of letters from folks asking what I knew about it.

Absolutely nothing.

I haven’t even looked at Scans Daily in I don’t know how long, and didn’t even know about the shut down until folks wrote me about it. And since we haven’t had power or satellite access much of the weekend, I’m a little slow on the news.

Anyway, the most interesting discussion of the matter is over here at Peter David’s website. Some fans have gotten the impression Peter David is personally responsible for shutting down the site, and some have sent threats while others have promised to boycott his work.

Interesting reading for all the wrong reasons.

The comments thread is about as diverse a discussion of the attitudes for and against copyright protections – and the attitudes of the general public toward creators – as I’ve ever seen. (EDIT) I’ve had a chance to do a more thorough read of the comments thread and some of it is downright scary. “It’s just the internet! That’s the way people are!” is not a suitable reaction to threats.

c