P.S. Colleen, a woman posted a response on The Beat saying that LiveJournal closing down Scans Daily reflected sexism and gender bias, since women have a different perspective on IP issues. I dared her to make her argument on your blog, but I don’t think she will!

(the same people, it should be noted, who balk at paying a few bucks for an original sketch at a convention from an artist, and then bitch about how greedy the artist is and how they should be flattered that someone wants their art! I’ve seen that more than once…)

Scribbler, the one other thing people seem to forget about the cost of art making: it costs money to live.

The more time we spend making art, the less time we have to spend making money to live. And the money we get to live on must also pay for the art. I don’t know what some people expect artists to use for food and shelter while the art making goes on.

Clearly, they think it is all just a glorified hobby.

Bill: When you wrote that people were sending abusive mail to Peter’s wife, my head spun around and I spat pea soup.

Antipathy may be a strong word but I don’t think it’s too strong, at least not based on some of the comments I’ve seen in PAD’s blog. I believe some of these people who envy artists to the point of resentment, and want to level the playing field by demanding the “right” to play with someone else’s creations however they choose.

I can’t say how prevalent this point of view may be. Those who feel this way may look greater in number than they are because they’re so vocal. I want to believe they are a small but noisy minority. I hope I’m right about that, but I dunno.

In fairness, this sort of thing pisses me off and that emotion is probably causing me to paint in overly broad strokes. There are obviously some S-D users who who don’t give a crap about intellectual property rights, but I’m sure there are others who really don’t understand the damage that is caused by illegally reproducing works. I’m sure there are still others who are upset because they really were limiting their activities to what would fall under fair use, and have seen their community closed down.

I’m sure S-D will come back in one form or another. I hope that when it does, the more reasonable members will realize they have a vested interest in more actively policing the community. In so doing, they can enjoy the benefits of sharing their love of this medium we call comics without infringing on anyone’s copyright. I’m sure there is a benefit to creators and publishers when fans gather online and spread the word about their favorite comics. But I think that benefit can be outweighed when people engage in flagrant copyright violations.

What’s sad about this whole thing is that not only is Peter David being pilloried and even threatened online for shutting down S-D when in fact he did no such thing (Photobucket and/or LiveJournal did that before Marvel could act on what Peter David told them), “fans” are now sending abusive e-mails to Peter David’s wife. Yet Peter has stated repeatedly that he feels S-D’s demise was unfortunate. He laments the fact that he never got to see a post that humorously ascribed homoerotic subtext to a page or two of an issue of “Young Justice” that he wrote.

PAD has also said that if someone had approached him about posting more pages of “Fallen Angel” than is allowed under fair use, he’d have worked with them to make that happen because he wants to promote the book. But he owns the copyright and that’s his decision to make. When he saw half of an issue of X-Factor posted online he felt obligated to report that to Marvel and let them decided what to do since they own the copyright. I think he was right to do so.

Oh, wait…. you mean canvases, canvas-boards, paper, paint, pencils, pens, ink…. all that COSTS something?

Nevermind the computer equipment and the PRO version of Photoshop (not cheap by any means).

You mean, that stuff isn’t FREE? Wow.

/sarcasm.

That’s biting me because I just purchased a set of Faber-Castell color pens, because I wanted something between crayons & color pencils and acrylic paints to play with. With a storage box – to the tune of $122.