Comic Book Piracy

Let's have a thread discussing piracy and ethics. Is it OK to pirate a comic book? Is pirating a Big 2 comic morally superior to pirating indies?

Additionally, does it negatively affect the industry, especially the direct market?

You need to define "OK" and not hide behind bullshit language.

Is it OK to steal? Does the answer depend on the circumstances and the property being stolen?

It really REALLY depends on your point of view. If you thought it's really not OK then you wouldn't be doing it.

Sorry, in this contest I meant "morally justifiable". Do you consider comic piracy theft?

It's the Sup Forums argument all over again
I'm not physically stealing a toy or something physical from anyone, but my action is depriving them from profit that they otherwise are legally entitled to.
So what's your definition of theft OP?

>Is pirating a Big 2 comic morally superior to pirating indies
>Is pirating one thing morally superior to another
That's stupid. Does my jerking off to official big titty JAV make me morally superior to you jerking off to bedroom amateur hour porn? Why is it more okay to commit "theft" from a big company than from a small company?

It's wrong but murder is ok.

Marvel doesn't have anything worth pirating, and DC deserves the money for your favorite characters.

Neil Gaiman says it's okay

>Does my jerking off to official big titty JAV make me morally superior to you jerking off to bedroom amateur hour porn?

Yes. There is no question about that.

>Is it OK to pirate a comic book?
Would you want people pirating things YOU created in hope of making a living? Could you afford to continue creating without a source of income?
>Is pirating a Big 2 comic morally superior to pirating indies?
You're a dick either way but a bigger dick if you're ripping off the little guy.

The only grey area is out of print books or ones you already own physically.

I do not consider piracy in the digital age as theft in the manner that theft has been defined pre-internet. Anything we take is still there, physically.

Morally justifiable? Maybe. We are stealing. I think we'd like to justify it as stealing from big corporations but we are also stealing from creators. Creators that we rely on whom have to make a living somehow.

We are doing something wrong in the eyes of the law but I think the law itself is wrong. How stilted would our conversations be, across the entire internet, if we couldn't post images, gifs, storytimes, movie clips, sports replays...I mean even memes could be copyright infringement.

tl:dr Copyright has gone too far and this pushback in the internet age is natural.

People who pirate wouldn't have bought the comics in the first place; either they'd never have fucking heard of them in the first place, or they're shiftless poorfags.

>2017
Are people still thinking about this?

>DC deserves the money
Kek, corporate cocksuckers are shameless

I think the only debatable aspect is things that are out of print and not available digitally. You'd think that downloading that wouldn't matter, but in comics unlike almost any other industry you have normal retailers who have contacts with the companies to help determine what should be reprinted. If I go to a LCS and say I want a specific collection available they can tell the company and eventually enough requests across enough stores might make it happen, but if I tell an hourly Gamestop employee I want a remake of a game no one with decision making power will ever find out.

I'm not really trying to judge anyone though. Do what you must.

And to clarify, I mostly mean that there's reason to buy old back issues because demand there can matter to the publisher in comics unlike with most things. The used good sales actually have an effect on future decisions.

I live in Brazil and there's a delay before shit arrived here and I wanna join the discussions ASAP, it also helps that reading comics in English is good to practise reading mostly when I was young, of course, shitposting is the real teacher).

But now we have the option to buy online to e-read and frankly... Big 2 doesn't deserve anything, physical copy would be the real deal so sometimes I buy a collection or a hardcover stuff they sell here

Same can be said about "piracy". It's not a legal term. It's not a ethical concept. It's slang. Mostly it is used by the speaker to condemn a person or activity without giving a line of reasoning.

Why should I give money to Marvel Comics for replacing my favorite characters with characters that I don't care about? Why should I give money to DC Comics for hiring Bendis and having him rape Superman and his entire lore?

>DC deserves the money for your favorite characters.
Thanks for supporting my book. Much appreciated.

Oy vey, Piracy should be classified as genocide. It's the systematic removal of my...I mean artists. Somebody stop this shoah.

'Pirating' is perfectly OK, both morally and legally. I don't pay data storage tax for nothing.

> Is it OK to pirate a comic book?
Is picking from the thrash theft?

I'm not going to buy floppies. That, for me, is a given. Too expensive for what they are, and I'm not really interested in potential collectors value.

But neither am I going to buy trades sight unseen. £10-20 at my LCS is a fair amount to lay out on something I might not even like, though if I see something I do then I'll support them and pick it up.

I've spent £600+ on what's on my bookshelf now, I've got probably another £1000 worth sat on a wishlist until I can afford to pick them up. Would I have bought most of those without pirating them first?

Nope.

No but I do it anyways and i'm not going to stop

Fuck Off, if it wasn't for piracy I had to go to the Comic Store to read them for free there.

>paying for comics

You expect me to pay for King's Batman?

bump

They expect you to buy things you enjoy.

I stopped pirating after Manhunter got cancelled for low sales and I found out how razor thin the sales are on most comics.
I've bought some awful comics as a result but at least tried to get some I liked staying on the shelves.

Piracy is ok if it's in a storytime of pain.

You pay for the good stuff qnd pirate the bad.

>Why is it more okay to commit "theft" from a big company than from a small company?
Think about it for just a second and you'll find the answer yourself.

>DC deserves the money for your favorite characters
So, they deserve money for something someone else created?

>Would you want people pirating things YOU created in hope of making a living? Could you afford to continue creating without a source of income?
This comes from the starting point of believing that 1 download = 1 less sold copy. This is absolutely untrue. It's more than likely that without piracy, you still wouldn't be able to make a living out of a comic if you're not doing it right now.
The downfall of comics sales has nothing to do with piracy (or at least very little to do with it) and much more with the advance of other forms of entertainment and the change of customs when it comes to consumption of such entertainment.
This is pretty obvious in the case of music, for instance. People do not consume less music, they just don't buy records/cds because nobody sits down to listen to music anymore.

Then why don't you just pay for good comics and pirate the shitty ones?

Were it not for piracy I wouldn't buy as much comics as I do. I spend like a hundred bucks each month on physical trades and shit I buy on sale from Comixology.