Illegal Comic Downloading: A Solution

The comic downloading debate reared it's head again over the Thanksgiving holidays. There's been a ton of talk about comic downloading, but very little in the way of providing a solution to the competing impasse between publishers and readers. I think I've come up with a unique solution to it that wouldn't please everybody 100% but does work on addressing the main problems with what the publishers want vs. what the readers want. First I'll address these wants. The publisher usually wants to control the copyright of the comic, ie nobody can copy/share/read it without them getting some money for it. Publishers invest a significant sum of money into creating those comics as creators, editors, and production staff don't work for free. Plus they pay for all the other office and other overhead expenses. Needing to generate some money from their digital comics is a reasonable and necessary request. Maintaining this usually means allowing access to the comic without downloading them (Marvel's subscription method) or creating a DRM software so that nobody can read the comic without paying for it. Sometimes DRM puts caps on the amount of times you can use something to counter act any sharing. Both of these goes against the wishes of readers. They want to own what they pay for (ie, download the comic) and be able to read it how every many times they want without having to fork over money repeatedly. And of course, they want to share the comics they read. Publishers obviously don't agree with this but I think it's time to just admit that this is going to happen regardless and do something to benefit from it instead of trying to stop it. My solution is this: Create freeware comic reading software, similar to CDisplay but with some advertising abilities within it. So if a publisher wants to charge for it's downloads they can, but if/when those downloads get shared they'll make money from that sharing via the advertising on the comic reading software. This way the sharing benefits the publisher, the more the comics are shared, the more people will use the application, the more advertising revenue they get from it. The advertising could be links to buy the GNs through an online source. Clicking on the ads should open up a browser not within the software itself. Or maybe the ads could be sponsorships where you don't need to click on anything. Whatever the case they shouldn't be annoying or all this goes out the window. The ad could be within the comic file itself, appearing in one frame while the comic loads and reads in another part of the screen. Or within the comic itself. Whatever the case some readers will be reading the books while offline so the advertising shouldn't always need a net connection to work. This would be simple for one publisher to do (i.e. DC), but if you wanted to do this across multiple publishers, then things get a little more complicated because it involves splitting up the ad money if they don't go for embedded advertising. Thankfully computers are good for handling complicated things so here's my solution. The software to turn the images into a single file for reading on the application (like a .cbr or .cbz, but unique to the application) would be made available to the publishers. Developers will probably charge them for it, or take a cut from the advertising. Each publisher would have their unique 'key' that would identify their comics. When publishers compile/create their digital comics that key would be embedded into them. Later when the reader has the comic (by whatever means) the comic reading software would recognize that publishers key and any ad revenue generated while that key is in use would go to that publisher. Although a much simpler way to do this would be advertising with the comics and the link itself would include a publisher 'key.' This would be exactly like what Amazon does for their to their products. In fact some free comics (first issues, the typical promotional stuff) with these links in them would be a good way to kick start the new comic reading application. And yes I know, this is DRM software and not as unintrusive as CDisplay and many readers probably wouldn't want it, but I think it's time to admit that publishers need to make a little something from their comics. I believe as long as some books are floating around out there in the 'pirate' networks using the publishers format, they'll download the free reader to read the books. Then the publishers will make some money from their eyeballs at the least, which I think is the best they can hope for. The readers will have a method of downloading what they buy and sharing it, which is what they want. The pirates who pay for nothing will be able to read the comics, but with ad revenue generating software. I'm sure some of them will never touch it, unless perhaps the comics for that format have some extra material within them (pins ups, sketches, unused covers, etc.. stuff that can eventually be put into a TPB) that's not in the scanned comic. You'll never get 100% conversion as long as an established competing method is out there and that boat has long sailed off. Again, this is a compromise and in most compromises nobody walks away 100% happy. With this method the big issues of both publishers and readers get addressed in some method. Publishers make a bit of money from the comic sharing and readers still get to share free comics.

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