A post on our forums alerted us to this thread on TWC about a program called ComicReaper which is designed to take only the images of several webcomic websites and display them on the user's computer. These types of programs come and go but frankly, this is the first time I've heard of one aimed squarely at webcomics.

Just for the record, these programs (1) might be illegal and (2) are very uncool to the artists who give the comic away and rely on advertising to help pay for bandwidth costs.

Why are they illegal? Publication of a website means the website is copyrighted. Use of a selected part of that is arguably a "derivative work" which one cannot create without the permission of the copyright holder. So a program that "rips" the images out a website without the 'toonist's permission is arguably violating the copyright.

New York, NY/Boston, MA --- Komikwerks, LLC, owner of www.komikwerks.com, a leader in creator-owned online comics and webbased comics community-building, has entered into a partnership with ibooks, Inc, the first simultaneous publisher of books in printed form and on the Internet. ibooks printed titles are distributed by Simon and Schuster and ibooks ebooks titles are sold by a variety of partners, including Palm Digital Media.

Komikwerks' founders, Patrick Coyle and Shannon Denton, have executed an agreement with ibooks that gives ibooks an equity stake in Komikwerks, LLC and active involvement in its future development. ibooks president Byron Preiss, has been involved in the development of digital comics for many years, and established the first major website for comics online, virtualcomics.com in 1995.

Bill Duncan points out that despite the current freedom we have to create comics (and any other form of speech) comics have been singled out unfairly before. Stuff like this Congressional report is why we have a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and why Free Comic Book Day is important.

Read on for some of the "excerpts" from comics that got Congress' blood boiling:

Argh! Sorry, this is hardly a nice first post, but this has me quite riled. The more I think about it the more it pisses me off, so I figured I'd post, 'cos I haven't heard about this before. but yeah! One of the gals from Weirdism brought it up at the TWC boards, and I figured it'd be kinda appropriate to bring it up here too.

Comic Reaper is a downloadable program that accesses webcomics and as far as I can tell, downloads just the HTML, rips the comic image url, and displays it by itself without the webpage. You can use it to navigate backwards and forwards, and it comes with a default directory of webcomics for browsing that you can add to. It's fast (keenspot & keenspace servers especially respond a lot faster than they do in IE), and hella easy for the readers. But the more I think about it, the more I see it as theft.

I downloaded the thing to check it out before I judged it, and it just pissed me off even more. I'll paste the evaluation I made over at TWC:

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Advantages (for the readers);
with this, reading Keenspot/space comics is MUCH faster. Considering the speed of the server most of the time, this is kinda a good thing. So yeah, Speed.
Also, there's a lot of comics listed here I've never heard of. If you can get your comic into the default list, you'll be getting yourself a lot of extra exposure.
For anyone with a slow connection, this is a godsend, 'cos nothing irrelevant is loaded.

Disadvantages (for the readers);
There is ZERO atmosphere. The grey background is clinical, impersonal, and the comics just feel so STALE without the website to accompany it.
If anything happens, like the artist goes on hiatus, or does some kind of special project, or even needs financial or moral support, the readers aren't going to know about it.
It doesn't encourage diverse tastes. With no links pages or plugs, the only comics Reaper users will bother to read are the ones in the list, giving the reaper default people somthing of a monopoly on traffic. Sure, you could go to the comic page and check thier links page in IE, but seeing as this is aimed at people who are inherently lazy, I doubt it.

Advantages (for us!);
Saves on bandwidth. A little. 'cos the main page graphics aren't downloaded, it kinda streamlines the whole process. Kinda irrellevant for anyone on a free server or a server that can easily cope.

Disadvantages (for us!);
Lack of feedback. Readers aren't gonna be giving us feedback if they're whanging around between pages at the speed of light without a guestbook/forum/email button to click on. And communities? What communities?
Lack of cash. Anyone relying on Paypal to supplement thier income is FUCKED. 8-Bit Theatre & Sluggy, two comics that are essentially day jobs for the artists, would be hit particularly hard by this. it's thier INCOME, and pays for the server.
Merchandise. We can't sell merchandise when we can't advertise it. In the case of Megatokyo, where the merch essentially pays for all of the server, they'd be fucked.
Lack of control. Some of us put a lot of effort into making the site complement the artwork (Weirdism, Scarygoround, etc), and suddenly this is redundant, and our work is placed into an environment we have NO control over.
Lack of communication; no-one's gonna read out news posts. While many comics don't HAVE news posts, there are a lot that do, and like to keep their readers informed of developments related to health, financial status, and other stuff readers might be interested in. Other and sites comics are plugged, and the artist gets to communicate directly with the readers. But not with Reaper.
No links! Like I said before, it could lead to a monopoly situation where the only comics worth reading are in the default comics list, which sucks for anyone new, or for comics that just aren't in the list. Therefore, the webcomic readers could shift from reglular readers as they are now, to being lazy and just reading what they are spoon-fed.
EXTRAS! What's the point in character profiles, galleries, little games, wallpapers, if noone knows they're there?

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Am I right in being quite scared by this? What if this becomes THE way to browse webcomics? If 90% of my hits were because of Comic Reaper, I'm not sure I'd bother putting anything up at all. I might as well print them off, make them into paper aeroplanes and throw them from the roof of the nearest tall building, 'cos I'll get more from it that way. I'd get long range paper planes. I could be worrying about nothing, and getting too worked up about this, but this kinda makes me want to go over to the programmer's house and force-feed him glue.

But yeah, thought I'd mention it. :\

I've been looking in a lackadaisical way into products for my comics. It's not a high priority for me yet but I want to sell products much more related to the comic than the standard T-shirts, mousepads, and coffee cups.

Being a Smith by trade I can reproduce the various items of Jewelry my characters wear. That'll probably be my first offering, copies of their bangles and rings. But that's going to be an extremely high-end product for most webcomic readers, even made of silver Zifeera's Bangle is a massive design that will probably cost a couple hundred dollars. A gold version would be close to a thousand.

And since I do write primarily action comics I had the notion of finding a company to produce action figures for them, posable minis with a kung-fu grip perhaps. Does anybody know of a company which would make such a thing?