InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Take Justin with you."

schmevil (schmevil) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-05-12 17:01:00

Entry tags:

admin: faq, admin: mod post

The 1/3 Rule
The Scans Daily modlings have lately been discussing our 1/3 rule. As it stands, the rule is that no more than 1/3 of a story or chapter can be posted on the comm, excepting free, orphaned, public domain, web-published stories, and stories that are 1-2 pages in length. It used to be, back in the halcyon days of Scans Daily 1.0, that we'd allow 1/2 of a volume to be posted. So why did we make the change?

The answer should be obvious. Scans Daily operates in a legal gray area that isn't getting any less gray. I believe that much of what we do is fair use, and that more of it should be. I firmly believe that IP law is shamefully biased towards protecting the interests of capital, over the interests of community. I believe that our members love comics, and have no desire to harm comics creators. My belief in the good faith of our membership does not protect us from DMCA takedown notices, another TOSing, or public censure.

Even before the TOSing, Rabican, Stubble Update and myself were making changes to the rules that would, we hoped, protect the community as a whole. These changes included: reducing page counts, so as to attract less negative attention from comics publishers and creators; instituting a creator rights policy; and shifting some of the burden of proof back onto individual members. It was our hope that with these rules changes, potentially offended parties would go after individual posts, rather than the community as a whole. ("This Spider-Man post bugs you? Ok, we can take that down"). As it happens, we were TOSed from LJ before we could institute the planned rules changes, and we have yet to have the opportunity to see them tested.

Recently, members have been seeking clarification of the 1/3 rule. The confusion is likely coming from the exceptions we made, but didn't explicitly lay out in the userinfo. When we implemented the new rules, we decided to make exceptions to the 1/3 rule, based on a sliding scale of risk: was the comic still in print? of dubious copyright status? were the creators and publishers particularly open to online redistribution and sharing (like Kago for example)?

The Warren comics posts were at that time, judged to be low risk. However, Dark Horse has now acquired the rights to the Warren catalog and is reissuing Creepy and Eerie in hardcover collections. It seems they may also have plans for a new Creepy title. This means that Warren posts are no longer low risk and are now subject to the 1/3 rule. This was not an easy decision for the mod team to make. The Warren posts have been a valued part of our community, and something that I personally adore.

Make no mistake, our community is still, and always be, at risk. However, the mod team believes that beyond even the archive of scans we have built up, this community is worth protecting. The best way we know to do that is to limit risk, and to ask you to do the same. This means stating up front the legal status of a work if you're posting it in its entirety. It means checking the tags and archive before you post, to see if your fellow members have already posted excerpts from the story you want to share. It means posting in good faith, and from your love of comics, and not a desire to 'get' a creator or publisher.

If your only interest is reading complete comics for free, there are other places to do that. Scans Daily is a forum for sharing our love of comics, and for discussing comics.

In short, what this means for you as a member making posts:

1) You may only post 1/3 of a story or chapter not of a complete volume.
2) The burden is on you to indicate/prove that the comic you are posting is in the public domain, an orphaned work, or a web-published story if you exceed the 1/3 limit. (If it is a web-published story, please credit and provide links to the source.)
3) Free promotional comics (e.g. comics that publishers released for free for Free Comic Book Day) may also exceed the 1/3 limit, but remember each individual poster may not post more than 4 pages from a recent comic.
4) Stories that are 1-2 pages in length may be posted in full.

(Post a new comment)

	suzene 2009-05-12 04:21 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for the clarification. :) (Reply to this)

	aaron_bourque 2009-05-12 05:35 pm UTC (link)
	Man, and I'd been wanting to post some 10 pagers by Barks and Rosa . . . Oh well. Barks did some 1-page gags, too. Time to go digging. (Reply to this)

	foxhack 2009-05-12 05:44 pm UTC (link)
	Silly question, then. Let's say that I want to post something, but the size of it is way too large according to the rules. Am I allowed to post a snippet here and say "You can read the whole thing over here" and include a link to another place? And by "the whole thing" I don't mean the full book, just a more expanded version of the S_D post. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	angelophile 2009-05-12 06:24 pm UTC (link)
	The trouble is with that is that it still puts the community on no firmer ground than, say, posting a page of thumbnails of pages that are hosted on Photobucket. While the images may not be hosted on the community, they're linked through the community and that'd be enough. Effectively, posting any direct links wouldn't be legal under our rules. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	foxhack 2009-05-12 06:40 pm UTC (link)
	Why? I'm the one sticking out his neck, not you guys. If they could throw the DMCA at people for linking to sites then half the internet would be shut down. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

angelophile
2009-05-12 06:50 pm UTC (link)

No pictures were actually hosted on Scans_Daily on Livejournal.

They didn't stop the community being TOSed.

No files are actually hosted on The Pirate Bay.

But year long jail sentences have been handed out.

That's a dramatic example, but the short answer is that posting links to where people can read entire comics or enough to utterly violate fair use laws on this community jeopardizes this community and, I'm sure you can understand, we're doing what we can to preserve it.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	foxhack 2009-05-12 07:00 pm UTC (link)
	Then I'll have to repost my older, impossible to condense posts somewhere else without telling you people about it, then. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ghosty732 2009-05-12 07:04 pm UTC (link)
	So what about when posting Preview pages? If IGN has five pages of preview up, and I post only one of these pages (so that someone else can post more pages when the issue actually comes out), am I allowed to link to the preview pages up at IGN? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-05-12 07:09 pm UTC (link)
	Yes. But previews are made available by the publisher. Linking to previews won't get us in trouble. It's our own scans they don't like. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	unknownscribler 2009-05-13 10:47 am UTC (link)
	Speaking of previews, they shouldn't count towards page limits for a particular issue. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-05-13 11:07 am UTC (link)
	Oh, they don't, so long as you just link to them. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	fungo_squiggly 2009-05-12 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	Does this also apply to scanlated manga not published outside of Japan? I mean, is it only legal to post 2 pages of a 6 page story from... say... Fuan no Tane? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	schmevil 2009-05-12 07:00 pm UTC (link)
	I don't know. What's the licence on Fuan no Tane? How does the publisher feel about scanlations? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fungo_squiggly 2009-05-12 07:36 pm UTC (link)
	Well, the publisher is Akita Shoten. The comic isn't licensed in English. So far I haven't found any accounts of Akita Shoten expressing an opinion about scanlations either way, but I'll keep looking. (Reply to this) (Parent)

PROOF

peur_evol
2009-05-12 07:41 pm UTC (link)

"2) The burden is on you to indicate/prove that the comic you are posting is in the public domain, an orphaned work, or a web-published story if you exceed the 1/3 limit. (If it is a web-published story, please credit and provide links to the source.)"

I know the Harvey Comics I posted aren't orphaned works, they're just not being used by the owners for anything comic related.

With most of the Dell Comics I post, it's common knowledge that they're public domain/orphaned (excepting LONE RANGER, TARZAN, UNCLE SCROOGE, etc.)I have no problem removing any Dell post as soon as I get a complaint.

However, recently I've been digging thru old Charlton comics which is a copyright nightmare. DC, ACG, ECLIPSE, and some others I forget, all bought bits and pieces of the material.

How do I prove something is orphaned? As with Warren, just because it sat around doesn't mean somebody won't snatch it up again ??
Showing older comics for historical/educational or just for discussion purposes qualifies as "fair use", in as much as I understand it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: PROOF

parsimonia
2009-05-13 09:56 am UTC (link)

How do I prove something is orphaned?

Obviously you're unlikely to get any will-hold-up-in-court kind of evidence, but if to the best of your knowledge, it is orphaned, please say so in your post. And given that a bit of googling can usually yield an informative wikipedia entry at the very least, it would be especially nice to include a link to that as well. It's one thing to know, but it's even better to be able to tell us how you know.

And I do have to emphasize that it's important to indicate in a post whether or not to the best of one's knowledge what is being posted is an orphaned work. If I were to post a 70-year-old Canadian comic that's considered orphaned, I might know it's orphaned, but the other mods might not know anything about it, and other members reading about it might not either.

As with Warren, just because it sat around doesn't mean somebody won't snatch it up again ?

Right, but I think what we want to focus on is whether or not somebody has, and if it's known that the rights are owned by someone/a current company and/or if there are plans to republish reprints or new material.

For instance, we looked up Charlton comics, and while I had already known that DC had the rights to some of their characters, it turns out the rest are owned as well, and some of them may be heading for reprints too.

If there's no evidence or information available indicating that it is no longer an orphaned work, then you're in the clear unless new information crops up or there's a complaint.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

RE: Fair Use and Copyrights...

peur_evol
2009-05-13 05:18 pm UTC (link)

Thanks for that.
As you've noticed, I try to post things that are old, strange, or just unusual; everything new and mainstream is overly covered here (and everywhere, to be brutally honest). My reasoning is that the average fan is not as familiar with these things, and I feel it provides at least a little educational and historical value for lovers of sequential art. If I've made it seem like I'm just trying to provide a bunch of free comics just for the sake of piracy, I've been entirely misunderstood. To the best of my knowledge, I have not done anything that goes against the four principles of fair use.

And thanks for that link, the last time I checked wikipedia™, their article on Charlton comics was much shorter and less informative than it is now. I sometimes forget that as a resource it gets better over time as more people contribute and edit.

For now, I'll be working on a legal disclaimer to run with any of my future posts, stating my intent and reasoning for posting any older short stories.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Fair Use and Copyrights...

angelophile
2009-05-13 06:05 pm UTC (link)

I agree, the posts are educational. I agree that they're something off the beaten track and have real historical value. I think it's also totally clear that no one here is advocating piracy for the sake of piracy.

However, since the rights appear to be held and the Charlton back catalogue owned and may be reprinted soon any future posts will need to be within the structure of the rules laid out, unless you're able to demonstrate they meet the criteria of orphaned works or public domain. Posting any stories in full with a disclaimer won't make them legal by our posting guidelines or, unfortunately, fair use.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: RE: Fair Use and Copyrights...

parsimonia
2009-05-13 06:55 pm UTC (link)

No, I fully appreciate your reasoning and I'm glad that we have members here who take the time to share the older and more unusual stuff that's out there.

We've just got to cover our backs, you know? Because the unfortunate thing is that even if Marvel/DC/Whoever takes umbrage with only a few individual posts, InsaneJournal may decide to eliminate any risk for themselves by just killing the comm, the same way LJ did. So for now we will have to stick with the 1/3 rule.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	xdoop 2009-05-12 07:56 pm UTC (link)
	What about stories from the Silver Age, like those old Lois Lane stories? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	angelophile 2009-05-13 02:31 am UTC (link)
	Unfortunately, unless a case can be made that they're public domain (which I seriously doubt) they fall under the 1/3 rule. Just because something's old doesn't mean that the rights aren't held by someone. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	xdoop 2009-05-13 02:46 am UTC (link)
	But would DC really care about posting silly old SA stories? And what about Spidey Super Stories? Marvel isn't releasing any collections of them or anything. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

angelophile
2009-05-13 04:19 am UTC (link)

The short answer is personally, I suspect DC wouldn't be worried enough to get us a TOSing.

But at which point do you draw the line? Since the rights are held, effectively we as a community would need to stand up and state "we are okay with breaking rights laws in this case". If we state that, we either take an activist approach, which we will lose (if only because IJ would pull the community) or we attempt to work universally to try and act along the spirit of the law and hopefully ensure the community has longevity by minimizing the chances of a rights holder taking offense.

It's something that's been discussed for weeks and before this post went up discussing it pretty much became a full-time job for all the mods. It's not been an easy decision. But simply it's hard to predict what rights holders would be okay with. The third of a story ruling is there to try and minimize the chances of someone like Marvel taking offense at, say, a complete Spider-girl story being posted from an issue of Spider-man Family and claiming that Spider-girl readers won't pick up the issue because they can read it in its entirety here. The same with the Creepy stuff, which is now being reprinted. Old Silver Age comics might seem innocuous, but the rights are still held by DC.

What making exceptions has shown is that as soon as we unofficially make exceptions to what can and can't be posted in full, posters, understandably, have got confused. Someone sees one story posted in its entirety and so posts another, perhaps something more recent, which we're then forced to kill. When everyone's singing from different hymn sheets it's not only unfair to certain posters, but also sets us up for another TOSing.

My view is that the community's for spreading enthusiasm for comics, discussing comics, hitting a demographic that's not normally hit and, frankly, slashing the hell out of everything. And while I'd love to see an environment where we could publish entire, obscure comics legally, this isn't it.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	mr_terrific 2009-05-12 09:43 pm UTC (link)
	I found it strangely amusing today to notice Comic Book Resources proudly announcing two twelve page previews from Marvel... (Reply to this) (Thread)

	lawrence_live 2009-05-12 10:19 pm UTC (link)
	Indeed. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	angelophile 2009-05-13 06:16 am UTC (link)
	The difference being it's Marvel's prerogative to decide what they show from their books. If we make that decision for them, we get TOSed again. As it is, as stated, there are other places to read longer previews of comics in their entirety, but that's not really the point of the community. Of course, if you want to link to such previews, that's entirely fine. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	pyrotwilight 2009-05-12 10:07 pm UTC (link)
	Oh drat. I'm gonna have to delete and re-post my Cobalt Blue intro story thing then. (Reply to this)

psychop_rex
2009-05-13 02:03 am UTC (link)

OK, I have a question. I've had an idea for a post for a while now, and it looks like I should probably run it by you guys first.
See, here's the situation - I am in possession of an anniversary comic celebrating the 60th birthday of Donald Duck. This comic has an interesting narrative device - it reprints various stories from various points in Donald's history, and frames them with a story about how Donald is DREAMING these stories after the pre-birthday ingestion of an especially naughty dessert, which for all intents and purposes links the whole comic together into one story. It consists pretty much entirely of a sleepwalking Donald running around yelling nonsense phrases which relate to the previous story, while the increasingly sleep-deprived H,D&L try frantically to keep him under control. It's pretty funny.
Now, here's what I was planning. I was planning on posting the framing story - and JUST the framing story - in its entirety, a matter of possibly eight pages, and then leaving it up to popular vote which of the other stories I should post bits from. My reasoning is as follows - the effect of the framing story is to basically turn the rest of the book's contents into one long story, read as a single sequence. Removing the framing story converts it from part of an ongoing narrative into a stand-alone piece, albeit one that makes precious little sense out of context.
Furthermore, the comic is at least ten years old now (thereby not making it a new comic that people are likely to beef about), has never been reprinted to my knowledge, and is jammed with various articles and such (which I would NOT post) that beef up the page count considerably, meaning that my initial post is not only less than a third of the total 'story', but less than a third of the comic itself. It was published by Gladstone Comics, which as far as I know has gone out of business (Disney publishes its stuff under the 'Disney Comics' label now).
So, in short, while technically what I would be reprinting is stand-alone stuff, it is, as far as I know, stand-alone stuff that none of its owners has the slightest interest in using or reprinting again, and it DOES fit in pretty well as less than a third of the total story, if you go with the theory that all the contents of the book are meant to be read as one, which is clearly implied. It DOESN'T stand up on its own - you need the rest of the comic to make any sense of it - and it's not even complete, since my copy is pretty dilapidated by now, and the first few pages of the story are missing.
I won't ask you to make an exception in my case or anything like that - I'll abide by your decision - but would it be possible to bend the rules just a little teeny bit here?

(Reply to this)

	unknownscribler 2009-05-13 10:53 am UTC (link)
	1) You may only post 1/3 of a story or chapter not of a complete volume. What if there's no indication of chapters? What about fanzines, which are by nature predominantly text? (Reply to this) (Thread)

angelophile
2009-05-13 03:58 pm UTC (link)

The quick answer, in this context is that a single issue of an ongoing story arc is a chapter. The reason we mention chapters is avoid confusion and anyone saying "Well, this story goes across six issues, so I can post two issues in their entirety." It, of course, doesn't work like that.

My assumption is fanzines would fall under the same remit as fanart. It's not really what this community's for, but fanart's posted on occasion if accompanied by a legal scan and the artist is credited. If available free, then the rules for freely distributed works apply. If there's a cover charge, then I think it's only fair to respect the rights of those that produce it and not post the entirety of the work. More so than normally, really. There's no reason for us to be snatching crumbs out of the mouths of other fans.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

kingrockwell
2009-05-14 12:37 am UTC (link)

I know you guys've been bugged a lot over clarifications here, so sorry if this is any kind of a bother, but what exactly defines an orphaned work?
As a for instance, I recently picked up Thumbscrew, a horror anthology put out in 92 from the now defunct Caliber Press. Caliber did creator-owned, so reprint is certainly possible, but unlikely.

Tracking down and acquiring creator permission would, I'm sure, sweeten the deal, I'm just curious what makes a work orphaned, for this title and for future reference. That a thing falls under the 1/3 rule by default is probably a safe assumption either way.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

angelophile
2009-05-14 04:09 am UTC (link)

A quick Wikipedia search - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliber_Comics - suggests that Caliver's rights are still owned by Gary Reed. Some titles have been bought up by other publishers, while others are planned as collections or have been reprinted in collections by Transfuzion Publishing and Image. As such I think you'd have great difficulty establishing that any of Caliver's titles are orphaned works - even if they aren't in reprints at the moment, other titles from the label are, so clearly the rights are owned.

You're right on the matter of tracking down and acquiring creator permission - although it needs to be established that the creator is also the rights holder (it's not enough for, say, Warren Ellis to be fine with us posting half of a Nextwave comic like we used to, because the rights holder, Marvel, are the ones who call the legal shots). But if a publisher tells us it's perfectly fine to reproduce a work in its entirety legally, hooray!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

foxhack
2009-05-18 12:05 am UTC (link)

Another question:

When it comes to adult content posts (like this, NSFW) could the rules be possibly relaxed a little? I mean, there's times when most of a chapter from a LARGE book (like a magazine anthology, or a compiled work of a bunch of serialized stories) would uh, be fun to post.

Not to mention that posting 1/3rd of a porn strip takes out most of the fun parts. :p

Just saying.

(Reply to this)

	chris251984 2010-01-09 03:09 pm UTC (link)
	Hey there, thanks for the post, really appreciate it, this is my first comment in here, hope will post frequently. Chris Domain services (Reply to this)