Marvel, DC bite into BitTorrent

Now that both DC and Marvel have jumped into the digital comics space – albeit with completely different approaches – they’ve been forced to address the issue of comics piracy.

Working together, Marvel and DC sent legal letters last week to the operators of Z-Cult FM, a popular site for BitTorrent trackers that allow users to download comics, including the most recent issues of those publishers’ titles. According to posts at the site, the letters gave the site three days to act before the publishers would take further legal action.

The site, which is based outside the United States, has its own policy for allowing publishers to request their material be removed. After verifying the letters were authentic, the site says it agreed to take down all Marvel trackers from its site within seven days. While the site has confirmed the letter from DC is authentic, they have, as of this writing, not posted any reports of further talks. In lieu of any talks with DC, Z-Cult FM has decided not to allow trackers for any new DC titles until the book has been on sale in comic shops for 30 days.

The publishers also went after a prolific uploader of scanned comics named “Oroboros,” who decided to stop using Usenet forums, though will continue to “scan and release into the wild like I did a year ½ ago.”

You can be sure there will be more of this going on as each company gets further and further into the digital comics realm. There already are some people reporting easy workarounds for saving the hi-res images from Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited site to your hard drive.

How far Marvel and DC will go is unclear. It seems unlikely they would go after end users who download comics the way the RIAA has with music downloads. But going after trackers and the sites that host them is futile, too, as there are already so many copies out there of pretty much everything those companies have published and no shortage of sites willing to post trackers that are beyond the legal jurisdiction of U.S. IP law.

As with music and movies, the best plan would be to make legit copies of comics available so easily and so inexpensively that it’s just easier to buy them than it is to steal them. But given how long it’s taken both companies to get this far, that’s unlikely to come along any time soon, especially with DC still not making any of its vast library available online in any way or at any price.