CBR: The iPad - Making Comics Piracy Easy?

[CBR News]

The iPad screen grab feature makes it easy to snap a high-resolution image of whatever is appears on it's screen - including pages from your digital comic books and ebooks.


Full article here.

[JesseBlazeSnider]

Seriously, THIS is irresponsible reporting!

There are plenty of people out there who are going to do that now and they might never have realized they could. You should seriously yank this article from the interwebs. Would you give direction on who to make bombs as well?!

Really not cool, nobody needs this information, this isn't a topic worth discussing.

[Shellhead]

I guess this means that the iPad won't save the comic industry after all.

[TwinPistols]

As long as they put in limits/blocks in the apps that allow you to download comics, this shouldn't be a problem. As far as whether or not this should be reported on, for anyone with an iPad that has this feature, it would be a no-brainer. I'd rather it be reported on and dealt with, than ignored and allowed to escalate.

[eforextinct]

As long as they put in limits/blocks in the apps that allow you to download comics, this shouldn't be a problem. As far as whether or not this should be reported on, for anyone with an iPad that has this feature, it would be a no-brainer. I'd rather it be reported on and dealt with, than ignored and allowed to escalate.

I totally agree. People are not stupid. It would only be a matter of time before iPad users become savvy enough with the tech to realize the many things they can do with it aside from the obvious. Good for CBR for writing this report.

[Donald M.]

Seriously, THIS is irresponsible reporting!

There are plenty of people out there who are going to do that now and they might never have realized they could. You should seriously yank this article from the interwebs. Would you give direction on who to make bombs as well?!

Really not cool, nobody needs this information, this isn't a topic worth discussing.

Right, because if CBR didn't do a story about it no one would have any way of finding out about it.

Damn you, CBR! Why do you hate the comics industry?

[JeffreyWKramer]

There are plenty of valid reasons to be critical of the reporting at CBR.

The idea that the story this thread was intended to promote is "irresponsible" is not one of them.

[Expletive Deleted]

Really not cool, nobody needs this information, this isn't a topic worth discussing.

Companies producing content for the iPad could conceivably find this information useful.

[howyadoin]

The iPad screen grab feature makes it easy to snap a high-resolution image of whatever is appears on it's screen - including pages from your digital comic books and ebooks.

Wow, it's almost like a computer.

[StoneGold]

Wow, it's almost like a computer.

The difference being the lack of comic downloading programs being heavily marketed to PCs.


Course, I'm not sure how much of a time saver this is really over slapping a page on the scanner. You'd still have to properly assemble everything in the right format. And although I haven't played with any of the new apps, from what I've read, the iPad being slightly smaller than your average comic page have forced many apps to play around with stuff like the word balloons popping up at certain points on the page, which would be impossible to pirate in such a way.

[putch]

this is a ridiculous story. i mean, is pirating comics really hard as it stands? and until now piracy has been one of the only ways to get digital comics that are actual portable on a mobile device. at least now there's a legal way to get digital content. not everyone who enjoys reading comics likes having entire rooms devoted to storage, you know?

so, what's the point of this fear mongering? i mean, i guess someone might use this once or twice to pass along the content. but no one is going to bother to make 20-30 screenshots, transfer to them to the PC, repackage them and re-distribute them. the pirates doing this already have a pretty efficient operation. this would probably be even slower for them. especially since the digital content so far is at least several months, if not years, old by now.

[zeno99]

I can't wait until someone hacks the IPad.

[Expletive Deleted]

The difference being the lack of comic downloading programs being heavily marketed to PCs.

Exactly. I think there's a perception that the iPad is somehow safer because it's such a controlled environment.

[stewart48]

The story would be better off as an editorial piece. The thing about this piracy issue, is its going to be the same people that would pirate comics anyway. I think comic companies would be better off offering day of digital releases anyway. People talk about LCS going out of business but Marvel overall would generate more capital and invest in other areas creating more jobs. I don't think it would hurt them overall anyway and would bring more people in, because of the collectibility value and the interest the apps would bring to the stores.

I use to pirate music in highschool not thinking much about it, but once itunes hit I never pirated again, and it doesn't excuse what I did, but I did buy back all the music I had in a higher quality.

[DNAlien]

I don't think I'd call 768 x 1024 "high resolution". That's pretty close to the minimum resolution you'd need to make a standard US comic book page readable on the screen, probably too low for many things with smaller lettering. Most scanned comics I've seen (mostly public domain stuff, but I'm not above downloading more recent things in some situations) go with a page width of at least 1000 pixels, with 1280 being pretty standard now since broadband is pretty much a given for most people.