So it was brought to my attention on Twitter that Scans_Daily is still talking about me. Or perhaps more accurately, talking about not talking about me.
To recap: Seven years ago, someone decided to post half of an issue of X-Factor which I openly begged people not to spoil. Because it was so much of the issue, I brought it to Marvel’s attention. As a copyright defender, I felt obliged to do so (just as people inform me when they discover my books on pirate sites.) I didn’t approach the mods myself because I wasn’t the copyright holder and thus didn’t have the right to.
My expectation was that Marvel would have the pages taken down. Instead Livejournal, who hosted the site, shut down the entire thing because of copyright violation.
Did they blame themselves for causing the site to be taken down? Of course not. They blamed me. And to get back at me, once they reconstituted the site elsewhere, they declared my works were to be banned from the site forever. (They also sabotaged my Wiki page, cried out for boycotts, and flooded my website with diatribes, but that’s neither here nor there.) The ostensible reason was that it was out of respect to my wishes, even though it in fact flew in the face of my wishes. I specifically said that if they remained within the constraints of copyright, reproducing a couple panels or pages, I’d be fine with that. That if they wanted to reproduce more of something to which I owned the copyright, they simply had to come to me and ask. Nope. No go. No Peter David on Scans_Daily ever again, in order to “respect my wishes” that I never made.
So now it’s seven years later, someone asked about posting something of mine, and it’s thirty seven replies. Some people are being reasonable, and some are being dìçkš, which is pretty much the most that one can expect from the Internet.
Do I still believe I did the right thing? Of course. I did what I had to: I reported a copyright violation. If it had been ten pages of “Fallen Angel,” I’d have handled it myself, but I didn’t hold the copyright to X-Factor, so I told the folks who did. Was I expecting the site to be taken down? Good lord, no. I was quite new to it and had no idea that they were in violation of Livejournal’s term of service, which would result in them getting the heave ho.
If I’d known that they would get shut down, would I have done it differently? Yeah, maybe. I might have violated procedure and contacted the mods directly (although honestly, considering the amount of hostility that was fired off at me when I actually interacted with them, I’d have had no idea if they would’ve listened.) That’s always the oldest question, isn’t it. “If you’d known then what you know now.” It’s really a meaningless question because we all have to make our decisions based on the information we have at the time.
Do I regret anything? Yeah; I think I overreacted to the idiot who said they wanted me to die in a fire. That really pìššëd me off at the time. But I shouldn’t have let that get to me. That’s probably because the level of discourse on the Internet, and the world in general (*cough* Trump *cough*) has deteriorated so spectacularly that it’s hard to get a rise out of me anymore. I mean, when I had a stroke, one jerk declared that he was happy and hoped I’d die in a sea of my own šhìŧ. And I read that and just laughed. I’m 59 and insults from random jáçkáššëš just don’t bother me anymore.
In any event, if Scans_Daily still feels the need to keep punishing me for the actions that they took and refuse to accept that they caused, then fine. Whatever.
Hope that answers it.
PAD
ADDENDUM: Just for the record, if any of the Scans_Daily moderators wish to contact me directly at padguy@aol.com to see what can be worked out, I would be happy to speak to them. And for the record, I obviously don’t think everyone on Scans_Daily are idiots. The whole of no group could be idiots. Except Trump supporters.
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