In part 1, I revealed my interest in comic books and how I came to have these realizations about my collecting of comic books. In part 2 here, I will start on my crusade for comic books in a digital scanned format.
I like scanned comic books in digital formats for a variety of reason, which I will explore below:
Point 1 -
PDF format. I've read all the arguments for and against concerning every format of viewing digital comic books. The logical choice is PDF. Yes, I know there are arguably better quality formats for viewing, but they sacrifice in convenience in viewing. Honestly, search the internet for digital comic book viewers. There are more versions of viewers than there are candy bars, each written by some wannabe "programmer" in their basement. In this world of viruses, trojan horses, malware and infections ad nauseam to your computer, who wants to adopt a yet another hacked piece of software that only gets updated once a decade. Not me. I want my comics in a PDF format that can be read by an widely accepted free software application - Adobe Acrobat Reader [1].
I've seem every previous attempt at digital comics in the past. Scanned comic pages broken out by panel, enhanced with sounds, music, voice-overs, obnoxious animations. Each ended in a flaming pile of debris. Each a proprietary viewing software package with a proprietary format. The publishers, in their zeal of digital right management could not see themselves within a cohesive universe of other publishers where everyone offered their products under one universal format. They grossly misjudged the burden on the consumer of having to keep each of the viewers for each publishers, or style of digital comic book, up-to-date, just to view a comic book. To say their judgement was terrible would be a compliment.
Point 2 -
Digital Rights Management. This is a hot button for me, and most likely not in the way you think. I like the model GIT Corp uses for the comic book collections they've offered in the past. Essentially, when you buy the DVD with the comics, you buy the rights to have the comic book. I like that. Yes, this allows for piracy, but I wouldn't expect most people to do this. I believe that fans of a product or company will, for the most part, purchase the products at the suggested retail price. If you like the product, support the company and pay their asking price.
I am a firm believer that in this digital age, people are more inclined to steal digital products. As I noted above, most will not. I used to run a vending machine business. I know first-hand as a business owner that some people are inherently evil, cheap, pathetic criminally inclined scum. I've seen people spend several agonizing minutes trying to rob a vending machine of a candy bar, or invent ways to cheat a cash changing machine. Its not because they cannot afford it, its mostly on principle. C'mon, its only a candy bar, right?
Yes, for your over-simplified brain, its only a candy bar, but for me its lost product, possible repairs to the vending machine, or in some cases a new machine depending on the damage done while trying to steal a .55 candy bar. Stop drinking cleaning solvents, it impairs your judgement and makes you do stupid things.
That was a little off topic, but it illustrates my point, which is, I don't expect Digital Rights Management to be abused. People who purchase digital media should be allowed to own it - not rent it or have its ownership restricted to the point where supposed ownership is more painful that its worth. iTunes from Apple [2] bridges that gap between ownership and the rights of the creators very well.
I'll explore more points in part 3.
References:
[1] - http://get.adobe.com/reader/
[2] - http://www.apple.com/itunes/
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