a copyright breaker speaks in favour of copyright

Marco Barlotti marcobar at ds.unifi.it
Sun Oct 22 23:25:09 CEST 2000


At 10:04:57 Sat, 21 Oct 2000 +0700, Arie Fachrisal wrote:
>
>I must say thank you to the ones who've put scans of Barks' stories like
>Treasure of marco Polo and Darkest Africa stories. If not for em, i may
>never enjoy those stories since last time i participated, a single issue of
>CBLiC containing Darkest Africa story sold for >$70. Imagine that for a $9
>comic album. Sigh.
>

Mmmh. That's me, the first one:
http://marcobar.cce.unifi.it/comics/censored

But, honestly, I did *not* do it in order to let you spare those 70 bucks.
I did it in order to let you, and everybody, read the story as it was
originally printed and not in the CENSORED form of the CBLiC.

The same goes for the other stories I have on-line.
I would NEVER dream of putting on-line for everybody stories that are
available for sale.

When issue #0 of PKNA (Paperinik New Adventures) sold out in Italy, there
was a rumour that it was censored and that it would NEVER be published any
more. So I made a special effort and scanned 72 pages at 150 dpi and put
those on-line for everybody; and committed myself to take those pages off
the web as soon as there would be a new, uncensored edition for sale. And I
wrote that clearly on the relevant web page. I wanted to prompt Disney
Italy to make the story available again.
A few months later, the story was reprinted, unabridged and uncensored, in
a big volume (for sale  @ more than 25 Euros!). That was enough for me, and
I took the pages off the web.

The story on Mickey's marriage is another one that you can find on my web
pages. There even is a rumour that all unsold copies of that issue of
"Topolino" were destroyed! The story was never reprinted. I am going to
keep it on the web until Disney Italy reprints it. At that moment, I'll
take it off.

Is this illegal? The only thing I know, is that I feel I am doing something
right, this way. I am not depriving anybody of money: should Disney Italy
reprint that story, I'd take it off the web. While Disney Italy is
depriving the readers of the right to read a very good and unusual story!

Another story that's linked to from my "censored" pages is "I tre samurai",
writted by Gianfranco Goria. This was NEVER printed by Disney Italy! The
authors themselves decided to put it on the Web! 

Do you see my point? Some stories by Scarpa are being reprinted every 5-10
years in Italy. Should I make THESE available for everybody on the web, I
would deprive Disney Italy of some possible income from future reprints. We
may discuss whether Disney is morally right in keeping all the income for
itself (I myself think Scarpa should get part of it), but I'm standing A
STEP BEHIND this point. I am NOT questioning this right, because I feel I'd
give way to a dangerous and disruptive trend. Read Rob Klein's message in
the last Digest to see what I mean... I 100% agree with him.

There's an interesting corollary on the stuff I wrote above. What if Disney
Italy waits too much before making available "Somewhere in Nowhere", the
Barks/Lustig/Block story? Should I consider it a form of censorship, and
put the story on the web?    ;-)

And speaking of corollaries...
>
>Information is a thing to make your living easier, and everybody has the
>right to access it (like Mathematics, Phyisics, Chemistry, etc)
>
...why am I NOT allowed to copyright my math theorems?
(Think of what Descartes would have earned, had he been allowed to
copyright his coordinate system!)


    Marco






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