Newsarama blogger JK Parkin reported on a collaboration between Marvel and DC Comics to issue cease-and-desist letters against Z-Cult FM, a website that tracked new comic book releases and included links to BitTorrent files containing scans of those issues. Z-Cult’s response was defiant, as administrators announced Friday afternoon that, since the site isn’t based in the United States, the American laws the comic book companies are invoking to shut the site down don’t apply to it and, anyway, “we have always had a clearly explained and signposted policy of making it clear to all comic publishers and copyright holders that we will on request (and reasonable proof of ownership) remove their material from our trackers,” but Marvel and DC wasn’t following Z-Cult’s policy, so Z-Cult saw no reason to cooperate.
In an interesting twist, one of Z-Cult’s administrator’s, “Serj,” went on to announce that independent comics publisher Slave Labor Graphics had given Z-Cult permission to distribute some of its comics digitally, “[hoping] that exposure to our large library of titles will help encourage support of our legal download site. But SLG publisher Dan Vado initially repudiated that statement, explaining that a freelancer who had been authorized to set up a banner ad exchange took it into his head to give permission that wasn’t his to give. Nevertheless, Vado added while sorting the mess out with Serj over the weekend, “you can go ahead and make our stuff available for download. I am not certain what our digital plans are going to be in the coming year, so I may come back and ask you to drop them again.