I read an interesting article over at The Superman Supersite about a comics pirating site that was recently shut down in a sting by the FBI. Htmlcomics.com was shut down and its servers confiscated in a joint effort by law enforcement, comics publishers, and attornies from Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. The site had proclaimed to have over one and a half million visits a day with thousands of comics one could read online for free.
The thing that is interesting to me is that it seemed that the comics publishing industry overall has been fairly quiet about pirating in general. Scans Daily was shut down this past year, but found a new home at Dreamwidth and DCP is still going strong. It was only time before they tried to do something about pirating, I just figured it would have been sooner rather than later.
It think what happened here is that this case was fairly easy for them to make to authorities. The owner, a one Gregory hart, didn't seem to take the whole pirating concept to seriously. He hosted the site in the US and appeared almost to brag about what he could offer. It made him a pretty big target and the publishers, which included most of the main comic book publishers out there, were certainly making a point about this. They won't take pirating lying down and are starting to fight back. What do you think? Will pirates start quaking in their boots or continue to fly their flag high?
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