Slashdot Mirror
Comic Sales Soar After Artist Engages 4chan Pirates
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Lieber, the artist behind the graphic novel Underground, discovered that someone on 4chan had scanned and posted the entire comic. Rather than complaining, he joined the conversation, chatting with the 4channers about the comic... and the next day he saw his sales jump to unheard-of levels, much higher than he'd seen even when the comic book was reviewed on popular sites like Boing Boing."
Turns out that the same tactic here didn't work out so well for Radiohead.
But that's ok. Just keep ignoring the data that doesn't fit your model. Slashdorks are good at doing that.
Slashdot has an extremely pro-piracy agenda. You never hear stories about piracy hurting anything. You only hear stories of how piracy supposedly increased sales or how some faceless corporate group is doing something horrible when it tries to protect its property.
You also never hear from content creators who are opposed to piracy, and you rarely hear about its negative effects. Here's one of the rare occasions that Slashdot reported on it, a story about how DRM-free game Machinarium suffered 90% piracy rates, to the point they had to offer an amnesty sale.
The Slashdot agenda is that artists have no rights and should never try to stop pirates, and that if they simply "engage" them, their sales will skyrocket. Apparently, some comic book on 4chan is supposed to prove this. Meanwhile, PC gaming is dead and software is moving to online services...I wonder why?
What claims are outrageous? PC game developers are public about how piracy has decimated PC gaming. Why do you think they moved to consoles? Why do you think the remaining PC developers require you to log into online services to play? It's the only way they can make any money.
Pro-piracy advocates are leeches who don't want the free ride to go away. They'll use any justification, from claiming piracy somehow helps sales (not buying something is apparently the same as buying something) to portraying other entities as the bad people, such as the RIAA. You can see it in the comments to this story. It's almost automatic at this point--"I'm not the one doing bad things, they are! It's their fault."
It's been an obvious agenda on Slashdot for years. I'm probably going to get modbombed again for saying it, but I've got karma to burn. The most amusing part of it all is how up-in-arms people get over GPL "theft." The double-standard never occurs to them.
People like to buy products from people they like.
Steam / Valve is one of the best examples I can give. I would rather pay $5 more and get it from Steam than on the shelf. Granted, I would be getting better value for that $5, with automatic updates, automatic install and configure and the ability to easily play the game on more than one computer as long as I only played on one at a time.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!