dwlt.thinksOutLoud

I am currently reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, in case you were wondering.

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I've Been Expecting You...

So you may have noticed that Tapestry and some of the feeds have been acting a bit funny over the last couple of days? (Thanks to the good folks over at Lockergnome’s RSS Resource for putting an alert out).

This morning, I received a letter from Eleanor DaCosta, a Legal Administrator at Andrews McMeel Universal, the parent company of Universal Press Syndicate and ucomics, demanding that I immediately remove any and all material bearing characters from, or the name of, any of the Features, as well as any links to any such material or names or to our ucomics website (so I guess this posting may technically be in breach of the letter).

The usual cease and desist letter then, for the comics which Tapestry provide feeds for, including Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield and FoxTrot. I’m not about to put myself at risk, so I’ve taken the infringing feeds away. I’ll be talking with Ms DaCosta about the way forward, and will report back soon.

There’s a bit in the letter that really annoys me though:
You are using the Features at your website, http://dwlt.net/tapestry/, wholly without AMU’s authorization, as well as framing the Features with your own advertising, again without authorization whatsoever from AMU.

Two things that stand out: one, I’m not really using the features, although I agree that this is something of a grey area. The second bit though, about advertising, is a bit unfounded. Yes, I ask people to maybe send me a book, if they like, but I wouldn’t classify that as advertising.

Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on it, and I’ll be offering the code for the feeds to ucomics to try and make things official. Let’s see what happens.

Bob Ryskamp wrote at 08:29 PM on 20 Dec 2003

Sorry to hear that—the Calvin feed was wonderful! Thanks much for taking the risk for all of us…

Patrick Grote wrote at 08:58 PM on 20 Dec 2003

Thanks for providing the update.

I don’t understand the legal issue here. The comics are on the site and you provide a link to them, right? You’re not copying the comic nor are you changing where they reside. Is that right?

Andy Jarrett wrote at 10:53 AM on 21 Dec 2003

Cheers for the feeds they’ve been great. Can you still send the URL for the days strip in the feed ?? That was you still have to visit the site to read the comic. Just a thought

Dave wrote at 12:54 PM on 21 Dec 2003

Thanks for the feeds whilst they lasted, I used three of these ones and loved getting them every day. Your service is fantastic lets hope it doesn’t all begin to go pearshaped.

If the company thinks that by shutting you down we will all rush off and pay them the near 10 bucks they want for email I have a feeling they are going to be very much mistaken.

dwlt wrote at 01:24 PM on 22 Dec 2003

All,

Thanks for your comments. I can’t say what is going to happen yet, but certainly UPS are free to stop me as they own the digital distribution rights for the comics.

I’m hoping to convince them to create their own authorised feeds, but we’ll see…

Mike McCormick wrote at 04:28 PM on 22 Dec 2003

comics.com seems to supply comics that may overlap ucomics.com. I know For better Or For Worse is there. We support you.

Andy wrote at 02:53 AM on 23 Dec 2003

I missed Calvin too. I’m not suprised that they stopped it but I’m glad they didn’t take the obvious manner of preventing hotlinking though as home grown methods will still work.

ronan cremin wrote at 06:22 AM on 23 Dec 2003

Thanks for the great feeds.

What about offering the scraping code for the ucomics feeds to the public domain? Then people could run their own copies at a smaller, less exposed level and keep this going.

luke wrote at 12:11 AM on 24 Dec 2003

Thanks for the feeds! I really enjoyed using them!

meester serg wrote at 09:53 AM on 24 Dec 2003

well i to en2joyed the feeds whilst they lasted and hope that the legal bagels can see the light and allow you to reinstated the feeds. eggcellant work !!

Differance wrote at 06:33 PM on 03 Jan 2004

You should notify www.chillingeffects.org

RobDurdle.com wrote at 03:10 PM on 06 Jan 2004

I bet that the person who reviewed your site and found the advertising was using a rss grabbed taht displays ads for unregistered users :)

She probally got a little confused and thought you were doing it, hehe.

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This is the website of one David Thomson (aka dwlt) from Edinburgh, Scotland. It contains the results of my patented thinking-out-loud process.

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