The Comictastic debate: authors vs. authors
Ah, that great promise of the web! Self-publishing, without interference of the type of middlemen who will take 90+ % of your earnings and hardly give something in return.
Comictastic is a computer program for the Apple Macintosh that will collect your favourite webcomics and show them to you. No banner ads, no annoying download waits, just comics, comics, comics.
So what does this have to do with self-publishing? Well, three things really: Comictastic is shareware, distributed from the site of the maker. It satisfied readers’ demands quickly and on a small-scale, the way only the products of small, self-publishing enterpreneurs can. And finally, it royally pisses off the self-publishing authors of web comics, who see their banner advertising schemes circumvented. These advertising schemes carry the huge hosting costs that come with high-bandwidth art like comics.
So there we are, no middle-men to argue our points for us. Just citizens and authors in what appears to be a copyright brawl. None of the participants particularly versed in copyright law, and none of them particularly versed in the law that code may be.