They Bullied Comic Book Tracker ZCult Into Closing

In my blog:


First I wrote about how they went after TVLinks and OiNK


Then I wrote about how they went after Demonoid


Then I wrote about how they went after Pirate Bay


And now Torrentfreak has reported that Marvel and DC have done a "Team Up" and gone after ZCultFM. The only all comic book tracker. That's it. Demonoid was actually a better resource for comics in my opinion, but it was only a fraction of what they offered. ZCult on the other hand has been a sort of last-resort-to-find-it kinda place. And of course when they killed Demonoid it began to play a much more vital role.


So to make sure they don't become the next big thing Marvel and DC have nipped it in the bud. The tracker guys say at this point they've verified the email from DC, but haven't confirmed the validity of the Marvel message. But slim chance it's not real. As I began to see this unfold a few weeks back I knew in my heart where this was all headed. I am not proud to have been right.


See, it's 10 years later, over again. It's not just comic books; it's torrent technology in general that's under attack. For the last few weeks I've been writing about this.


Major producers/suppliers of media are involved, involuntarily, in a game of whack-a-mole. They thought they finally had a handle on all this "downloading" when they managed to either shut down, incorporate, or scare people away from all the original P2P systems like Napster, Gnutella, eDonkey or Bearshare. But they KNEW that people were still downloading stuff somehow, and now they've got a-hold of a word, "torrents." And they don't understand HOW it works, but they know there are websites they can threaten (hence Marvel telling Zcult to hand over files, and Zcult having to explain they don't HAVE any files).


So it's evolution. But it's in reverse. Normally producers/suppliers provide something to the public AND control the means of distribution. But now they're in a weird position of not having 100 percent control over distribution-and lets be realistic; the number of people who CAN deal with torrents and the number of people WILLING to deal with it is still pretty small. But those producers/suppliers are trying to curtail the growth of the number of people willing to do that. Because if the number gets too large somebody will invent something like TIVO that makes it easy enough for grandparents to do and then they'll be freaking out-like people who make TV commercials are now.


David T Rosenthal. Chicago native, lived in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Graduated Columbia University. Did film/tv acting. Studied Bujinkan Taijutsu. Comic book and movie fan. Renovating my home.


Source: www.isnare.com


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