The Department of Justice, the FBI, a consortium of comic book publishers, and Florida law firm Katten Muchen Rosenman has shut down pirate website www.Htmlcomics.com.

The operation, said the law firm’s press release, is “believed to have been the largest, best-known and most easily accessible website of its kind, producing rampant copyright infringement on a daily basis and depriving artists and publishers of hard-earned and much-needed revenue. By April 2010, the website claimed to have an average of 1.6 million visits per day and more than 6,630,021 pages of comic books offered for unrestricted viewing. Ridding the Internet of such a large source of pirated content is a major victory for the comic industry and the publishing industry in general.”

Not officially named in the action is author Harlan Ellison, a righteous and relentless pursuer of pirates whose action against AOL resulted in an important settlement.  Ellison’s  properties were among those purloined, according to the author, and the footprints leading to Htmlcomics’ door bear the spoor of Ellison and his “Flying Blue Monkey Squadron”, friends and wellwishers who keep an “eye on the street” and may have assisted the FBI in locating the superperp.

The press release in full is reprinted below, or you can click on it here.

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May 5, 2010
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LOS ANGELES – Comic book pirating website www.htmlcomics.com has been shut down and all of its servers confiscated, following an FBI search based on a warrant alleging criminal copyright infringement. The FBI investigation was performed in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice, a consortium of comic publishers and their legal counsel, a team of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP attorneys specializing in the areas of intellectual property, publishing and comics, as well as local counsel in Miami.

Prior to the combined efforts of the consortium and the authorities, Htmlcomics was believed to have been the largest, best-known and most easily accessible website of its kind, producing rampant copyright infringement on a daily basis and depriving artists and publishers of hard-earned and much-needed revenue. By April 2010, the website claimed to have an average of 1.6 million visits per day and more than 6,630,021 pages of comic books offered for unrestricted viewing. Ridding the Internet of such a large source of pirated content is a major victory for the comic industry and the publishing industry in general.

Htmlcomics creator Gregory Hart, 47, acquired pirated copies of more than 5,700 series of comics spanning every major comic publisher in the United States, and made them available for public viewing on his site. The comics could be viewed from cover to cover and page by page and the infringing copies were reproduced on Hart’s servers and publicly displayed without authorization. Titles available included Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, The Simpsons, Futurama, Avengers, Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, Dilbert, Peanuts, Catwoman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Hellboy, Star Wars, 300, Predator, The Mask, Iron Man and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among thousands of others.

The FBI’s Tampa Field Office headed the investigation leading to the warrant. The consortium of publishers cooperating with law enforcement include Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Bongo Comics, Archie Comics, Conan Properties Int’l LLC, Mirage Studios Inc., and United Media.

Katten has one of the nation’s premier, full-service entertainment and media practices, providing comprehensive domestic and international representation in the entertainment industry. The firm’s entertainment and media attorneys consider themselves partners with clients from concept to completion. When litigation becomes necessary, the practice represents its clients aggressively and effectively, in matters involving intellectual property issues, contractual and business tort disputes and distribution rights issues, among others. Katten also provides representation to entrepreneurs in business and personal matters. The firm’s entertainment attorneys pride themselves on providing cutting-edge, creative solutions to complicated problems.
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• He’s ripped off hundreds of books.
• He can rip yours off in five minutes. It’s so easy even a caveman can do it.
• He painstakingly proofreads the books he steals.
• He has ethical and moral standards. And a conscience…of sorts.
• Though piracy’s toll is in the billions of dollars, he thinks the crime is overrated.
• But he admits it’s a crime.

That’s a thumbnail profile of a book pirate. I’ve condensed it from an astounding interview with one conducted by C. Max Magee on his website “The Millions”.

After pondering the phenomenon of book piracy, a crime estimated to drain over $3 billion annually from legitimate copyright owners, Magee decided the best way to understand it was to ask a practitioner. “Who are the people downloading these books? How are they doing it and where is it happening? And, perhaps most critical for the publishing industry, why are people deciding to download books and why now? I decided to find out. After a few hours of searching – stalled by a number dead links and password protected sites – I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk.”

The perpetrator’s handle is “The Real Caterpillar” and, as is so often the case, he is far from a noble Robin Hood. “He lives in the Midwest,” writes Magee, “he’s in his mid-30s and is a computer programmer by trade. By some measures, he’s the publishing industry’s ideal customer, an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends. But he’s also uploaded hundreds of books to file sharing sites and he’s downloaded thousands.”

Here are a few revelations in his own words:

• I generally only upload content that I have scanned, with some exceptions. I have been out of the book scene for a while, concentrating on rare and out of print movies instead of books because it is much easier to rip a movie from VHS or DVD than to scan and proof a book
• I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may
• Just because someone downloads a file, it does not mean they would have bought the product I think this is the key fact that many people in the music industry ignore – a download does not translate to a lost sale
• In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing…however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks
• I’ve spent anywhere from 5 to 40 hours proofing the OCR output

And, finally: “In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers.”

Two persons mentioned by Caterpillar as having been stolen from are Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison. Both have published privacy or anti-piracy statements on their websites. You may read Helprin’s here but it says in part: “You agree to comply with all copyright laws worldwide in your use of this site and to prevent any unauthorized copying of the materials.” Ellison’s is an all-caps fist-shaking no-prisoners Jeremiad which you may read in its entirety here. Here’s a taste:

A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS’ WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF “FAIR USE” OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN “INFORMATION MUST BE FREE.” A WRITER’S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES’ ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND “SCREW THE AUTHOR”? WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!

Caterpillar laughs at them. “One thing that will definitely not change anyone’s mind or inspire them to stop,” he says, “are polemics from people like Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison – attitudes like that ensure that all of their works are available online all of the time.”

For the full flavor of Magee’s interview read Confessions of a Book Pirate in its entirety here.

We are Harlan Ellison’s literary agents. Our e-book company is publisher of some thirty of his books. Though we cannot express ourselves as colorfully as he, we support his position completely. His work and property, the work and property of countless other authors, our own labor and investment and that of all legitimate, reputable publishers worldwide are being stolen. Those who file-share copyrighted books are receiving stolen property. We ask those who take and those who receive to consider whether there is any difference between having your literary property robbed and your purse stolen. For one victim’s answer, read Are Pirate-site Downloaders Better Than Muggers, Pickpockets and Shoplifters? This Victim Doesn’t Think So.

Richard Curtis

At long last some thirty of Harlan Ellison’s finest books are becoming available in paperback. After releasing them as e-books we worked closely with the author to make sure the print editions reflected his stringent editorial standards.

Recently released are Strange Wine , The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, Harlan Ellison’s Hornbook, Troublemakers, Partners in Wonder, Stalking the Nightmare and Again, Dangerous Visions. You can see them all on display on Ellison’s E-Reads author page.

Many connoisseurs of Harlan Ellison consider Strange Wine to be his finest collection. Though its contents, individually speaking, are not as high profile as some of his other collections, taken as a whole it is an electrifying book. Here’s an excerpt from an Amazon reviewer with the handle “Penguin Egg”:

It is good news that this book is soon to be republished. It’s about time. I’ve been a fan of Ellison for a quarter of a century and this, by far, is my favourite book of his. If you have never come across Ellison before, you’re in for a treat. A master story-teller, he breaks new ground with practically every story, whether it is in the style of the telling – such as “From A to Z, The Chocolate Alphabet”-, or in the subject matter – “Croatoan.” Whatever the style or the subject matter, the voice of Ellison is unmistakable, -uncompromising, vivid, funny, and perceptive- so that even if an Ellison story did not have his name above it, you would quickly guess who it was. The stories range from the humorous “Mom” to the serious “In Fear of K.” Whatever he writes, he is thoroughly entertaining. What makes this collection of stories different from his others is that this collection has an introduction for every story. With any other writer, this would be an intrusion; but with Ellison, it works, because the man is funny, wise, and entertaining. They are basically a miscellany of anything that Ellison wants to talk about: How he came to write this or that story; where he wrote it; the ideas behind it- and sometimes the connection to the story is tenuous…

And for a delicious appetizer, you won’t want to miss Ellison’s introduction.

RC

“I should do a freebie for Google? What’s the matter, do they have a tin cup and an eye patch on the street? F**K NO!”

Though none of the artists solicited to donate their work for nothing to Google Chrome actually said that, they might well have paraphrased Harlan Ellison’s foaming-at-the-mouth rant against Warner Bros. and all other corporate patrons that think they’re doing writers and artists a favor by displaying their work.

Canadian-based illustrator Gary Taxali’s written response to Google was slightly more printable than Ellison’s, but the writer would certainly agree with the graphic one issued by the artist (left). Here’s what Taxali had to say:

DON’T CALL ME
In the last little while, there has been a MAJOR backslide in the industry. Poor rates have been an issue for a while but things are becoming worse. Clients fees are getting even lower and the rights theyre demanding are even higher.

You want examples? How about SWATCH calling me and asking me to design a watch. They wanted a complete transfer of copyright for a paltry fee. As if thats going to happen. Google calls me and wants my work for their new search engine all over the web, the fee? Nothing. Editorial clients are slashing 1999s fees almost in half and citing the bad economy as an excuse. You know what? My excuse is that the economy is bad so you have to pay me MORE for an illustration. Hows that for an economic stimulus package?

So heres to every client with shitty fees and terms. Do not waste my time or contact me. I am very busy working with clients who respect artists and youre wasting my time with your solicitations. So for you, I give you a special salute that I hope will keep you away because I dont need your work.

According to Andrew Adam Newman writing in the New York Times about the Taxali-inspired uprising, his posting on Drawger “drew more than 200 responses, many from other illustrators who also had rejected Google’s offer.” Newman quotes another illustrator, Brian Stauffer, who also turned Google down. “When a company like Google comes out very publicly and expects that the market would just give them free artwork, it sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Sadly, there are plenty of artists who need the exposure and will take Google up on its offer.

And of course, Google may feel it needs an eye patch and tin cup. It only squeaked by the first quarter of 2009 with a $1.42 billion profit.

You can read the whole story in Newman’s Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google. You can also Catch a snatch of Ellison’s fulmination on YouTube and buy it online.

Richard Curtis
This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times. Every blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers. Without them our free society would not only be impoverished but imperiled. We must strive to find a way to rescue the industry, even if it means nothing more than buying a paper on the street. Support your local newspaper.

Fans of Harlan Ellison know that E-Reads has reissued over two dozen of his classic works in e-book format. But now we’ve released them in paperback as well.

Among the long out-of-print titles you can now hold in your hands are:

Deathbird Stories
City on the Edge of Forever
An Edge in My Voice
Children of the Streets
The Deadly Streets
From the Land of Fear
Harlan Ellison’s Movie
No Doors, No Windows

Keep visiting Harlan’s author page for updates. When that “paperback” link turns hot, you’re good to go.

RC

“It crouches near the center of creation. There is no night where it waits. Only the riddle of which terrible dream will set it loose. It beheaded mercy to take possession of that place. It feasts on darkness from the minds of men. No one has ever seen its eyeless face. When it sleeps we know a few moments of peace. But when it breathes again we go down in fire and mate with jackals. It knows our fear. It has our number. It waited for our coming and it will abide long after we have become congealed smoke. It has never heard music, and shows its fangs when we panic. It is the beast of our savage past, hungering today, and waiting patiently for the mortal meal of all our golden tomorrows. It lies waiting.”

This is the “Beast” of the title story of Harlan Ellison’s mind-bending collection of stories. The Beast is a hideous thing that has drawn the madness out of a race of alien beings and infected humanity with it.

Though each story in The Beast that Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World burnishes Ellison’s reputation in yet another coruscating way way, the gem is “A Boy and His Dog”. Ellison continued the story in the graphic novel Vic and Blood . It was the basis of a movie adaptation in 1974, the post-apocalyptic science fiction film of the same name, directed by L. Q. Jones working in collaboration with Ellison.

For a special treat, read Neil Gaiman’s introduction.

RC

Many connoisseurs of Harlan Ellison considered Strange Wine to be his finest collection. Though its contents, individually speaking, are not as high profile as some of his other collections, taken as a whole it is an electrifying book. Here’s an excerpt from an Amazon reviewer with the handle “Penguin Egg”:

It is good news that this book is soon to be republished. It’s about time. I’ve been a fan of Ellison for a quarter of a century and this, by far, is my favourite book of his. If you have never come across Ellison before, you’re in for a treat. A master story-teller, he breaks new ground with practically every story, whether it is in the style of the telling – such as “From A to Z, The Chocolate Alphabet”-, or in the subject matter – “Croatoan.” Whatever the style or the subject matter, the voice of Ellison is unmistakable, -uncompromising, vivid, funny, and perceptive- so that even if an Ellison story did not have his name above it, you would quickly guess who it was. The stories range from the humorous “Mom” to the serious “In Fear of K.” Whatever he writes, he is thoroughly entertaining. What makes this collection of stories different from his others is that this collection has an introduction for every story. With any other writer, this would be an intrusion; but with Ellison, it works, because the man is funny, wise, and entertaining. They are basically a miscellany of anything that Ellison wants to talk about: How he came to write this or that story; where he wrote it; the ideas behind it- and sometimes the connection to the story is tenuous…

And for a delicious appetizer, you won’t want to miss Ellison’s introduction.

RC

Spring has arrived and lawsuits are pushing their hardy green shoots through the soil everywhere we look. It started last week when we reported that Harlan Ellison is suing Paramount and the Writers Guild of America. Then we learned that Discovery Communications was suing Amazon for patent infringement over the Kindle (“Did Jeff Overlook U.S. Patent Number 7,298,851?”). Today it’s a Swiss company called Monec Holding Ltd. and the target is Apple. Did Steve Jobs overlook patent No. 6,335,678? According to an Apple Insider report by Katie Marsal, he may have. She writes:

In a 7-page complaint filed with a Virginia district court Monday, Berne, Switzerland-based Monec Holding Ltd accuses the iPhone maker of patent infringement, unfair trade practices, monopolization, and tortious interference for allegedly treading on its January 2002 patent No. 6,335,678 titled “Electronic device, preferably an electronic book.”

Monec claims Apple’s distribution of e-book applications violates an early patent filed by the Swiss firm. “Although Monec does not identify the specific eBook reading applications that prompted its lawsuit,” writes Marsal, “the complaint was filed just weeks after Apple began distributing Amazon.com’s Kindle eBook reader software through the App Store.”

Monec’s website is unadorned, uninformative, unimaginative and uninteractive but if anyone reading this finds himself in the vicinity of Galgenfeldweg 18 in Berne, Switzerland we’ll be most interested to know what their office looks like and how many people work in it.

It’s easy to dismiss the actions against Amazon and Apple as nuisance lawsuits but they must be taken seriously. Pundits who brushed off the patent infringement suit brought by a firm called NTP Inc. against BlackBerry vendor Research In Motion Ltd. stopped laughing after the court awarded NTP more than $53 million in damages.

Actually, if anyone has grounds for a lawsuit it’s science fiction novelist Ben Bova, author of a novel entitled Cyberbooks. He published it in 1989, long before e-books were a gleam in the eyes of Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. Here’s the summary: “A futuristic satire on the fate of the publishing industry after the invention of ‘cyberbooks’, electronic books which eliminate the need for paper, printers, salesmen, distributors and even booksellers.” Unfortunately, Bova didn’t patent the gadget but wouldn’t you imagine that one of the parties in these lawsuits owes him a generous tip for his foresighted concept?

In any event we’ll be at ringside watching Amazon and Apple wrestling with their tormentors.

RC

In an earth-scorching fulmination including a denunciation of “my once-tough, beloved Guild – my UNION”, Harlan Ellison announced that he has launched a lawsuit against CBS-Paramount, Inc. and Writers Guild of America. Papers filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California cite “breach of the duty of fair representation” and “breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement”.

The specific issues are failure to account for and pay licensing and publication revenues resulting from publication by Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, divisions of Paramount, of a paperback trilogy that Ellison alleges is a “knock-off” of his famous Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever; and the failure of the Guild to support his complaints or take action against Paramount. He seeks unspecific damages from Paramount, but because he remains a loyal member of the Guild he is asking for only one dollar from the union. However, he also seeks “a judicial determination as to whether the WGA is doing what its stated purpose has been since day-one! To fight and negotiate for him and other writers.”

Ellison reserves the full measure of his ire for Paramount:

“The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who ‘have more important things to worry about,’ who’ll have their assistant get back to you, who don’t actually read or create, who merely ‘take’ meetings, and shuffle papers – much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams – they refuse even to notice…until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you’ve made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars…from OUR labors…just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters.”

And that’s just for warmups. As long as you’re prepared to confront both barrels of his 12-gauge invective, you can read the complete text of his press release here.

The City on the Edge of Forever is a poignant love story that takes the viewer back to 1930s America. Kirk and Spock race to apprehend a renegade criminal and restore the order of the universe. It is here that Kirk faces his ultimate dilemma: a choice between the universe – or his one true love. It became the classic Star Trek episode, winning the 1966-67 Writers Guild of America Award for best teleplay and the 1967 Hugo Award (the only teleplay ever to do so!). It was also ranked as one of the”100 Greatest Television Episodes of All Time” by TV Guide.

E-Reads has published the original teleplay of The City on the Edge of Forever as Ellison intended it to be aired. The author’s introductory essay (expanded by 15,000 words) reveals all of the details of what Ellison describes as a “fatally inept treatment” of his creative work.

Ellison is determined to have his day in court. Read his screenplay, introduction, and the description of his lawsuit and you can vicariously serve on the jury.

RC

Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed

Marty Clark “spent over two years with Harlan in the enviable position of personal secretary, administrative officer of his professional corporation, and occasional grammarian.” Those who have experienced the master’s bark and bite might choose a different adjective than “enviable”. Clark not only lived to tell the tale, but went on to assemble, from hundreds of rare and previously unprinted works, this breathtaking collection of twenty wide-ranging essays that demonstrate why the monstre sacre of imaginative literature won the prestigious Silver Pen award of P.E.N. International in 1982.

Clark’s introduction is filled with insight into the essay form and Ellison’s place in the tradition that began with Montaigne.

You can download the e-book of Sleepless Nights, but before long we will have it in print format as well. Just keep an eye on our home page for an announcement.

RC

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INTRODUCTION BY MARTY CLARK

For the serious Ellison reader, there are few tasks more difficult than staying current with his nonfiction output. Harlan’s work appears all over the literary map, so that it is impossible to know where he will turn up next. This is also true of his fiction, but one can always count on the publication of a new fiction collection every few years to gather together those stories which one has missed. Until now, this has not been so of his essays. They have occasionally been included in other collections and, as with the four essays which appear in Harlan’s short story collection Stalking the Nightmare (Phantasia Press, 1982), have received raves. Also much in demand are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat (Ace, 1983) which collected the columns of television criticism which Harlan wrote over a period of four years in the Los Angeles Free Press. However, Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed marks the first time that a book has been devoted exclusively to the best of his general essays. The twenty reprinted here are from such disparate sources as Video Review, Heavy Metal and the Saint Louis Literary Supplement.

To read Clark’s full intro, click here.