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I run the Cool Calvin and Hobbes Collection - http://calvinandhobbes.me http://calvinandhobbes.me - and as one of the very early fan sites have seen many C&H f
by tobtoh 16y ago
I run the Cool Calvin and Hobbes Collection - http://calvinandhobbes.me http://calvinandhobbes.me - and as one of the very early fan sites have seen many C&H fan sites come and go.
For most of the past 15 years, the most popular C&H site was Martijn Reemst's site which was truly comprehensive. Sadly that was taken down a few years ago because it featured a search engine. The same thing happened to S. Anand's fan site once they offered a search engine as well.
From what I have observed, in the late 90's Universal Press Syndicate was quite aggressive in pursuing C&H fan sites and getting them shutdown. However from 2000 onwards, they have taken a much more relaxed (enlightened?) approach with few C&H fan sites being pursued for copyright infringement. In fact, the only sites that I know that have been shutdown are those that have run search engines.
I've long been tempted to add such a search engine to my site as I've already got it all coded up and indexed already, but I'm quite fond of my site since it was the first website I ever created (and what started me on my IT career) and so don't want it shutdown.
- 1amzave 16y agoHmm...could you sidestep that by just OCRing (or however) the text from the strips and putting it on the page, thereby allowing Google to index it and thus make it searchable? Or would they not allow that either?
- tobtoh 16y agoYup. I've actually been quite fascinated about the different ways to build my own C&H search engine and have implemented (but not publicly) it two ways - one of which was to do it the way you suggested. I think from a 'will the publisher still it as copyright infringement' point of view, I think the answer is still yes if I host the text on my site. And so I haven't implemented my efforts as a result.
- mbreese 16y agoUsually this can be gotten around if you index the text, but don't display the text. This way you can still offer a search engine but not "publish" the text.
- jparise 16y agoIt looks like he already received a cease and desist request: Someone at AMU got in touch with me; a C&D was (is?) headed my way, but they seem open to finding a better solution, which is AWESOME. You may see some changes here in the next few days/week, but hopefully it will be in the best interest of everyone! (Click the "A note from Michael, the creator" link on the site to read the full text.)
- tobtoh 16y agoI also just noticed that Marcello's site is now unavailable. Marcello had downloaded the entire collection of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips from the gocomic site and made it available for download on his site. I've been surprised that it's lasted for so many months without any C&D notices being sent. However, Michaels' search engine mentions Marcello's website as the source of the images and it looks like that has drawn the attention of the AMU lawyers (unless it's simply overloaded from demand). I wouldn't be surprised if the script on scribd is taken down soon either.