Circulating the tapes

TV Tropes, I've been thinking.

There are / were many great webcomics out there. There are just as many that were abandoned by the author and thus are no longer readable on the web.

I recall some of my old favourites. Bloodlark. RPG World. Wendy.

...And bless myself that I was smart enough to save the archives on hard drive.

So here comes my question. Would it be okay to give these the Kid Radd treatment, ie. upload the archives somewhere where future generations can download and view them? I realize that it'd be the best to do this with the authors' consent, but I also realize that many of them do not care or consider it an Old Shame (though I doubt that they'd object).

Interesting moral question. Obviously, if you get their consent, there's no objection to it. If the author is no longer accessible... then I honestly don't know. I'd love for the good stuff to be available for anyone to read, but if they really don't want their comics to be read, that should be respected.

Personal story: a friend of mine took her webcomic down when she decided to quit working on it. I thought she should have left it up (it was a gag-a-day comic with few story arcs, so it wasn't like its unfinished state made it incomplete). But then, I think about my own feelings about my stories from a couple of years back and can understand her actions.

I'm wishy-washy. If they went to the trouble to take it down, I would presume that they would not appreciate seeing it put back up. However, if it was simply being hosted on a "too long inactive and we flush it" site, they may not have realized it was gone until it was a done deal...

Another question is what to do with the workspages after the webcomic goes down. Take RPG World, for example. Being an Eastern RPG parody itself, it's a trope goldmine. But the archive's been down for a while and it's unlikely that Ian would bother to put it back up. Should we leave the works page as it is as a memento, knowing that no newcomer would probably be able to read it?

The thing is that from what I see happens is that these artists just stop caring for certain works. They reorganize their site, or lose it or move to another and just don't bother to upload them again. Some of these comics were attempts at building a career or making a living that didn't work. There was likely fanmail, probably even encouragement after they have ended that they should pick it up again, about which they may feel that the less of it there is the better. Some of them moved on to other projects and just don't care about their early stuff anymore. On the other hand, very few do explicitly hate their work so much that they'd send out a public request that they want it to be completely forgotten. It's just that they have other things they want to be remembered for now.

I, on the other hand, think that it's unfortunate if people who have come too late are deprived from enjoying these. To be honest — and you may disagree with me here — I feel that, to some extent, if one has put their work on the Internet, then he has made it, to some extent, public property. They deserve to be credited, not to be made unfair money of, or suffer any bad consequence because people still look at these, but if people can ensure that they will not have to spend their time on something related to this then the fair thing to do would be not to consciously prevent that people who did like their work try to keep them alive. But I realize that I may be preaching there.

But yeah, my favourite would be to upload all bygone comic archives to an own site, and take them down if the author asks for it (the same strategy used by many image-sharing sites). But, yes, that is again somewhat disrespectful.

Relevant for RPG World.

edited 15th Sep '10 9:57:20 PM by newtonthenewt

^..Which has the anniversary for having been up for two years today. Not gonna happen.

Of course we should keep the works pages for deceased-and-removed webcomics. They were works; they were created; they had tropes in them. The fact that they're no longer accessible is sad, but doesn't change anything.

Archive it. Internet pages are tenuous enough already. If they end up inspiring someone,so much the better.

IIRC, Hellbound has been mirrored too, and as for Loserz I think that's the case, but that might just be the "official" site.

I don't think we have the right. The authors chose to take these works down. Its a different matter if they just didn't want to pay for them being up or something, but if the author wanted them off the net for personal reasons, I think we should respect said authors wishes.

I suggest you at least ask.