Is it okay to make a program available for faster reading of old pages?

[tempelorg]

I have made a little program that makes it faster and easier to read through the story from the start.

It downloads every image only once and stores it on the local disk. It then shows the images in a window for quick browsing.

This has several advantages over reading on the web:

Reading is quicker because one doesn't have to wait for the next page to load all the time because it pre-fetches the next pages in the background while reading.
Since it doesn't have the huge web site header, one doesn't have to scroll down all the time to read the lower half of every page.
It saves bandwidth because when one goes back to reading a page, it doesn't have to load it again from the web.
The pages can be read offline. I could even imagine writing a similar program for the iPad! (Android, anyone?)

It works on Mac OSX, Windows and Linux thanks to having made it with Xojo.

So, is there (a) interest for such a program, especially since I'd make it available for free, including source code? And (b) is it okay to do that?

[bentheiii]

I'm not exactly sure what the program does, if the images of the comics are distributed along with the program, than Rich as put a (completely justified) no-no ban on distributing his comics or a part of them anywhere (http://www.giantitp.com/FAQ.html#faq14), making your program strictly not okay. Alternatively, if you only distribute your software which, when activated, downloads and stores the comics on a local machine than technically, no-one said it's not allowed so I suppose it's kosher.
As for demand, I dunno, I can certainly see the use of it. I have indeed had the site go dark on me and have wished for an easier way to navigate the comics on most of my re-reads, but I don't know if I would download a program specifically for this purpose. Maybe if it had the ability to store or browse other comics...

[tempelorg]

Thanks for the clarification.
As a pro developer I fully understand the copyright issue of the comics and would not dare to redistribute them, of course.
The program downloads them to the user's own disk.

Some websites / content creators do not like such readers because it hides other information on the web page, which is often a concern if they earn money with ads on the site, for instance.

That's why I asked. So, how do I find out if this is okay with Rich? Can he be contacted about this, or is there someone else that can speak for him?

Also, I could improve the program to download images of similarly made comic web sites, as long as they have forward buttons and the img links in plain html code (i.e. do not use flash or javascript for selecting and showing the images).

But that would require more work and I'd probably not make it available for free. I just wrote this program as it's now for my own reading pleasure now that I want to start reading the first ~860 pages I had never read so far. And then sharing it would be easy for me. I just want to make sure that I do not violate Rich's interests by that.

[veti]

You can send Rich a private message via this board.

The easiest way to do that is:

Log in
Find a message posted by Rich (e.g. the first message in the current strip discussion thread)
Click on the poster's name (in this case, 'The Giant'), where it appears above the avatar to the left of the message text
Select 'Send a Private Message to The Giant'

[tempelorg]

Done. Thanks, veti.

[Klear]

As long as the Giant doesn't mind, I would certainly like this when I inevitably decide to reread the whole thing again...

[littlebum2002]

Yeah, let us know if Rich gives it his blessing. I, too, would be interested in this.

How much hard drive does the entire strip take up, BTW? would it be feasible to store it on a phone?

(Oh, and :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin: if you make it for Android!)

[Smolder]

There's another technology already available that caches the comics locally for faster reading.
It's called a book, and the Giant has already gone to great pains to make his books available again.

[Anatares]

There's another technology already available that caches the comics locally for faster reading.
It's called a book, and the Giant has already gone to great pains to make his books available again.

Even though I own most of the books (With the rest on the way!) they are kind of bulky to, say, bring to work and flip through on my lunch break. I would love to see an Android app similar to the Dilbert one available that fetches the comics as they update and puts them in a phone-friendly format.

OP, maybe offer the Giant your services to build such an app and charge a small fee ($1-2) for readers to download it. The fee would go to the Giant of course to make up for lost advertising revenue since it would bypass the website. It is his creative work after all.

[littlebum2002]

Even though I own most of the books (With the rest on the way!) they are kind of bulky to, say, bring to work and flip through on my lunch break. I would love to see an Android app similar to the Dilbert one available that fetches the comics as they update and puts them in a phone-friendly format.

OP, maybe offer the Giant your services to build such an app and charge a small fee ($1-2) for readers to download it. The fee would go to the Giant of course to make up for lost advertising revenue since it would bypass the website. It is his creative work after all.

Agreed. While I don't have the books yet (except for the prequels, because I want to read all the commentary together after the strip is complete), I do plan on buying them, but they're not nearly as convenient as carrying all the strips together on your phone.

Also, while I would not be adverse to buying an app like this, the advertisements are only on the forums. There are no ads on the comic pages themselves, so this shouldn't eliminate any ad revenue.

[tempelorg]

To answer the question about the size:

I store the images in their orignal GIF format, and all 916 imgs take about 150 MB. That fits easily on a mobile device.

Also, I manage to read them on my iPad by simply putting them on my Dropbox, and then read them with the Dropbox app on the iPad. Most pages are well readable without the need for scrolling on the iPad in portrait orientation, and the Dropbox app even lets me switch to the next page with a simple swipe!

Totally cool :)

[Lord Torath]

I use Windows Photo Viewer for this. :smallyuk: One problem is it re-sizes everything to fit in the viewing window. So any multi-page comics need to be zoomed.

[Haldir]

If the program seeks the data off of the Giant's server and downloads it to an individuals local disk, then all you're doing is driving up his server access numbers in a big spike and then never going back. I could see why this might be a financial concern for him.

[tempelorg]

If the program seeks the data off of the Giant's server and downloads it to an individuals local disk, then all you're doing is driving up his server access numbers in a big spike and then never going back. I could see why this might be a financial concern for him.

I do not agree.

I already explained in my post that I rather think it's the opposite: Since every reader will only download them once, it rather reduces the amount of server accesses per reader.

Also, since it only downloads about one page every 2 seconds, it isn't creating a spike, either. And anyone who just runs the program and then decides not to use it after all, will have downloaded only a few pages, because the app stops downloading as soon as you close it.

So, it would effectively only download it for people who are actually interested in reading it.

Also, since the imgs are fairly small in size, this isn't huge data amounts. Seeing that he has raised over a million for reprinting the books, I don't think a few more $s for the servers is going to be a problem. It may, however, increase his popularity. In any case, I think traffic costs are his least concern.

I might be wrong, of course, I'm just giving you my view of it.

[Haldir]

Traffic costs are his main concern, because he runs an ad on just about every page. So if you spike it once by downloading every comic with a two second interval, but don't look at any of the ads on the page and never go back, the Giant then potentially lost money.

[Cavenskull]

Traffic costs are his main concern, because he runs an ad on just about every page. So if you spike it once by downloading every comic with a two second interval, but don't look at any of the ads on the page and never go back, the Giant then potentially lost money.
There are no ads on the comic pages--only on the forum.

[The Giant]

I've responded to tempelorg's message and will be taking a look at the program before making any decision.


There are no ads on the comic pages--only on the forum.

There are not third-party ads on the comic website. There is absolutely an ad below the comic which I use for my own products, which is the primary means by which I generate revenue. The fact that it has been running a Thank You message since the Kickstarter ended does not mean it will never be used to promote a GITP product ever again.

[Cavenskull]

There are not third-party ads on the comic website. There is absolutely an ad below the comic which I use for my own products, which is the primary means by which I generate revenue. The fact that it has been running a Thank You message since the Kickstarter ended does not mean it will never be used to promote a GITP product ever again.
I stand corrected. In my defense, the Thank You message has been there so long that I can't remember any advertisements that were there before. :smallsmile:

[littlebum2002]

There are not third-party ads on the comic website. There is absolutely an ad below the comic which I use for my own products, which is the primary means by which I generate revenue. The fact that it has been running a Thank You message since the Kickstarter ended does not mean it will never be used to promote a GITP product ever again.

Yeah, same here. I totally forgot there used to be other stuff under there!

[Bartle]

You crazy kids and your "apps" and "tools" and "frameworks". I would've just used lynx -dump, wget, and python.

Not that that's any better, just following a different intent.

[Fale]

You crazy kids and your "apps" and "tools" and "frameworks". I would've just used lynx -dump, wget, and python.

Not that that's any better, just following a different intent.
I actually wrote my own downloader entirely in Python which stores the comic's metadata (title and such) in a SQLite database.

Just a suggestion tempelorg, provided that you're able to release it, convert the GIFs into PNGs. According to your total GIF size, I'm saving ~50MB by doing so.

[Quild]

I'm not exactly sure what the program does, if the images of the comics are distributed along with the program, than Rich as put a (completely justified) no-no ban on distributing his comics or a part of them anywhere (http://www.giantitp.com/FAQ.html#faq14), making your program strictly not okay.

I've been reading the FAQ few weeks ago and I have been surprised by this precise point.
It is not okay for me to post on a forum one unmodified page of the webcomic because I find it appropriate with the discussion?

I’ve always figured that reposting was some kind of advertising…

[MaximKat]

I've been reading the FAQ few weeks ago and I have been surprised by this precise point.
It is not okay for me to post on a forum one unmodified page of the webcomic because I find it appropriate with the discussion?

I’ve always figured that reposting was some kind of advertising…

I'm pretty sure that including a single page for the purposes of discussion would fall under fair use.

[dancrilis]

I'm pretty sure that including a single page for the purposes of discussion would fall under fair use.

I'm pretty sure it falls under:
Also, please do not take, alter, or use the provided avatar images, comic images, or other pieces of Rich's art without express consent.

Particularly the 'comic images' mention.
Though what discussion could really require a full page escapes me at the moment (using a signal panel would also fall under that anyway).

[Klear]

I've been reading the FAQ few weeks ago and I have been surprised by this precise point.
It is not okay for me to post on a forum one unmodified page of the webcomic because I find it appropriate with the discussion?

I’ve always figured that reposting was some kind of advertising…

Rich is extremely careful when it comes to copyright laws, the reasoning being that if there was a legal dispute, he has to be seen as protecting his rights in all cases. As such, he doesn't want anybody to pretty much use a single pixel out of the comic.

[Quild]

I'm pretty sure that including a single page for the purposes of discussion would fall under fair use.

Well, the case I have in mind is that I remember posting years ago the page of "The test of mind" on a discussion about that kind of enigmas :p

So I can post a link but not the image itself? Even if by clicking on the image you get the link to the comic?

What about fan-art out of oots forums?
I've seen this one (http://inkthinker.deviantart.com/art/Belkar-Bitterleaf-55129038) years ago, the author never responded to me about if I could use it so I didn't, but it didn't occur to me at this point that I may need Rich's word as well.

[Warren Dew]

There's another technology already available that caches the comics locally for faster reading.
It's called a book, and the Giant has already gone to great pains to make his books available again.
Ordinary web browsers also cache the images, though they expire after a while to avoid the cache eating up unlimited disk space.


So I can post a link but not the image itself? Even if by clicking on the image you get the link to the comic?
Posting a link without permission is legal in the U.S., on the theory that the actual intellectual property still comes from the owner's servers, where the owner can control access if he wants. The same reasoning does not apply to copying the image, which once it gets on another server is out of the owner's control.

[littlebum2002]

If you post a link, then people see whatever ad is beneath the comic (when they start appearing there again). If you just post a picture of the comic, no one sees the ad. Even if the image links to the strip, I'm sure most people aren't going to click on it. Whenever someone posts an image in a forum, I never think "let me click on it to see what happens".
However, if someone makes a funny comment, then had a link to follow for that comment, I might follow that link to see the context. So yeah, I think you're better off not using images of the strip.


Like everyone else is saying, Rich certainly is VERY protective of his intellectual property. I think it's safe to say that Rich is Lawful Good, lol. That makes it hard for Chaotic types like me that would otherwise be doing gods-know-what with these strips, but I respect his wishes. Take this program for example. Even though I believe it wouldn't hurt anyone, I won't use it unless Rich says it's OK. Maybe I'm more Neutral than I thought.

[Quild]

Well, I can post an image without re-hosting it, which is the same than posting the link.

If I do this:

http://www.giantitp.com/Images/redesign/Icon_News.gif

This image would be changed if the icon is changed.
That may eat some server capacity from giantitp though.

I have no troubles posting links in stead of images, it's just that I thought that could be good advertising to share pages from oots and that people tend not to click on links while they have no choice seeing the big page in front of their eyes :p.

[Armitage]

I have no troubles posting links in stead of images, it's just that I thought that could be good advertising to share pages from oots and that people tend not to click on links while they have no choice seeing the big page in front of their eyes :p.
Taking something from somebody else and re-possting it somewhere is not really advertising.

The Link brings the reader to the source, they get the comic presented in the way Rich intended, they get all the information and know where to go to get more of these great comics.
Yes, I know that the comics contain the URL of this website, but a link brings you there directly, the URL you would have to type in, which is less direct.

[Quild]

Taking something from somebody else and re-possting it somewhere is not really advertising.

The Link brings the reader to the source, they get the comic presented in the way Rich intended, they get all the information and know where to go to get more of these great comics.
Yes, I know that the comics contain the URL of this website, but a link brings you there directly, the URL you would have to type in, which is less direct.

But an image can also be clickable in order to be a link (people don't always realize it though). I can put a small text with the image explaining what oots is.

To be fair, I've been linking pages 6 times since 2006 on the french forums I am regularly on. I have hotlinked an image only once and it seems the hotlink doesn't work anymore.

I still think an image can be an advertisement because the person may want to know more about the comic.

But if the Giant is not ok with that, I respect his choice.

[tempelorg]

Just a suggestion tempelorg, provided that you're able to release it, convert the GIFs into PNGs. According to your total GIF size, I'm saving ~50MB by doing so.
So far, I found the opposize to be true, but that may be because the tools I use only handles 32 bit images. What were the exact parameters for your PNG imgs?

[Warren Dew]

Well, I can post an image without re-hosting it, which is the same than posting the link.

If I do this:

http://www.giantitp.com/Images/redesign/Icon_News.gif

This image would be changed if the icon is changed.
That may eat some server capacity from giantitp though.
It's called "hotlinking". From a legal perspective, it's the same as a regular link, since the web browser goes to the content owner's server to get the image. If the person who owns the content cares enough, he can set up his server not to serve hotlinks.

Some people consider hotlinking to be poor form, but it's not illegal in the U.S., unless the server you're linking to is serving material it doesn't have permission for.

[The_old_Man]

It's called "hotlinking". From a legal perspective, it's the same as a regular link, since the web browser goes to the content owner's server to get the image. If the person who owns the content cares enough, he can set up his server not to serve hotlinks.

Some people consider hotlinking to be poor form, but it's not illegal in the U.S., unless the server you're linking to is serving material it doesn't have permission for.

Where would be the difference to deep-linking or framing?

In Europe there's a decision of the European Court of Justice pending whether or not that'd be legal under the Copyright Directive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive).