[Groop] Fwd: Groo Sale!

[Denis Hackney]

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 10:05, Chris Emmett <mygodaplum at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I was considering in the light of all the comments whether my DVD backups
> for NAS were actually pirate in the face of the availability of official digital versions
> online. As I said I don't know the answer to this.

Copyright laws in most parts of the world (including, I'm pretty sure,
the UK) are quite clear on this - if you own the DVD, you're perfectly
within your rights to make a copy of it for your own personal use -
this includes format shifting so you can watch it on your PC or iPad,
or making a copy for backup purposes.  It's the same as importing a CD
you own into iTunes so you can listen to it on your iPod.  (Of course,
if you copy all your DVDs to your NAS then open it up to the web and
make your copies available for anyone to download, it's a very
different story.)

As for the main debate... well, I would love to have high-quality
digital copies of my entire Groo collection to carry around with me on
the new tablet I bought a couple of weeks ago.  The fact that people
are downloading the scanned versions shows there's demand for it -
people are willing to *break the law* to get low-quality, unlicenced
digital Groo.  If there were legit versions available, then yes, they
would still lose potential sales from people pirating it.  But there
are also plenty of people out there who would be willing and happy to
pay, and right now they are definitely losing every single one of
those sales.

That said, Groo belongs to Sergio and ME, and they have the only say
that matters in terms of how they licence Groo to be sold.  So if they
say they're not going to sell Groo in a digital format, then that's
that - unless they change their minds, we can't buy Groo in a digital
format.  Each person then has to decide for themselves whether
downloading dodgy copies off the internet is a) worth the risk of
legal repercussions if they get caught; and b) something their
conscience will allow them to do when they know full well that the
creators of this comic that they love have explicitly said they don't
want people doing that.

-Denis.