Old School (Part 12)

By: Brian Mah

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What are your opinions regarding digital downloading? Is there a way the industry can police it?
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Patrick Macias: On one hand, illegal downloads have helped to spread otaku culture. On the other, it has definitely had a negative impact on the parent industry. From a realistic standpoint, policing is probably impossible. There needs to be an alternative that serves everyone’s needs and things seem to be moving in that direction.

Rikki Simons: Until the fundamentals of digital material itself changes, such as computers evolving into quantum computers. I don't think you can stop digital downloading. I think the only solution is to make your work
available online for free and sell advertising and merchandise to
support it, just like web comics creators do.

Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons: If it's the internet then it is next to impossible to police it. The only time I get upset is when there's an art thief. Luckily, I've only had to deal with this personally once on-line. Someone had the nerve to repost on their site an image of the ShutterBox cover art to volume number 1 I had rendered in a blue color scheme, and tried to claim that they had colored it. I sent this person an e-mail declaring I was the original artist and that what they posted I use for business cards and they most certainly did not color it. I asked them to please remove it from their site at once. This person complied by removing their entire website without further incident. I didn't even get a "sorry".

Jan Scot-Fraizer: Man, I hate this question. It strongly affects the industry in a negative way and it would be nice if it were to stop but it's not going to and it's not going to abate. Downloads are virtually effortless, free, disposable, free of physical format and specific player and everything is available. People will not voluntarily turn off such a cornucopia.