Webcomic Box is another webcomic image stripper that diverts traffic from the actual websites. Actually hotlinks the comics, stealing bandwidth from the creator’s websites… as well as reposting without permission.

I had a conversation with the person behind Webcomic Box, and this is what they said after I told him he should not be doing this:

Roman Tsjupa <draconyster-at-gmail.com>

It is not illegal because im not actually copying the content, just hotlinking to it, so it doesn’t violate any DMCA law.

There is a lot of webcomic reader apps out there, just like there are things like Adblock etc. A lot of people will not follow the webcomic on a day to day basis if its not presented to them in an acceptable format etc. This website is for such people.

E.g. If i am on my phone in a bus I simply will not go to read my favourite comics online because of the amount of bandwidth each pageload will cost me.

At the end it is the users’ choice how they want their comic read.

I don’t mean to upset the comic creators, if they wish I can add more of their links (e.g links to their shops/pages/fan art) to the comics main page. I will remove a comic if there is now way to reason with its creator. 

The website also does a lot of good, e.g. some comics gain exposure that theyw ouldnt get otherwise.

If you yourself are the artist behind the comic think about it, and if you can’t be persuaded with me adding more of your links/conent to main comics page I will remove the comic. 

I then basically said that he is still stealing and that it is not cool, and now people will likely start getting on him about the whole thing. He replied:

Roman Tsjupa <draconyster-at-gmail.com>

Well there is a caching feature to just download each page once, but actually I would need comic creators permission to do  this (because I would need to save the page on my own server).

I’m not using them for my own purposes, its not like I have my own ads running there. 

Again, I always try to reason with the artist. If he doesn’t like his comic feature, he can tell me and I’ll remove it.

I could ask permission beforehand, but sometimes its actually a pain to find the artists email.  

He actually said “I could ask permission beforehand, but sometimes its actually a pain to find the artists email. “ Which to me says that he does not really seem to care or really be a fan. He’s just been giving excuses.

Certainly there have been some people that have made these readers in the past, with good intentions. But they ultimately realized that, even with the copyright concerns and bandwidth theft, that its relatively NOT COOL to do this.