A couple of Marvel employee tweets from late last week, joking about the bedbug infestation of Google headquarters, were all the hint we had that Marvel and Google might be communicating publisher-to-search-engine about who-knows-what.
Bleeding Cool says they have an answer, and (as we all might have guessed) it’s about piracy.
It appears that last week Marvel sent a DMCA Notice to Google regarding the popular pirated comics blog Comics Invasion. Google had “jurisdiction” in the matter because Comics Invasion, which would catalog links and direct downloads of scanned comics, was a blogspot blog, and Blogger/Blogspot is owned by Google. The site has since been taken down, although it has resurfaced with its archive back to 2008 on WordPress.
Seems odd that Marvel would actually visit Google offices in order to submit a DMCA, and Bleeding Cool’s sources indicate that there was more to it.
I’m told that Marvel have asked Google to block links to all pirated comic books, but have been rebuffed. Instead, Marvel are to be issuing a number of DMCA notices, like the one that took down Comics Invasion, which Google will abide by.
This piecemeal whack-a-mole approach will surely be tiresome for both Marvel, Google, and the pirates. But hey, at least we don’t have DRM on monthly floppies.
(via Bleeding Cool.)
