“I’ve been to Canada,,,it needs to be insulted.”

So, I’m just going to preface this by saying I’m not offended or irritated at all. This is not a defensive post.

But, really, the whole “making fun of Canada” shtick is lame. It’s played out beyond repair, and based on an idea that just isn’t funny. “It’s another country. Ha!” You’re acting like the dude who quotes “Family Guy” non-stop. By the time you got to the joke, it was already killed ten years ago.

This goes for talking about how awesome bacon is, Chuck Norris jokes, and saying “that’s how I roll”, too.

Oh, for the love of…!

Oh, dear goddess, aren’t you a piece of work? You’re so ludicrous that I can’t actually get angry at you, just sit here in amusement as you tar and feather yourself further and further with each post. I know your type, old son, I really do; you’re worldwide, you are, and all of a type, with your tantrum-squeals that usually devolve quickly into insults and invective.

So…still have your head shaved and a fondness for Doc Martens and brown shirts, son? I can see you’re endlessly angry with what you perceive as your place in the world.

I do appreciate the correction, though, old boy, in being informed that you’re just one of the floorwalkers and not the Uber Boss Of It All. Even less wonder that you won’t want to give out the name of your workplace; I’m sure your employer wouldn’t be too impressed with your proven techniques for driving custom from the door. As for the Twat Factor…it’s the price of doing business. People in retail develop techniques for dealing with the idiots. Then again, people in retail often develop techniques for screwing over and abusing customers. I think I know which school you attended.

You note that you’ve been banned from several places. I think that’s pretty much the final word on you, isn’t it? You’re that guy that bouncers chuck bodily out of clubs and women file orders of protection against and who winds up on the wrong side of an ASBO.

A: It was over a decade ago and B: That still doesn’t justify it, because as a consumer I have a right to shop where I like, and as a human being I have a right not to be verbally abused.

And once again – you’ve ignored my point. I want the business to thrive – but not at the expense of property, and my dignity in dealing with little fucks who treat the shop like a playground.

And yet again I have to ask what that has to do with scans_daily. You obviously believe there’s some kind of connection, but you’ve yet to make clear what that is.

And once more, with feeling- Why am I scum, Dave? What makes me subhuman? Because I don’t fit any of your criterea, but you’ve still applied the label to me. Please elaborate.

This is not the place for this conversation – but Matt Brady goes out of his way to bury any promotion of Marvel books.

>>>ex-scans regular

Irregular.

>>>>Which customer would you prefer?

More to the point, what the hell has that got to do with the coversation? You still haven’t explained that.

And once again – you’ve ignored my point. I want the business to thrive – but not at the expense of property, and my dignity in dealing with little fucks who treat the shop like a playground. This is the third time I’m after stressing that, but you’ve repeatedly ignored me, in favour of making immature jokes about sandwiches.

>>>The guy just objected to the idea that I was spending any of my money elsewhere.

And, given the current economic climate, I agree with him.

Here we get to the crux of the argument. The criminality of S_D isn’t that it will destroy the RETAIL industry, it’s that it will destroy the WHOLESALE industry. If someone who actually created comics came here and complained then we would have to be silent, because we would have no argument.

Creators, whose moral rights to their work are being violated, have a right to be angry. But I don’t see what the fuck this has to do with you. You obviously worried about the state of the retail comic industry, but the retail comic industry was hurting before internet comic piracy.

There are two reasons why comic pirates should feel guilty about piracy A) they are abusing moral rights of creators and B) they are destroying the wholesale industry and therefore shooting themselves in the foot. However as LCS have no moral rights to works nor are they necessary for the wholesale industry neither of them apply to you.

If you had said “You abused creators rights. You should be ashamed of that” then there would have been no recourse, because you would have been right. But you tried to make this about YOU when it was never about you, that was your problem.

There are many people who have a right to feel hurt by comic piracy. Unfortunately none of those people are you.

More to the point, what the hell has that got to do with the coversation? You still haven’t explained that.

They brought it on themselves. We’ve a regular occurance of prank callers calling us “fucking nerds”. Ergo – I call them what I like.

So, because you get prank calls, it’s okay to call me subhuman? What?

But, for you to come along flaunting your bags in another store’s face. Thats just rude, asshole

I had some books to carry. I picked up the first carrier bag than came to hand to put them in before I left the house. It happened to be a forbidden Planet bag. While I was out, I walked into my local comic shop to have a browse and pick up my pull list. As I walked through the door, the owner started shouting and swearing at me across the shop, at which point I realised what was printed on the side of the bag… I wasn’t “flaunting” anything at anyone. And, to repeat, the shop was bloody miles from the nearest Forbidden Planet, so it’s not like they were direct business rivals. The guy just objected to the idea that I was spending any of my money elsewhere.

Your last paragraph is hilarious. So, now you reveal your secret past as an ex-scans regular… “before the pirates took over”. That’s interesting, but makes your earlier statements like “S_D was used to relentlessly criticise comics by good, hardworking creators” and your charcterising all scans_daily users as being either homophobic morons laughing at yaoi or subhuman pirate scum look awfully odd. So am I to take it you were on of the homophobic morons laughing at the yaoi?

(Oh, and Newsarama puts up Marvel previews all the time? )

… in closing I shall just ask, out of curiosity- Why exactly am I scum? I’m not a pirate, I don’t promote piracy, I don’t put sandwiches anywhere near comics or make prank phone calls… is it just because I keep pulling you up for being such a prick to everyone?

So you approve of “customers” being allowed to be rude and abusive??? I’m just fascinated by your train of thought.

And anyone pirating from scans_daily is really, really bad at it. There’s much better sources of full issues that can be downloaded the day they ship (or before) in full .cbz form. scans_daily only offered individual, often cropped pages that popped up a lot more slowly. Funny how nobody’s shutting the hardcore pirates down– probably because doing that would require more effort.

…you know, that thought had occured to me, and deep down I really, really hope you’re right. But the truth is, my experiences tell me different…

Dave ‘O Neil is a sock-puppet from the scans daily fans. The whole thing is a complete fake, a way to discredit comics retailers by making it look like IF you set foot in a comic store, you will… well, have to deal with people like Dave O’ Neil.

Somebody’s simply trying to make comic retailers look bad, possibly reflecting their own negative experience. Why, I dunno. But nobody’s who’s actual rent-and-food livelihood depends on getting bodies into a comic shop would do this much wok to keep people out of comic shops.

And with regards the sandwich comment you’re fetishising on – if you had actually read all my comments – I said, as much as we’d like our business to skyrocket – I’d prefer one decent customer a week – to a gang of juvenile delinquents who invaded the shop last week on half term, wreaking havoc (criminal havoc, as it happened) – one of which was one of them pushing a half uneaten sandwich into the back issue bin.

Which customer would you prefer?

>>Why you think it’s acceptable to refer to people you just happen to have a difference of opinion with as being subhuman scum and assholes and shitstains and so on and so forth

They brought it on themselves. We’ve a regular occurance of prank callers calling us “fucking nerds”. Ergo – I call them what I like.

>> if you think I’m scum for buying comics in bookshops and from the newsagent. You’ve made it clear you think I’m scum for shopping in more than one comic shop (despite admitting to doing the same yourself)

There’s a difference between a bookstore and a comic store. Thats why they call it the DIRECT market, and the INDIRECT/Bookstore market. Obviously we’d prefer if you shopped in our store, but, whatever.

And I don’t have a problem with people shopping in another store. I resent the free advertising for that store. As it happens – I know the guy who runs the rival store, and the guy who runs the graphic novel section of the bookstore near us. Its a small town, and..thank God, they’re great guys. As it happens, I even sent a customer to our rivals today to look for a back issue. Thats supporting the industry.

But, for you to come along flaunting your bags in another store’s face. Thats just rude, asshole.

And, as for the constant harrassment about my “knowledge” of scans daily – its a website. I used to look at it when it was a site devoted to, you know funny pictures and superdickery style panels – and when I wasn’t working for the comic book store. When the pirates took over, i stopped going as regularly. It helped that I took my own livejournal offline in protest at LiveJournal’s censorship and I didnt have a feed in my friends page. It helped further that Marvel/DC started giving better previews to sites like Newsarama and CBR (even if Newsarama only promote the DC books)

That’s a pretty good analogy. Thing is:

many people pointed out how drugs could be gotten in so many other places that it was “unreasonable” to shut down the club.

is actually a pretty reasonable arument. A strong police presence outside the nightclub, performing searches and so forth, combined perhaps with an undercover operation to find the source of the flow of drugs into the place, could have sorted out the problem without necessarily killing the scene.

(That said, if I’d been a regular at the club, I would have blamed the drug-dealers. I’ve been a regular at a pub that went from being a great place to go to being bloody horrible entirely because drug-dealers moved in. And I should mention that this was many many years ago, and I was in fact an addict myself at the time, and I still got angry with the dealers for dealing in my local, because I knew how that was going to end…).

I never thought I’d be shouted down by assholes like you simply for speaking out against a criminal activity.

You’re being argued with for calling people assholes and scum, and for judging an enormous group of people on the actions of a few- not for speaking out against criminal activity.

Let me make something crystal clear: I do not support piracy of any media, let alone comics. Not at all, not even a little bit. It’s wrong, pure and simple.

I do not regard promoting a comic you like by showing people a few pages you think they’ll like as piracy, any more than playing a few songs to a friend to get them into an album is piracy. And you know, the law is actually on my side on that view.

There was, apparently, a certain amount of “soft piracy” going on at scans, and I agree that that needed to be stopped. But that doesn’t make everyone who ever visited the site scum, and it doesn’t make everyone who ever disagrees with you scum either.

OBVIOUSLY, in your twisted world view, I should be on my knees begging him to stay, and OBVIOUSLY, giving him it for free, lest he come here

…that’s a lovely strawman you have there. Nice work. Now stop arguing with the voices in your head, and come back and talk to the rest of us.

All you want is to destroy the industry

…right, The industry I’m currently in the process of breaking into, with the intention of moving from indy amateaur to paid professional- I want to destroy that business. Of course. That makes SO much sense.

I still want to know a few things that you’ve failed to answer:

1: if you think I’m scum for buying comics in bookshops and from the newsagent. You’ve made it clear you think I’m scum for shopping in more than one comic shop (despite admitting to doing the same yourself)

2: where your appparently intimate knowledge of a site you’ve barely visited to comes from

3: What the hell the “sandwich in the comics” incident has to do with the price of rice

4: Why you think it’s acceptable to refer to people you just happen to have a difference of opinion with as being subhuman scum and assholes and shitstains and so on and so forth

I don’t expect satisfactory answers to these questions, to be honest. I expect any answer, if there is one, to begin with a random quote, answered with a complete non-sequitor (probably involving the words “subhuman”, “scum” or both), followed by a rambling story of the time somebody looked at you funny on the bus and YOU KNEW THEY WERE FANTASISING ABOUT YOUR GIRLFRIEND I BET THEY DOWNLOAD COMICS OH MY GOD IS THAT A SANDWICH IN HIS HAND

…Get help, Mr O’Neill. I don’t think you’re well.