search

applications4android / ComicReader

Android application for reading comic strips over internet
Other
46 stars 28 forks source link

Why not distribute a compiled version in the repo? #109

Open jbrown123 opened 11 years ago

jbrown123 commented 11 years ago

Seems like it would be useful to non-devs if we put a compiled version in the repo as well. Thoughts?

applications4android commented 11 years ago

The reason compiled apk is not put in the repo is the same as why we removed the app from the android playstore. We do not want any licensing issues with any comic owner or publisher.

jbrown123 commented 11 years ago

Okay, I understand your reasoning. I just don't agree with it. If you were pulling the comics and sticking them on another server and then serving that to users, I could see an issue. In this case you have simply built a custom purposed web browser with caching and filtering and a pre-loaded set of "bookmarks".

Nearly every web browser includes some level of caching and/or preloading of pages (see feature lists for chrome and firefox for example). None of them are getting in trouble from content providers.

All modern browsers include filtering - the ability to eliminate portions of the page that the user doesn't want to see. There are entire classes of browser add-ons out there called ad blockers that provide exactly this functionality. Tools like greasemonkey (plugin for Firefox; Chrome essentially has the greasemonkey engine built in) provide the ability to run user specified JS on a page to change the layout or eliminate or enhance pages and sites. Companies provide browser plugins that add "tool bars" to the top of sites and extract info from the page and push it to their site (e.g. amazon's wish list plugin). None of them are getting take down orders from content providers.

Have a look at tools like Evernote's Clearly product: "Clearly makes blog posts, articles and webpages clean and easy to read. Save them to Evernote to read them anywhere." How is that not EXACTLY what ComicReader does? Let's see, Clearly eliminates cruft off of the page so you can focus on the content and stores the reminader for offline reading. Once again, Evernote is not getting nasty letters from content provider's scum-sucking-bottom-dwellers (aka lawyers).

So, what am I missing? What do I not understand here? How is ComicReader any different than dozens (nay, tens of thousands) of other custom browsers and browser plugins out there on the market today?

I'm not trying to have a fight about this, I just think we need to frame the functionality of ComicReader in the context of the modern internet. I think what ComicReader does is perfectly legitimate and legal under fair user provisions of copyright law. However, IANAL so take that as just one engineer's demented opinion.

Thanks,

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013, at 03:20 AM, applications4android wrote:

The reason compiled apk is not put in the repo is the same as why we removed the app from the android playstore.

We do not want any licensing issues with any comic owner or publisher.

—

Reply to this email directly or [1]view it on GitHub. [p2PnFQAoFCM_rMEm-KyWztcYXk5RO5fdo-9y-A00uuypGAXZixOJQHllXjrsGyPi.gif]

References

  1. https://github.com/applications4android/ComicReader/issues/109#issuecomment-22692949
stoerr commented 11 years ago

The argument "Comic Reader is just a kind of fancy web browser" is IMHO currently not particularily valid since it is not even possible to navigate to the actual web page of the comic. You'd need to google it or look into the source. Since I consider that unfair to the comic authors, I created suggestion https://github.com/applications4android/ComicReader/issues/110 , which also might somewhat mitigate the potential trouble with comic authors that was mentioned here.

applications4android commented 11 years ago

James, I completely agree with you. But the fact that we are mere engineers and cannot afford to pay a lawyer to talk to the legal department of the comic authors and publishers.

Stoerr, The feature you mentioned here is already available in Comic Reader. I have replied to the thread you opened.

PS: I am not in town, so there is delay in responses.

jbrown123 commented 11 years ago

Okay, fair enough. I was thinking I might fork the project and add an apk to the repo but 1) I can't get it to build under windows and 2) I don't want to cause consternation for others on the project.

Thanks,

applications4android notifications@github.com wrote:

James, I completely agree with you. But the fact that we are mere engineers and cannot afford to pay a lawyer to talk to the legal department of the comic authors and publishers.

Stoerr, The feature you mentioned here is already available in Comic Reader. I have replied to the thread you opened.

PS: I am not in town, so there is delay in responses.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/applications4android/ComicReader/issues/109#issuecomment-22829942

gervasiocaj commented 7 years ago

A way to circumvent this would be to have the whole comic page as default and offer a "clean mode", which displays only the comic itself. A whole lot of other sites could be added without the clean mode, also.