The crawl is turning into a steamroll as Marvel Comics has targeted another comic book torrent tracker, Komics-Live.  According to Lying in the Gutters, Marvel threatened legal action against the web site.  The site was down for several days and recently returned with no Marvel files.

Marvel send legal notices to torrent trackers Z-Cult and ComicSearch a few months ago and it seems the comic publisher is looking to follow in RIAA and MPAA’s foot steps.  No lawsuits yet.

The interesting part of the Lying in the Gutters post is the affect of Marvel’s legal notices has increased comic book traffic on the leading torrent site, Pirate Bay.  Users of these niche torrent sites are just switching to different providers meaning Marvel’s takedown strategy is not having a noticeable effect on stopping comic book downloads.  As I have written before, there are so many sources for pirated content, trying to take each down one by one is impossible. 

Marvel further has a large force in Pirate Bay.  The Sweden based website has been vocal in its opposition to all copyrights and has survived years of legal threats from the RIAA and MPAA.  The Swedish government even raided Pirate Bay’s servers and found nothing illegal since Pirate Bay doesn’t host any of the infringing content itself.

It’s worrisome to see Marvel continuing this strategy and questionable what they hope to gain.  Because Marvel’s own download service does not offer the same experience - small selection, lower quality, and no download option.  Very compelling.