Forum - View topicNEWS: Dark Horse Comic Closes Digital Service, Ends App Support
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Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
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Nionel
 Posts: 394 Location: Nebraska |
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I feel sorry for anyone who put money into this app. The fact that they've outright said they can't guarantee you can access your content after a certain date is exactly why digital "ownership" is a scam.
Seeing that Embracer Group is now owner of Dark Horse doesn't give me much confidence in their future, which is a shame, Dark Horse is responsible for localizing some iconic manga over the years. |
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Exodus007
Posts: 36 |
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Exactly. "In the same FAQ, Dark Horse states that, technically, users do not own the comics in their bookshelves." This is just proof of the giant FU the digital service industry truly is.
I only buy Dark Horse for physical. |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 825 |
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I'm honestly pretty worried about Dark Horse right now. Some of their upcoming manga releases have suddenly been quietly erased from store fronts or just delayed last minute. But some product entries aren't updated to show as being delayed or having a publishing date pushed back... the product entries are outright removed entirely. I saw people remarking on it in various places immediately after this digital news dropped.
Gunsmith Cats was supposed to come out in February and got delayed to March. That one was probably because of the layoffs in February, but it isn't March just yet. Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service omnibus 6 was supposed to come out in March (after volume 5 came out in 2022), but the product was entirely removed from Amazon, B&N, CR, and such. Something's going on over there. |
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Akcoll99
Posts: 297 |
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Same. They seem to be keeping up with some things, like the Warren Magazine softcover collections and the Richard Corben Library hardcovers. But some of the other titles, especially their manga, have been falling way behind schedule. The Kurosagi CDS Omnibus dropping off the schedule completely is very worrying. Does anyone know if their manga department was hit harder than some others during the cutbacks? Last edited by Akcoll99 on Wed Feb 26, 2025 6:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 6003 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Digital ownership is not a scam, naturally you are using their service to have the books delivered to you digitally. So when that service fails due to insolvency or other financial factors it is only natural that you cannot back up from that. When you own physical books, you must take care of them. Protect them from humidity, from insects, properly store them, and other damage vectors. It is the same with digital books, back-up, back-up and back-up. Digital libraries can get corrupted, digital books can mysteriously disappear, and other problems can pop up. Put your digital libraries on your smart phone, on your laptop, and put them on multiple external hard drives.
Digital book providers have to say you don't own the game or book, because otherwise people will just provide copies to their friends or put them up on a torrent site, just because. You know that will happen. Practically, though, once the digital book is on your media, your laptop, your HDD and SD, it can't be taken away. And just like physical books, you are responsible for its care and storage. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6449 |
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Well provided your computer’s Hard Drive doesn’t decide to randomly fail or become corrupted through no fault of your own. |
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JuJuBee
Posts: 4 |
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I can't say for certain since I haven't used Dark Horse's digital platform, but from the article it talks about logging in to access a user's library. I read that to mean that users aren't able to download their copies and store it on their devices, they would have to log into their account each time to read. Can any users confirm whether they were able to download their library to their device? That would certainly make the shutdown much less painful for users, but I would guess that when the service goes down, all the purchased content goes away. |
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Glordit
 Posts: 716 |
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That's where DRM comes in and ruins the fun. Can't access the authentication server? Can't access your data. |
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Vee-Tee
 Posts: 147 Location: イギリス |
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Exactly. My brother recently got me to back up his Kindle library because Amazon removed the option to download your books to a hard drive. Using software like Calibre no longer works to convert Kindle’s AZW3 files into EPUB, because of DRM. Let’s say I had a huge disagreement with the way Barnes and Noble is run and refused to ever shop there again for books. My previously purchased B&N books don’t just disappear or become inaccessible. Nobody is *leaving* Amazon per se, but lots of readers want the freedom to be able to side load their ebook library that they purchased with their own money onto a Kobo or Nook. (In fact, you used to be able to access a Kindle through USB in this manner and place books and documents onto it, easy as pie. It doesn’t do that any more, last I checked.) I can lend my physical books to friends, donate them to the town library, etc, so why are ebooks so special? |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 6003 Location: Virginia, United States |
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DRM is a valid concern.
As to the freedom of eBooks, well, you would need a printing press or xerox machine to duplicate a physical book. With eBooks you could give the whole world a free copy of a novel. That is not going to help the author and publisher much. |
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