As the days of comic strips for the media center come to a close, we have to looking toward the potential of RSS comics being a threat My take on any potential liability for using a RSS feed without a Creative Commons license or something to an equal effect is that you could, I say COULD be playing with fire if you are not careful.

No more Comics for Media Center people! Check this out people, you can’t even read comics now without pissing someone off. If you don’t know Comics for Media Center is this nifty plug-in that displays comic strips inside of Media Center. The concept is rather simple and here’s how the plug-in works….

A feed is obtain through a third party website (i.e. not mcesoft.nl or the site hosting the comics which is United Media) –> That feed has the URL’s to the images on the site that hosts the comics (United Media in this case) –> Comics for Media Center takes that feed with the URL and displays them inside of MCE.

That sounds simple and it is! But wait, United Media is claming that this is “Unauthorized use of Intellectual Property”. The important thing to remember about them being displayed in Media Center is that it’s really just Internet Explorer. By downloading comics using Media Center (which is using IE) you might just be violating someone IP, even through you can download them in Internet Explorer and it’s not violating anything. Stupid, you bet!

Danee, the author of Comics for Media Center was told that this plug-in was “violating the cartoonist rights” and “abusing their skills for my own benefit”. Please! I can understand that if people were downright stealing the content with this plug-in that it might be a problem, but using it to view the content with a remote instead of a mouse? That’s stupid!