Monday 27 July 2015

Cerebus TV Urgent Fundraiser

Print: Cover to Following Cerebus #12
Art by Dave Sim & David Petersen
Donate just $20!
MAX SOUTHALL:
Yikes, CerebusTV domain and hosting fees are due today and no one's donated! We need this to be able to keep airing the show, with 100 plus episodes in the library. So I just went through the various items in the Cerebus TV Archive to see what we could give folks for helping out at Cerebus.TV that hadn't been offered before.

What I found was what Craig Miller, the publisher of Following Cerebus, had sent to support Cerebus TV, along with his 10 minute video segment that hasn't yet been aired, just a week or so before his untimely death several years ago. So, CerebusTV will make a gift of Craig's gift of these 11x17" full color prints to those who can help out!

Our PayPal donation link accepts all major credit cards as well as direct PayPal transfers.

Possibly, we can air Craig's segment as well. I was very moved as I just watched it again; Craig's loss was a big one to the indie comics community, as well as his personal friendship being sorely missed. He was also a self-publisher of comics himself, as a creator/artist/writer. You can see the prints at the Cerebus.TV page if you scroll down.

And don't forget to watch the show and read the Cerebus Guide to Self Publishing!

17 comments:

George Peter Gatsis said...

why not just put it up on youtube? or any other established system that has millions of users?

CerebusTV said...

Hi George,

It was Dave's "irrevocable" and "implacable" decision before we ever started, that CerebusTV would never be on YouTube.

Moreover, given Google's absorption of YouTube into its tracking system, where everything you click on, post, view or watch, is then monetized to make merchandise of you (and shared far and wide, domestically and internationally, with any body willing to buy, from governments to corporations to hackers, to create profiles and dossiers on you) Dave's instincts seem prescient.

Note that the CerebusTV site does not track or record you and doesn't share or sell any info about you.

Now Dave's "TV model" may have seemed counter intuitive then, but in the era of Snowden disclosures and mass domestic recording and spying, it seems peculiarly prophetic. And in an era where public social networking now often turns into private persecution and destruction of the politically incorrect, CerebusTV takes seriously, "Don't do evil" more than corporate PR.

YouTube/Google's lust is a lot like that of DC, Marvel, Time Warner and Disney - billionaire corporations that do their best to pay those who work to create their value, nothing at all, exploiting by playing to ego, flattery and narcissism. Dave has pointed out his faithfulness to his understanding of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Their scripture in common adjures, "Let no one turn you into merchandise."

BTW, George, love your own independent site and am a long time fan of The Black Diamond Effect.

And thanks everyone for helping out.

Sandeep Atwal said...

One of the main problems with putting the material on YouTube is copyright. There are too many images, etc. that Dave doesn't have the rights to publish.

George Peter Gatsis said...

The entirety of every episode is 100% under the FAIR-USE umbrella.

You can certainly put it on youtube... Commentary/review/opinion is fair use.

Jeff Seiler said...

What is the cost of renewing?

CerebusTV said...

Sandeep, we did have at least one issue as I remember, on one of the promotional videos on the CerebusTV YouTube channel, where we got notified of a violation over some music. So we redid the audio substituting an original composition and performance. I imagine you have some experience with your Malcolm X site. http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com

Sandeep Atwal said...

Whether it actually is fair use and whether YouTube recognizes that are different. I just mean from a practical perspective, Youtube's robots are just perpetually flagging stuff left right and centre, often mistakenly. Any audio or visual match could just flag the video, then you'd only have some of the episodes up. There are appeal processes, but it's a hassle. I've been running a YouTube channel for a while now, and I'm not convinced it's the best fit. Personally, I would prefer some sort of simple on-demand service similar to Vimeo or YouTube's for Cerebus TV as I haven't seen any of the episodes. But it's a lot of work to provide video to a lot of people in different formats, as I'm sure Max knows.

George Peter Gatsis said...

Streaming video is no longer secure... there are any number of DOWNLOAD plugin buttons available for Firefox to download any video any format to any computer.

Simple and best way... in my opinion is to replicate the CerebusDownloads.com method... Make all the videos available as hidden weblinks that are only accessible by email. People make their purchase... they get a weblink in their email... they click and download.

h264 is the most common video format.

lylemcd said...

What is wrong with YT advertising?? That's how they make money. You guys are having to beg for it instead of hosting it on the most watched site on the planet. God forbid Dave get any sort of exposure by being somewhere that people actually might see it other than the handful who knows about cerebus.tv

Seriously, Dave is a great artist, mind, writer. He's no businessman clearly or he wouldn't be in the situation he's in right now.

Jeff Seiler said...

Lylemcd, though knowest not whereof thou speakest.

Dave Kopperman said...

I gotta say, the reason I didn't watch CTV in the first place is because of how much of a pain in the ass it was to simply get it to play (on my Mac). Which it pretty much never did. All of these suggested approaches are so bizarre, it makes my head hurt to think about them. I'm sure someone, somewhere has made the comparison, but imagine if the comic itself had been similarly difficult to obtain, because of some deeply held bias against a) the comic store model, b) the distribution model, and/or c) the paper and ink model. So we'd have to read the continuing adventures on a fabric scroll that was only available at a laundromat in Bayonne after business hours on a Tuesday.

Why make it so difficult for fans to get the work in the first place? Why make it difficult for those who did follow to simply share something with another fan or another potential fan? And why continue making it difficult to access something that's over and done and presumably paid for (that is, the produced videos, not the site that hosted them)? There's literally no cost for distribution on YouTube, Vimeo, etc., and it could stand as a major promotional engine for the current trade remastering and reprints, which is where the real legacy money lies.

So let's say that those types of platforms are dead out. Fine. Few people working in comics seem to have the understanding of the art and history of the medium that Dave does, and even his most ardent detractors would cede that point - maybe partner with some institution with a strong comics program (like the Savannah College of Art and Design) and have them either partner on a new site or move them to their own server. Or something. Or just let them continue to sit in the poorly conceived and increasingly cobwebbed box that's the CTV site, funded by donations from only a select number of acolytes. This is how knowledge is lost.

Tim P said...

It seems to be about privacy / tracking with regards to youtube. Well a possible solution / alt way of looking at it would be to put it Youtube and let people make the choice of whether to look at it. Given the huge numbers of users, moat people seem to be ok with it. However what you could also is ask cerebus fan sites like amoc, is to also put caveats ob any links to youtube so that people can make informed choices.

Tim P said...

Yes my spelling is terrible...

Dave Kopperman said...

Why would the privacy thing be an issue if you're watching CTV and yet not an issue if you're watching the weekly updates? That makes quite literally no sense whatsoever.

George Peter Gatsis said...

Hey...

ALL THE VIDEOS can easily be hosted on CEREBUSDOWNLOADS.com the cost would be no more than what Dave already pays to maintain the HOSTING PACKAGE and the DOMAIN NAME.

Heck, I even have a large number of the videos that Dave forwarded to me on hard-drive... But it has been on hold for the last 2 years.

And they can be in the standard universal format of h264 mp4s... :)

Dave Kopperman said...

Yeah, I'd agree with George, if there's just no way we'd ever get these things up on YT or other free streaming platform. No need to diffuse the web presence AND pay more for it. Fold CTV into CerebusDownloads and be done with it.

CerebusTV said...

Lots of good ideas. Aardvark-Vanaheim has just one employee, so other than direct support for Dave through Patreon, Kickstarter, etc. all of those involved in the various associated enterprises are responsible for raising their own funding to meet their project's costs. That's true for Sean and Mara as well. The agreements with those involved are all different, as well, limiting what can and can't be done.