48 upvotes, 5 direct replies (showing 5)
View submission: The history of the /r/xkcd kerfuffle.
Wouldn't the logical response to this to just post the comics on imgur and then share them?
Comment by SanityInAnarchy at 09/02/2014 at 22:50 UTC
108 upvotes, 6 direct replies
At that point, you lose the alt-text and clever things like Click And Drag[1], and this also moves into not just a barely-actionable trademark claim, but a potential copyright claim. XKCD is currently Creative Commons, but there's nothing stopping him from changing the license on new comics.
It'd also hopefully grab the attention of the current 44,000 readers or so, and turn /r/xkcd into a ghost town overnight.
Comment by diagonally_stacked at 10/02/2014 at 13:04 UTC
19 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Imgur links, instead of direct links, are heavily frowned upon (if not disallowed) in /r/xkcd. The main point of redirecting /r/xkcd users is to raise awareness for those who haven't yet noticed there is an issue. This is a bit of a problem for the casual users, since there is no way of finding out what's going on unless you happen to stumble upon the story outside of that sub. Awareness will be gained even if the mod suddenly switches to imgur links only, since most users will wonder why they suddenly stop getting linked to xkcd.com and promote more discussion.
Comment by smallteam at 09/02/2014 at 19:04 UTC
36 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Well, sure, that would be one way for the evildoers to get around it, but at least it would make them work harder than directly linking to the image on xkcd.com.
Comment by xtfftc at 12/02/2014 at 14:58 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's the ordinary users unaware of the situation who post the comics, not the mods.
Comment by DEADB33F at 23/04/2014 at 18:53 UTC*
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If Randall were properly serious about closing down /r/xkcd he could start submitting DMCA takedowns on any imgur links that get linked via /r/xkcd. They could be automatically generated by running an image matching algorithm against posts to /r/xkcd and his comic archive.
It wouldn't even need to be a long-term thing. People will soon figure that what the score is, and once they realise that only submissions to /r/xkcd are affected they'll soon switch en-mass to /r/xkcdcomic instead.