copyright on S Anand

The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:53:27 +0000

Eight years ago, I started typing out each of the Calvin and Hobbes strips by hand. Four years ago, I set up a site that let people search for strips. Early this month, I was asked to take it down.

This is the story.

I can’t quite remember when I started reading Calvin & Hobbes. The earliest reference I can find in my blogs is in July 1999. I remember it didn’t take me long to become a fan. I’d read every strip on the newspaper; hunt them out at bookshops; and spend a fair bit of time searching for archives online.

At some point, I discovered a few archives of the complete Calvin & Hobbes images. These aren’t hard to find, and they’re still around in plenty. So that gave me a few more months of delight.

The trouble, though, was that I never could quite find a strip when I wanted to. A friend would refuse to accept something, and I’d want to pull out that strip where Calvin declares to reside in the state of “Denial”. Or if they said something fancy, I’d want to pull out the one where Hobbes says “I notice your oeuvre is monochromatic”. Or those strips where Calvin’s Dad explains how things work (“They build bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks.”)

There were a few Calvin and Hobbes search engines around. None quite did what I wanted them to – which was to search the text, and show me the strip, with a nice scrollable interface.

So I set out to build one. I can’t remember when, exactly, but it was before Sep 11, 2002.

It took me many years. I’d spend several train rides and evenings typing this stuff out. My friends, employers and family were a bit puzzled, but just added it to my list of eccentricities and carried on. I was halfway there in 2005, pushed further in 2006, and with some help, I managed to finally complete it.

I was able to do a lot of cool stuff with this, like statistically improbable phrases and some amusing posts as well.

It also increased traffic to my site, which was a bit disconcerting. I didn’t want to attract attention. In 2007, I removed the page from Google’s indexes, which cut the number of hits a fair bit. Since then, the site was only visited by a few people that knew of it, and the occasional stumblers.

A month ago, I got reddit-ed and MetaFiltered.

It didn’t take me long to figure that a takedown notice would be on its way. It turned out to be quite a friendly mail, actually – scary only in parts. (A bit of a carrot-and-stick approach, perhaps.) Anyway, it took me all of 2 minutes to remove all of the pages and links.

Of course, the reason I went to all of this effort was because the original Calvin & Hobbes site does not have the search feature. I’ve reached out to United Media, offering my transcripts and code. Let’s see what happens.

Comments

Pradeep 29 Jul 2010 8:25 am: what a shame. how are u doing buddy? been some time…
Frank 23 Jun 2010 8:03 pm: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Using two sites to do the work of one is not the ideal… but for now here is a way to find those strips you have in mind or are trying to search by topic or whatever. The first is a complete collection of all of the actual strips on the following site: http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/ The cool thing about this site is that you can actually download the entire collection in a zipped file (105mb) if you prefer to have the strips stored on your computer, and it opens with your web browser. The following site will allow you to search for key words: http://www.reemst.com/calvin_and_hobbes/stripsearch It used to have the actual strips posted as well, but alas has had the same woes as just about everyone else. One reason I think that the scripts have been allowed to stay up is that they are no the actual verbatim texts from the strips… it is a commentary on each strip… so essentially it has all of the key words you might want to search for and extra, in the sense that it is a narrative of what is happening frame by frame, including the dialogue in the 3rd person… so the interesting thing is that you may be able to find topics through the narrative as well, not just the script/ speech bubbles. So anyways, what you do is pop in the topic or words you are looking for in the second link I posted… find what date it was published on… and then go along to the first link I posted - and you will be able to search by year and month. Each month that opens has 28-31 “batches” of strips for that particular month. Just count down to the day you are looking for as you scroll down. This may be a long-winded explanation, but it’s just 2-3 steps instead of one, which is what I’m going to make do with until something more convenient crops up. I have tried the above search method, and surprisingly gives me the same results… if not more options. Check it out for yourself and you’ll know what I’m talking about. A suggestion… since none of the material posted on the above sites is wholly property of the site owner, perhaps someone with the know-how could combine the commentaries and the strips (With a lot of manual copy-pasting however) to end up with a single downloadable PDF or Word document where anyone could easily do a word/strip search by simply using the Adobe reader/ Word search functions. Anyways, that’s my five cents for now. Abraços Frank
Ravi Atluri 13 Aug 2010 6:50 pm: http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/ Why did they shut down yours?
Kannan 21 May 2010 12:12 pm: Moral of the story : If you do something good, just keep it to yourself or your elite group who will appreciate it’s usefulness. Over reaching can be bad in “free world”. That said, it was indeed a really really good page :)
Srihari 21 May 2010 1:23 pm: Been reading Calvin and Hobbes from your site for quite a long time. Time and again I would try and recollect a particular strip, and the search feature made it very comfortable. Sometimes I would just key in a particular idea, and search for it, and more often than not, Calvin would have something or the other to say about it! Shame it had to be taken down :( All the same, thanks to your efforts, we all were so many smiles richer! :)
Arvind 21 May 2010 4:40 pm: Hey Anand! First of all,hi-5! I’m a huge calvin n hobbes fan n I started late too, pretty much like u! But yea, left no stones unturned in devouring whatever C&H content I can set my eyes or lay my hands on!! :) Ohh this is nothing in relation to this post but I’m totally hooked onto ur blog for a while,now…So much so it’s hampering my productivity at work place(A tobacco firm…No prizes for guessing which 1)…I’m totally lagging behind schedules n deadlines but for the moment it just feels like there’s nothing which can eclipse the joy of readind your posts! :) Ohh n I coudln’t help noticing a few commonalities between us! Gives a mere mortal like me to identify and associate with the almighty Himself, u c…I’m a Tam bram too, from chennai…Name starts with A and ends with D…Teetotaler…Engineer + MBA…Though I cudnt make it to the IITs, guess i’m just a notch behind, having graduated from NIT, Trichy…Followed by a coupla years work-ex…And MBA from NITIE…Can relate to all ur pranks from undergrad n workplace cliches! No wonder I’m just addicted to the content on ur blog… Wish I cud meet u in person, sometime! Thanks for writing, Anand…Keep up the good(no, absoultely fantastic) work! :)
408wij 21 May 2010 11:34 pm: I suggest mapping your database to the comics at a legit site (gocomics.com). I.e., you host the search, but they host the comics.
Deepak 23 May 2010 7:18 am: Anand, Time to come out of hiding! I think I got to your site coz I used to work for your current company. Your CnH site was lovely - I pulled out some gems through that search myself. Sorry and sad you had to take it town. Hope all that work you put in transcripting goes to good use!
George 24 May 2010 1:39 am: I was one of those people that ‘stumbled’ across your C&H site a couple years ago. The searchability was brilliant. Good luck on transferring it to the other site!
evans 25 May 2010 4:18 am: I’m a teacher and would frequent your site to pull relevent comics to delight my kids. It takes way too much time for me to flip through my books to find what I am looking for, so your site was a godsend. I’m sad to see it down, and I hope that your work can live on somewhere else. Right now I’m trying to find a good luck strip to put on my final exam… really missing your site.
Andreas Schamanek 25 May 2010 10:02 am: First of all, thank you very much indeed for all the efforts, the typing, coding, and keeping it up for so long. It’s a pity it is gone. I was reading the strips of gocomics on a daily basis but just like you write when I was looking for a particular quote I had your search engine bookmarked. I had no idea you had typed all the strips yourself. This was utterly amazing work. Thanks again.
Bjarne 12 Jul 2010 3:14 pm: What a shame. For the last 6 years this site has helped me digging down in strips to find the one which did just fit in the situation. Hope United Media will take over the job :-) Thanks for the good work from Denmark.
» very sad RT @sanand0 The Calvi… Thej Live 15 Jun 2010 7:38 pm (pingback): […] sad RT @sanand0 The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and-hobbes-search-takedown/ […]
Graham 8 Jun 2010 12:51 pm: I can’t remember when i first stumbled apon your Calvin and Hobbes site but it was many moons ago. I’d just like to say a massive thanks really. I’d spent years laughing at the books while I was growing up and your efforts enabled me to instantly find all those excellent strips I’d remembered. All the best Graham:-)
Thejesh GN 15 Jun 2010 7:03 pm: sad :(
Naveen Arur 16 Jun 2010 1:02 pm: Really sad man. I am such a huge fan of C&H. Hope United Media comes to their senses and make use of your hard work.
Li 29 Oct 2010 6:43 pm: Anand, thanks for your great efforts. I stumbled across your Calvin & Hobbes site years ago and loved it, but I always knew it wouldn’t stay around forever. Alas, it was fun while it lasted. Ravi Atluri, thanks for posting on 8/13/10. I’m sure that’ll be taken down someday too. I’ll keep it to myself.
Hope 2 Dec 2010 10:19 am: I REALLY miss your website. :( I’d use it all the time, cuz i find myself in the exact situations as you, where I can come up with a calvin and hobbes strip for almost every situation in life and in most conversations.
x-f 7 Dec 2010 7:16 pm: Hi! I too used the search feature for a couple of years. It was sooo great I could instantly find the right strip I was looking for! Sad you had to remove it all. A very big thank you for your efforts writing it all down by hand! Hope it comes back one day.
Prashanth 14 Feb 2011 7:36 pm: It’s really sad that you had to take down the Calvin & Hobbes archives . I used to come to this site often to look up Calvin strips - for example the one where he goes into a dimension where time has no meaning! Came in today to look for strips where Calvin’s father tells him to eat his vegetables because it builds character and discovered this page. Anyway, just thought I would tell you - thank you for all your efforts!
BabyGodfather 15 Jan 2012 7:19 am: Man, this is really sad that you had to take it down. I had the exact same problems about searching the right Calvin’s strips at the right moment as you. Maybe only you know my annoyance. Is there anything that we could do ? I mean, I don’t think it needed to be taken down. They didn’t have any problems people posting Calvin strips in their blogs, did they ? Are they taking down all the pages that include Calvin Strips ? It’s ridiculous.
Visualising Text | Gramener blog 28 Jul 2012 5:01 am (pingback): […] to the joys that are lawyrs, @sanand0 was asked to take the Calvin & Hobbes text archive down. http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and-hobbes-search-takedown/ […]
From Calvin & Hobbes to Photo Tagging: Excel's Unexpected Image Capability - S Anand 26 Mar 2024 8:55 am (pingback): […] This is how I transcribed every Calvin & Hobbes. […]

No copyright

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:04:15 +0000

I don’t have any copyright declaration on this website.

The problem with that is: content is copyrighted by default. As Jeff Atwood indicates, this means that people with experience in such matters won’t copy the content because they have no legal right to use it.

Let me clarify: I don’t care what you do with my content. Feel free. You don’t have to ask. You don’t have to attribute it to me. You can change it. You can misquote me. Whatever.

I tried to find a Creative Commons license that suits my purposes. Of their licenses, the most liberal is the Creative Commons Attribution license.

This says you can do what you want as long as you attribute my content to me.

But that creates a constraint. And if I had a choice, I’d rather have my content quoted than be attributed.

The license that best captures this is the WTFPL, or Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License.

           DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
                   Version 2, December 2004

Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar
 14 rue de Plaisance, 75014 Paris, France
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
as the name is changed.

           DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
  TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

 0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

So, in the spirit of a happy and open Internet, the contents and code in this site is released under the WTFPL. Do what you want with it.

Comments

Prasenjeet 4 Mar 2009 12:37 pm: +1 for Yahoo Pipes. Or write/cajole someone into writing a Python script. With a library like BeautifulSoup, screen-scraping HTML has never been easier.
Rishi 4 Mar 2009 4:13 am: Though a way to do it via the PC would be to run a VB macro that imports the content and then publishes it.
S Anand 4 Mar 2009 7:19 am: Use Yahoo Query Language (http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/) or Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/). You’ll be able to create an RSS feed out of any content.
Rishi 4 Mar 2009 4:07 am: Hey Anand, I know you have written “dont mail me, call me”, but rather than waste your time and an ISD call on a triviality, let me take the chance of putting it as a comment. Problem: Webiste (www.orbat.com) does not have an RSS feed, and the editor is not really tech savvy enough to screw around with the code to put one. How can an external/unrelated party copy/paste the blog entries whenever it is updated (say to a blogspot account). This, independent of any code running on a PC - rather is there a way to make a hack that will do this - online? (i.e. some piece of code that will trigger a compare string (string = first 10 words of old blog post say) , and copy/ paste on blogspot till old string found, and then re-initialize the string to the new post. Something that does this check maybe once a day? Rishi IITB, IIMK
S Anand 5 Mar 2009 7:46 pm: It isn’t, of course. Why, did someone mention elite institutes when talking about copyright? ;-) Nah, I just have it on my front page so people can find me on Google.
somnath 5 Mar 2009 11:15 pm: This is for Mihir about the elite institutes My guess you don’t know Anand enough … he happens to walk through the doors of those elite institutes at some point of time in life when we have struggled a lot :)
Mihir Modi 5 Mar 2009 7:20 pm: Slightly off-topic, but why is it relevant for someone to specify which elite institutes they belong to when they’re talking about copyright :P (Plain curiousity. No offense meant!)
Mihir Modi 6 Mar 2009 2:30 pm: Oh no no… Anand, this is your site, you can talk about yourself as much as you want! :D I was referring to the comment by Rishi right up there! (Gosh! NOW I’m getting personal!)

Books for download

Mon, 15 May 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Shared books at esnips.com. You can download the entire book. Authors include Jeffrey Archer, Fredrick Forsyth, Arthur Hailey, Erich Segal, Michael Crichton, J K Rowling, Terry Pratchett, etc.

Comments

blogreader 18 May 2006 4:39 pm: Anand, are these downloads copyright comliant? any idea?
Sai 18 May 2006 7:01 pm: Real nice, thanks for sharing.
Dhar 19 May 2006 5:53 am: Blogreader, you can bet your last dime that these books are NOT copyright compliant. Cheers, D.
Anonymous 19 May 2006 1:38 pm: Then do u still think we shud support these?
S Anand 19 May 2006 5:35 pm: Doesn’t look like anyone’s earning any money out of it – so it may not be a matter of support. I guess at best we can choose not to download these.
Sai 19 May 2006 11:09 pm: Oops :). did not realize that angle. Had felt happy for having found a cool medium.
Anonymous 20 May 2006 6:25 am: Yes Anand. Makes sense. It wud be so unfair on our part to enjoy some nice works without having to pay for it.

Hitchcock film Charade is public domain

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Charade starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant is now in public domain (you can download it for free). So are some other classics like His Girl Friday and Dressed to Kill. See Archive.org’s feature films. (Actually, it’s not a Hitchcock film. But it’s said to be the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made.)

Comments

Dhar 18 Oct 2005 10:25 am: Wow! This is amazing. Have been trying to lay my hands on His Girl Friday for quite some time.
WILDMAN 3 Mar 2009 5:30 pm: RE: CHARADE…DOES THE PD INCLUDE THE MUSIC?
S Anand 3 Mar 2009 6:19 pm: I’m not quite sure, really… it’s been a while. Besides, it looks like the page I’d linked to has vanished. Maybe it’s no longer in public domain.
Unidyne 27 Jun 2010 5:19 am: There’s a debate on the film’s public domain status, because the music composed for it and the story on which it was based are both under copyright. Also, while the film has a number of Hitchcock style touches (big name stars, plot twists, romantic scenes), it was directed by Stanley Donen.
Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) 11 Jul 2011 12:56 am (pingback): […] can easily be mistaken for an Alfred Hitchcock film. With wit to spare, the presence of Gary Grant and an innocent […]

Snapster

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:00:00 +0000

Snapster. Best original idea I’ve heard in quite a while. (Buy music, go public, share assets among shareholders)

RIAA sues radio stations

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 12:00:00 +0000

RIAA sues radio stations for playing their music. (No, not really. It’s a spoof. But I wouldn’t be surprised.) via Scripting News

Copyright generating trouble for Google

Sat, 28 Sep 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Get an idea of how much trouble copyright is generating for Google. via LinuxJournal

How news spreads through the Internet

Thu, 23 May 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Staci Kramer interviewed the CEO of Turner Broadcasting (who, among other things, said stuff like not watching ads is theft). Staci traces how news of this spread through the Internet into sites like top 10 copyright crimes and “But Daddy I need to go”.

Linking to illegal sites is illegal

Sat, 15 Dec 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Linking to illegal sites is illegal. But if you just type the URL like http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/ that’s fine.

Movies pirated on the Internet

Fri, 17 Aug 2001 12:00:00 +0000

“Dude, Where’s My Car” tops the list of movies pirated on the Internet in July. The pirating is usually through file sharing software. Unlike music companies, studios are moving with the wind, before it gets too late.

Napster must pay up

Mon, 12 Feb 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Napster must pay.