Webcomics are getting larger and larger and now they are starting to crossover into traditional media. Mac Hall and many other comics are offering their comics in a printed collection. Penny Arcade has held a fan convention. Many comic creators now make a living off of their webcomic.
Now Player vs. Player (PVP) is offering it's comic to any newspaper who wants to publish it for free. The idea is to drive more people to the website to generate more ad revenue. This is pretty smart idea that really turns the print comic publishing world's strategies on their head. My guess is that a comic like Dilbert publishes in print for hefty syndication fees and has a website mainly to drive people to the print version and to gain some online ad revenue.
Predictably, PVPs syndication idea and the general rise in prominence of web comics has some of the traditional comic artists a bit defensive. Take this Non Sequitur. Now I like this comic, but I think it is pretty clear that the artist (Wiley) just doesn't get it.
First, some of these webcomics are doing very well for themselves (as pointed out by Penny Arcade's Gabe). Second, there is no real reason that the next "Great American Novel" won't be posted to a personal website in PDF format so that people can print it out. It wouldn't even surprise me if the next "Great American Novel" was released on the web under the Creative Commons license. The web is changing people's views of publishing and there is nothing about printed content that makes it inherently better than web content. The sooner traditional content creators understand this, the sooner they will prosper in a digital environment.
Also, just because I believe that the current copyright laws aren't working doesn't mean I'm a communist, regardless of what Bill Gates says.
