Pirate Party Politician Fights Piracy (Of Her Book)

[McMullen]

The takedown notice in question:

"This file is no longer available due to a takedown request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by Julia Schramm Autorin der Verlagsgruppe Random House."

That's her name on the takedown notice. Did Random House issue it on her behalf? Quite possibly.

I contract with publishers, and know several people who also enter contracts with publishers. I can tell you they don't exactly give you a lot of choice in what the terms are because unless you're a very big name in your market, they don't have to.

In my experience, piracy and decisions on what to do about it are not the author's domain. For the most part, the publisher handles the business of the book whether the author wants to go along with their decisions or not. This story sounds exactly like what happens when a publisher unilaterally decides on a course of action.

If she has such abhorrence for the "content mafia," why did she sign a deal with them?

Perhaps some of you find the flexibility of her principles a little uncomfortable. Maybe you wonder how many other paragons of higher thinking would so readily salivate when the money bell rings. (Probably lots.)

Not all of us can get through life without making compromises, especially when it comes to business. Her mistake was going through a publisher instead of publishing it online herself and requesting donations. Not sure why she did what she did. Maybe she didn't know about or didn't trust self-publication. Seems like a case of being naive and painting oneself into a corner to me.

These are valid things to wonder. But taking out your disappointment and frustration on me isn't going to accomplish anything.

You misunderstand the source of my disappointment. I'm not invested in the piracy debate; I don't like piracy but I don't like IP law either, and the loudest factions in the debate only seem to be trying to make it worse. I don't really care about what went on with that book.

Where my disappointment comes from is people who either intentionally spread misinformation, or spread it accidentally but don't show any interest in learning from their mistakes. Your articles and your response to the criticism of said articles strongly suggests that you are one of the latter. If instead of investing energy in claims of persecution you put more time into research and were more cautious about indulging in sensationalism, I think we could both get more of what we want.

 

[Squilookle]

Pirate Party Politician Fights Piracy (Of Her Book)

Umm... well, no. That's not what you've written. What you've written is that her publisher - the one who owns the copyright to the book - fought the piracy of her book.

Yes, thankyou. I'm yet to see anything that suggests that she personally made efforts to prevent the distribution. Sounds to me like it was all the publisher.

 

[PatrickXD]

I kind of agree with their ideas, but you need to support the content producers.
This article does seem unnecessarily inflammatory, though. She said herself that she doesn't own the copyright to her book, and that's not necessarily her fault as she wouldn't have been able to publish it whilst maintaining the copyright. Therefore the DMCA orders are not hers, they're the responsibilty of the copyright holder to issue. I appreciate the irony in the title of the book 'Click Me', given the nature of this article.

 

[Evil Smurf]

it sounds like she joined the navy. Silly pirates

 

[Monsterfurby]

While people are right in claiming that she is probably not behind the takedown notices herself (which, considering most of that happens under German jurisdiction, probably have nothing at all to do with the US Congress' "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA) and are rather derived from German copyright law), there is something else to consider.

As a politician, you NEED to watch your step at every turn. If you are incapable of doing that, you have failed in the political arena. The argument that "she is not to blame" fails to apply at the point where we are talking about someone in active politics.

The same applies for any politician, which is why the former defense minister as well as the previous two Presidents had to step down for good reason - they, too, had failed to protect themselves from what is essentially an everyday threat to anyone with a certain political profile.

 

[JochemHippie]

Fairly sure her publisher holds copyright to it.
Not her.

Misleading title is misleading.

 

[lapan]

Pirate Party Politician Fights Piracy (Of Her Book)

Umm... well, no. That's not what you've written. What you've written is that her publisher - the one who owns the copyright to the book - fought the piracy of her book.

Pirate Party Politicians Publisher Fights Piracy of her Publication

 

[C. Cain]

Fairly sure her publisher holds copyright to it.
Not her.

Misleading title is misleading.

Yes, that may be true. But according to <link=http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2012-09/Julia-Schramm-Piraten-Buch-Download>Die Zeit there was an agreement between the author and the publisher on how to handle possible issues arising from piracy. From what I could gather it boils down to immediately taking legal action against commercial distributors whilst private distributors get a warning first. She knew what she was getting into and she's apparently okay with the way the publisher handles these things.

So there's still quite a bit of hypocrisy going on.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Not all of us can get through life without making compromises, especially when it comes to business. Her mistake was going through a publisher instead of publishing it online herself and requesting donations. Not sure why she did what she did. Maybe she didn't know about or didn't trust self-publication. Seems like a case of being naive and painting oneself into a corner to me.

You expect me to believe that one of the leading figures of a political party devoted to copyright issues is ignorant of self-publishing? Come on, that's just silly. "Why she did what she did" - which, to be clear, is to sign a contract with the "content mafia" that she purports to find so disgusting that gave it an explicit right to control and profit from the dissemination of her book - is simple: money. 130 large and change. And she bears the same responsibility for having her name at the end of the DMCA takedown notices as she does for putting it on that contract.

I don't hold anything against her for protecting her work - I'm no fan of piracy, although the DMCA takedown mechanism is a loathsome, blunt instrument - but the hypocrisy on display is staggering.

 

[Soak]

As already said by some others, the title is misleading, but hey, i think i'm getting used to this shit - no, not realy, it'll always piss me off.

However, as already said as well, she's still to blaim for being stupid enough to sell her book, while there were already enough ways to publish/offer it for free and still get something back, not only in the possible forms of donation, but also as good publicity for her party. In addition, she would've been in a very good position to promote new ways of distributing intellectual work and ideas.
But instead she gave away the opportunity, undermined her parties' ideas, got bad publicity and a nomination for both, "best & worst fail of the year", though, she got very tough competition for those catigories from many other german politicians.

I have to say, i knew why i wouldn't vote for the pirate party in the last election, because i thought of those scenarios to happen and they've definetly proven me right. Their only "excuse" is, that they're a very young party and not experienced enough to properly deal with those issues, as well as to see how their high set idealism is hard to stand for as a whole group, or otherwise, to aim lower.

 

[Mortuorum]

Can we get this article tagged "hypocrisy", please?

 

[n00beffect]

Don't you just love the delicious irony of it all? It's brilliant!

 

[McMullen]

Not all of us can get through life without making compromises, especially when it comes to business. Her mistake was going through a publisher instead of publishing it online herself and requesting donations. Not sure why she did what she did. Maybe she didn't know about or didn't trust self-publication. Seems like a case of being naive and painting oneself into a corner to me.

You expect me to believe that one of the leading figures of a political party devoted to copyright issues is ignorant of self-publishing? Come on, that's just silly. "Why she did what she did" - which, to be clear, is to sign a contract with the "content mafia" that she purports to find so disgusting that gave it an explicit right to control and profit from the dissemination of her book - is simple: money. 130 large and change. And she bears the same responsibility for having her name at the end of the DMCA takedown notices as she does for putting it on that contract.

I don't hold anything against her for protecting her work - I'm no fan of piracy, although the DMCA takedown mechanism is a loathsome, blunt instrument - but the hypocrisy on display is staggering.

Great! Why not take what you just wrote and merge it into the article instead of saying she's directly responsible for the takedown, and change the headline accordingly?

 

[Andy Chalk]

Great! Why not take what you just wrote and merge it into the article instead of saying she's directly responsible for the takedown, and change the headline accordingly?

Because she is responsible. Look at it this way: whether I kill a guy, or I pay you to kill a guy, I'm still responsible for that guy being dead. Every step she took from the moment she signed that contract is in direct opposition to what the Pirate Party and its supporters stand for. She's not an innocent bystander or a naive youngster blindsided by a corporate machine; she's an informed and active participant in the process.

 

[GAunderrated]

OK, I'm a bit confused. Because from what I can tell, it's actually her publisher who has something against the piracy, not her. And she says that when her deal with the publisher runs out, in 10 years, she'll happily make it available for free after it's up to her.

By my count, all she's guilty of is poor negotiation between herself and her publisher regarding the copyright issue. But I can see why it's more fun to just call her a hypocrite and thus try to invalidate any opinion she has or stands for

Warning. Title is Missleading.

She's not the one issuing the take down reports. Her publisher, whom she sold the copyrights to is.

Still a bit hypocritical, but not as much as the title implies.

THANK YOU!

Except, as someone who hates copyright in all it's forms, and as a prominent member of a political party that upholds those beliefs, you can't then sign up to a lucrative copyright contract and not expect to catch some flack!

That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is the article. Misleading as hell, makes her look even worse than it should by stretching the truth.

*looks up to see journalist who wrote this*..... ah crap I got tricked again by andy's fox news style journalism into stretching the truth to raise ratings. Seriously I think I just need to outright assume all of andy's articles are not accurate information. It's getting a bit stupid when tons of his articles people are calling him out on his BS. Come on editor of escapists, hold him to a higher standard please!

 

[Geth Reich]

Can you blame people for wanting a piece of her booty?

Hi-oooooooooooooooooooooh!

I like how she says she'll release the book for free in ten years time when she gets the copyright back-looooong after everyone whose interested will have had to have forked out cash.

 

[UnSub]

Great! Why not take what you just wrote and merge it into the article instead of saying she's directly responsible for the takedown, and change the headline accordingly?

Because she is responsible. Look at it this way: whether I kill a guy, or I pay you to kill a guy, I'm still responsible for that guy being dead. Every step she took from the moment she signed that contract is in direct opposition to what the Pirate Party and its supporters stand for. She's not an innocent bystander or a naive youngster blindsided by a corporate machine; she's an informed and active participant in the process.

Also, the TorrentFreak article points out that even the copies hosted on the Pirate Party website have been taken down.

Chalk's article is fine. Schramm's representatives - the ones she signed the contract with - are out fighting the piracy of her book. Schramm appears to have only publically indicated she now doesn't like her contract (now she is embarrassed about it) and isn't even doing the whole "steal my book" bit.

IP rights are meant to be Schramm's area of interest. In signing the contract, she should have looked very carefully at those particular areas and what they meant. Instead, either willfully or naively, she signed and got a large advance and now doesn't really have a platform to stand on when commenting on reducing other peoples' IP rights when she is directly benefiting from a publisher protecting hers.

So yes, she is responsible for this situation. Her alternative was to not take the deal and trust her book to the IP-free ideals she claims to believe in. Make the book public domain and ask for donations if people want to. Schramm didn't.

(And the problem with believing she was naive is that if she doesn't understand how such things really work, how can you trust the reasoning of her other anti-IP positions?)

 

[Aeonknight]

If she was a true pirate she would've never sold it to the publisher in the first place.

But if she didn't sell it to a publisher then how could she encourage the pirating of it?

Yeah, didn't think of that did you. :crosses arms: uts on sunglasses:

But is she actually encouraging the pirating of it? Based on the OP her blog only listed lines from the book. If she wanted to encourage the pirating of it she'd have torrent links instead!

 

[AnarchistFish]

Who issued the notices? Her or the publishers?