German "Pirate Party" Politician Has Own Book Pirated -- And Doesn't Like It

Heh, heh.

Obviously this is really amusing for the burning irony, but also because the word "shitstorm" gets repeated throughout the article and it kinda surprised me.

MM

This is my favorite part of the article:

Earlier this year, the heavyweight conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung accused Schramm of constantly changing her mind and not being honest. The article still annoys Schramm today. She explained her flip-flopping to the newspaper by saying that she was currently engaged in "negating the negation in a kind of Hegelian dialectic."

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Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

I gather from the article that her publisher issued a takedown notice, which is their legal right as the holder of the exclusive right to publish the work. That doesn't mean that the author has changed her opinion at all. Maybe she's quite happy to have her book (in her view) shared.

Wow. Where I come from, the kindest thing we can call that is 'waffling'.

Parametric said:

I gather from the article that her publisher issued a takedown notice, which is their legal right as the holder of the exclusive right to publish the work. That doesn't mean that the author has changed her opinion at all. Maybe she's quite happy to have her book (in her view) shared.

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So she believes the hard work of others should be up for grabs freely but hers is for sale to the highest bidder. She sold the license to exclusively use the type of rights she believes others should share for free.

Nice of her.

Lest we forget, the Pirate Party actually isn't totally against copyright.

Alitriona said:

So she believes the hard work of others should be up for grabs freely but hers is for sale to the highest bidder. She sold the license to exclusively use the type of rights she believes others should share for free.

Nice of her.

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Her views aren't terribly consistent, but it seems she has issues with current IP law and data privacy. That doesn't mean she believes no one should be allowed to sell their work, and like Parametric said, it's apparently her publisher enforcing their rights.

You may disagree with her position, but from reading this article, I am not sure where the double-standard is.

Alitriona said:

So she believes the hard work of others should be up for grabs freely but hers is for sale to the highest bidder. She sold the license to exclusively use the type of rights she believes others should share for free.

Nice of her.

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Not feeling the outrage here. The publisher buys the licence. The publisher's exclusive right is infringed. The publisher issues a takedown notice. The author is still reading her morning newspaper over her cup of coffee, oblivious. What she thinks about piracy doesn't even factor into the publisher's decision.

I guess she could have refused to sign the contract in the first place, but a lot of authors end up taking deals they're not 100% happy with. Compare to an author who is publicly opposed to DRM, but has their work published with DRM. Are they a hypocrite, or did they just get outmuscled during contract negotiations? You do what you can, but ultimately you take it or leave it, and I don't blame an author for taking it. Maybe she needed the money.

Amadan said:

You may disagree with her position, but from reading this article, I am not sure where the double-standard is.

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I think it's pretty clear.

Okay, I read through the article again and couldn't find any statements from her about how she feels about her book being pirated. Can anyone provide these quotes? All we have is the publisher's actions. I couldn't find anything about how she feels.

Alitriona said:

I think it's pretty clear.

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Perhaps you could point it out for us?

From the article, it sounds like she originally gave the reporter her opinion on the issue, and later called back and asked that it not be used, and that she didn't wish to make a public statement -- and the reporter obliged, and did not say what she had said previously.

This could mean that originally she had criticized her publisher, but her publisher strong-armed her; it could mean she originally supported her publisher, but was taken aback by the backlash and recanted. We don't know.

And per my quote above, we probably never will know what she thinks. Is no one else amused by that quote?

I'm going to use that next time someone accuses me of lying or waffling

Parametric said:

I gather from the article that her publisher issued a takedown notice, which is their legal right as the holder of the exclusive right to publish the work. That doesn't mean that the author has changed her opinion at all. Maybe she's quite happy to have her book (in her view) shared.

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I agree - the only reports I've seen say the publisher's legal department issued the takedown, so the way it's been reported has, I think, been a bit misleading. There's no evidence she instigated it.

On the other hand, I don't understand why she didn't

a) Publish via Kickstarter and release a CC licensed ebook
b) Publish via a publisher but strike out the takedown clauses in the contract
c) Publish more like Cory Doctorow does (with a CC licensed ebook version at the same time as the print edition)

Seems more cluelessness than hypocrisy, as far as I can tell.

Momento Mori said:

Obviously this is really amusing for the burning irony, but also because the word "shitstorm" gets repeated throughout the article and it kinda surprised me.

MM

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I saw this earlier. The source is just sort of... questionable. I don't doubt the integrity of the article, I just didn't know German politicians called each other ''pieces of shit''. Interesting.

An economist friend remarked that this was a brilliant publicity ploy on the part of the publisher's marketing gurus. It reminded him of the old adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity - to be famous or infamous is good for the bottom line.

Apparently being mercurial and/or deliberately obscure doesn't hurt either.

This story has been all over German media, including of course the social media, and I've yet to see one that gets the facts right.

Well, there was an interview somewhere that at least didn't stick to the wrong view.

Being somewhat sympathetic towards the Pirates, I did some digging and even listened through the podcast where she allegedly calls intellectual property "disgusting".

So, facts:

1. the Pirate party, insofar as they've reached a consensus by now, are not anti-copyright as is often reported. They want to adapt copyright law to modern realities so it can serve its original purpose better - to grant the distribution of copyrighted material, as opposed to diminishing it by empowering gatekeepers at the artists' expense. I don't think they've been too clear yet on how they're going to achieve that, granted. Also, some of them are very bad at phrasing those goals.

2. Schramm, in the podcast, did indeed call Intellectuial property disgusting. However, she was clearly referring to the concept and the value judgments the concept incl.udes, not the thing the concept refers to (i.e. the actual works). In the same podcast (recorded, btw, after she'd signed the book contract), she repeatedly takes a pro-copyright position.

So much about her changing sides on that one.

3. It wasn't she who sent the takedown notice, it was indeed the publisher, doing publishery things. In the interview I mentioned she acknowledges that she maybe should have been clearer on these issues when negotiatiing. But at the time, I think, she was glad she got the publisher to consider ebooks at all. She also mentioned that she did manage to talk the publisher out of using legal measuures right away. But that may or may not have been a smoke screen.

4. She also mentioned that she's planning to release the book under a CC license once she gets the rights back - in ten years. (If, I might add, she still feels as connected to the web community after ten years of shitsorming as she feels now.)

5. All this suggests that she was a bit naive about the whole book deal thing, but not outright abd evilly greedy. Not sure how much she would have achieved if she'd insisted on more pirate-friendly conditions, though. Last time I checked, big book publishers weren't too keen on letting first-time authors dictate conditions. And they did pay her well, although I haven't seen the 100,000€ advance confirmed anywhere.

Okay, not all facts, some interpretations. But all based on actual information that would have been easy to research. Any journalist should have come across these things during the minimum amouint of research I'd expect from them. Oh well.

The story just fits two clichés too well to look beyond the story potential: the clichéd image the pirate party has with a lot of outsiders; and within the party, the cliché of the market liberal who had been expected to betray the party ever since she'd joined. This, and not the takedown notice, explain why there wasn't just critcism, but a veritable shitstorm.

Oh, and she's a woman, of course. You should have seen some of the tweets. Disgusting.

Oh, right, the interview. There's no English version, I'm afraid, but for those of you who can read German:
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschl...dlicher-Netz-Reaktion-habe-ich-gerechnet.html

Here's an "English" version thanks to Google Translate.