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posted by martyb on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the going-to-need-much-more-popcorn dept.

I ran across this article, and laughed at its ludicrousness. It seems that a publishing company is sweating bullets and a bunch of science fiction writers around the world are hopping mad.

Galaktika was once a respected Hungarian language science fiction magazine, closed in 1995, and later reopened. Right now it's Hungary's only printed SF magazine. The only trouble is, its publisher, Metropolis Media, took copyrighted fiction from the internet and had it translated to Hungarian and republished it, saying it was in the public domain because it had been on the internet!

They're presently in some deep trouble with professional writers and their agents. Did they really believe that, I wonder? I'll bet if it was movies they'd REALLY be in trouble!

The article is worth a read. It was written by by Cat Rambo (honest, that's her real name), an old sciene fiction writer who has won Hugo and Nebula awards, and is president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; the SFWA is a professional guild.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:44PM (#409081)

    Thanks for submitting this, would not have found it on my own.

    Somewhat similar experience happened to me a couple of years ago. I contributed a short chapter (8 pages) to an engineering primer for students that some old friends were editing. Strictly volunteer, I did not expect any compensation. There was no contract or other transfer of copyright, which means that I still hold the (C) as author.

    The primer (~250 pages) was published by a magazine publisher in UK, who agreed to print/distribute at their cost. So far everything looked good--students got some good introductory material for a nominal price and the authors got some exposure.

    A few months later, my chapter appeared as an article in one of their regular magazines (which is sold for a profit), a use for my work that was never authorized. If they had asked me to reuse the chapter as a plug for the book, I might have agreed (not sure), but this was out of the blue. I talked with the editors (my friends) and they agreed, this was improper. After a somewhat strained negotiation, I was paid at the going rate for authors in that magazine.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @05:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @05:44PM (#409112)

    Once that was settled, did you go back to watching the movie you downloaded off of a torrent?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @06:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @06:35PM (#409115)

      > ... the movie you downloaded off of a torrent?

      I know, bad to feed the troll, but here goes anyway.

      No, I don't do that. Maybe I'm being idiotic, but we wait ~6 months and borrow the official copy on DVD from our local public library.