I joined forces with another party who also had problems with the content of the book.
Ignoring for the moment the various untrue statements within the book, our problems were:
- The book contained scanned images of letters that each of us had written. We had not given permission for these letters to be used - we had not even been asked for permission, even though we were both easily contactable up to, and after, the book's publication.
- The book contained a number of photographs that I had taken, some of my fellow complainant. Apparently, the author had contacted my fellow complainant, who refused permission for the images to appear in the book. The person who should have been contacted in each case was the person who took the photographs, as the copyright owner of an image is the image creator - in the case of photographs, it is the person who took the photograph. In these cases, it was me.
Some of the images were of the author, taken from such an angle that it was extremely unlikely that the author took them, yet there were no image credits for any content in the whole book.
By publishing the book in this manner, Chipmunka were representing all content in the book as being the copyright of the author.
While I can perhaps understand that finding the copyright holder for an image might be hard, I still fail to see how something that has been written by someone else, and is clearly presented in context as being written by someone else, could be published by anybody with any understanding of copyright law without first obtaining permission for publication. That a company in the business of publishing books could do this is beyond belief.
Perhaps not so much beyond belief after I received this:
"Please find attached a very amended ebook. The names of all butChipmunka's solution to the copyright problem was to offer to change names in the book. This was staggering. Their solution to publishing a letter written by me was to claim that the letter was written by another, fictional person.
one person - the author. There is a disclaimer on page two
Once you have read it I hope your approve it for publication"
I had suggested earlier that if all material that I owned the copyright to was removed from the book, and the book was published under a pseudonym, that I would most likely be happy for the book to be published, as I would not be identifiable, and therefore the question of libel would not need to be brought up.
It seemed as though Chipmunka were hoping that I would feel that I could no longer be identified, because my name had been changed (even though the author's had not - and being mentioned as the author's relative in numerous places made the changing of my name a moot point), and that I would therefore not be concerned about either the representation of me in the book, or the use of my copyrighted material. This made me feel that I was dealing with a company who were not particularly used to dealing with issues of copyright, or libel, and it was going to be an uphill struggle to even make them understand what the problem was with what they were doing.
I was right.
12 comments:
Completly inaccurate. It is clear that have never read a Chipmunka contract.
And yet this all happened.
It's almost as if I never had a contract with Chipmunka and yet they published content, the copyright of which belonged to me.
Chipmunka are mearly the publisher and don't hold any copywrite, as stated in the contract that you haven't read.
Although i imagine the letter you wrote to be quite a creative piece, unless an actual photocopy of the letter you wrote was published in the book, then there's no proof that they were your words. Maybe you never wrote it are are just jumping around the internet saying 'look! That's my letter in this book! I'm famous!'
Unless you have proof that the letter was your work then I have no reason to believe you even know a chipmunka author. You just wish to go round the internet trying to damage a charity that's saved my life and many others.
"Chipmunka are mearly the publisher and don't hold any copywrite, as stated in the contract that you haven't read."
That still doesn't mean that they can PUBLISH (they are publishers, right?) anything they like, does it?
"Although i imagine the letter you wrote to be quite a creative piece, unless an actual photocopy of the letter you wrote was published in the book, then there's no proof that they were your words. Maybe you never wrote it are are just jumping around the internet saying 'look! That's my letter in this book! I'm famous!'"
They originally published a scanned copy of my letter. I was attributed as the author.
Yes it was my letter. No they did not have any right to publish it.
Unless you can show us a photocopy of your letter, there's no reason for anyone to believe you.
I am not publishing my letter.
Thankfully, despite their threats Chipmunka have stopped publishing my letter.
I think the biggest reason to believe me is that Chipmunka are aware of this site, and have not taken any action to have any content removed.
This is because they couldn't if they tried.
I don't expect you to believe me, but that won't stop me telling everyone the truth. :D
Unless you can show us a photocopy of your letter, there's no reason for anyone to believe you.
You are confused. The content of the letter has nothing to do with this.
In fact, the letter I wrote was pleasant and apologetic.
The fact that I wrote it when I was around 14 years old because I had been guilt-tripped into writing it, and the fact that this was then presented as something much more recent and in the context of absolving the author of her transgressions, is something that mattered to me.
Imagine if you wrote a letter apologizing for being late for a birthday party (you were told the wrong time, but decided it would be better just to take the blame in this case), which said:
"I'm really sorry - you were right and I should have been there when you asked me to."
This person becomes more unstable and manipulative, and eventually, though you tried to help them (to the detriment of your own mental health), you make the hard decision to break contact with them.
This letter then turns up may years later, when the author claims that even though she stole money from you, slandered you, and called your friends day and night with mad ravings, you had forgiven her and this letter was proof of that.
You inform the publishers, and they say "you don't own copyright, we can publish whatever we like anyway."
They then lie to you that they have contacted lawyers who confirm that their version of copyright law is the truth (while admitting this in their private emails).
They withdraw the book from sale while hoping (as revealed in their emails, again) that you will simply forget about it now that you have complained.
You check their site a week later and see that the book has gone back on sale. You complain again, and the book is withdrawn again.
The debate over the law (even though you are aware you are correct - copyright law in this case is very simple) goes on for months.
Finally the publisher tells you that the book has been permanently withdrawn. You feel a small sense of relief.
Then you receive an email from someone claiming to work for the publisher, which contains correspondence between you and the employees, and also correspondence between the employees about you.
You discover that throughout the publisher was employing underhand methods to try and confuse, delay, and mislead you. You also discover that the plan is to 'get their own back' by waiting until you seem to have forgotten again, and to release the book then - that the CEO of the company has said that he can publish what he likes, copyright be damned.
How happy would you be?
This is a potted history of my experience with Chipmunka.
This all basically comes down to you claiming you have a lot of evidence that you're not willing to show anyone. As I've said before, nothing in this post tally's up with what is said in Chipmunka contract. If you are going to make a valid argument about Chipmunka's 'attitudes to Copywrite' then please check out their 'attitudes' that are mentioned in the quthors contract first.
"This all basically comes down to you claiming you have a lot of evidence that you're not willing to show anyone."
I'm posting correspondence as I go along. I presume that if I defame Chipmunka in any way, they will get their lawyers onto me asap. You can presume this too. They won't do this because they know that what I am writing is true.
"As I've said before, nothing in this post tally's up with what is said in Chipmunka contract."
That is because Chipmunka's contract is irrelevant here. If Chipmunka publish content written by someone with whom they do not have an agreement to publish (such as me, for example), they have broken copyright law. The ins and outs of their contract (which is very vague on copyright in general - yes I have read a contract) have nothing to do with this.
"If you are going to make a valid argument about Chipmunka's 'attitudes to Copywrite' then please check out their 'attitudes' that are mentioned in the quthors contract first."
In their contract, they don't (or at least did not) ask for authors to secure written permission to publish works owned by other people. Any publisher worth their salt does this, for fear of legal action.
That Chipmunka does not do this means that they expose themselves and their authors to legal action, and suggests they have a very ill-informed attitude to copyright.
They also lie about copyright law to people who complain, or have particularly bad lawyers.
I think I have a pretty good foundation upon which to build when determining their attitude as regards copyright.
You seem really confused about the issues both here and in my other posts. If you would be interested in discussing this at some time, I would be very happy to discuss this with you on any IM client you choose, at any time. You could possibly even publish the 'interview' (unexpurgated, of course) on your site if you wished.
Let me know and I'll send you my contact details.
As things stand, I would appreciate it if you would read my responses before responding, as you seem to be missing the point to a frightening degree.
I just realized I have been lazy here.
As it turned out, the deleted comment above contained words written by Victoria Strauss, an author of Adult and Teen novels who is also a co-founder of the great resource Writer Beware
While the comment above was not authorized by her and was therefore removed by me, much interesting reading on the pitfalls of getting published can be found at Writer Beware - go check it out!
Thanks to Victoria for helping me to identify the particular comment that needed removal - the DMCA > Google > Blogger process made it impossible to accurately do so (and so the entire page was yanked while waiting to find out what the problem was).
While understandably annoyed she was nothing but polite and courteous. I hope I was equal to her manners.
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