The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has issued an update on the situation with Galaktika Magazine.
You can read it here: http://www.sfwa.org/2016/09/the-galaktika-situation/
I have a further update of my own coming sometime this weekend.
Showing posts with label piracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label piracy. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Galaktika Magazine: Getting Paid
Just a quick note today.
Polenth Blake is reporting they have been paid by Galaktika Magazine for the publication of their (translated) story, Never the Same.
They say they were offered copies in lieu of payment, then told $20 was the new standard monetary payment, but they requested $50 and were paid accordingly.
Doug Smith had originally listed Galaktika's payment terms as $50-$100 per short story plus contributor copies.
This is good news, as it means the staff at Galaktika are making some effort to make good on the payment their guidelines initially promised. I encourage authors to whose work was stolen to pursue that payment and not opt for copies only. (Remember that Katalin Mund said just last week those magazines are no longer available for purchase, but it has been pointed out that they will continue to sell the physical copies from their office - via the website or in person - for an indefinite period of time. This means they will continue to seek profit from the work that was originally stolen.)
I strongly encourage authors published in the bigger SF/F magazines in the US or England since the early 2000s to check the Galaktika Bibliography and make certain their work is not among those that were stolen. Primary targets were big name magazines that offered some or all of their content for free online at some point following the initial publication (Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Asmiov's, Analog, etc). Other typical targets are folks who were published in slightly older anthologies, that then posted their short stories on their blog at a later date.
If you have been effected, the contact person is Katalin Mund and she can be reached at mund dot katalin at gmail dot com
[Unsure what all the fuss is about? You can start here - Galaktika Magazine: Theft on a Massive Scale and then read more about it here: Mandiner Article in English, Galaktika Magazine: More Bad Behavior, Galaktika Magazine: By Way of Explanation, Galaktika Magazine: Legacy]
Polenth Blake is reporting they have been paid by Galaktika Magazine for the publication of their (translated) story, Never the Same.
They say they were offered copies in lieu of payment, then told $20 was the new standard monetary payment, but they requested $50 and were paid accordingly.
Doug Smith had originally listed Galaktika's payment terms as $50-$100 per short story plus contributor copies.
This is good news, as it means the staff at Galaktika are making some effort to make good on the payment their guidelines initially promised. I encourage authors to whose work was stolen to pursue that payment and not opt for copies only. (Remember that Katalin Mund said just last week those magazines are no longer available for purchase, but it has been pointed out that they will continue to sell the physical copies from their office - via the website or in person - for an indefinite period of time. This means they will continue to seek profit from the work that was originally stolen.)
I strongly encourage authors published in the bigger SF/F magazines in the US or England since the early 2000s to check the Galaktika Bibliography and make certain their work is not among those that were stolen. Primary targets were big name magazines that offered some or all of their content for free online at some point following the initial publication (Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Asmiov's, Analog, etc). Other typical targets are folks who were published in slightly older anthologies, that then posted their short stories on their blog at a later date.
If you have been effected, the contact person is Katalin Mund and she can be reached at mund dot katalin at gmail dot com
[Unsure what all the fuss is about? You can start here - Galaktika Magazine: Theft on a Massive Scale and then read more about it here: Mandiner Article in English, Galaktika Magazine: More Bad Behavior, Galaktika Magazine: By Way of Explanation, Galaktika Magazine: Legacy]
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Galaktika Magazine: Legacy
Several things happened this morning in regard to Galaktika Magazine.
First, Katalin Mund, manager of Galaktika Magazine responded to Cat Rambo's request for further clarification on several points following the initial statement made by Istvan Burger on Friday.
Second, I was contacted by Eric Brown, who told me his story, The Time-lapsed Man (Interzone #24 1988) had been published without his permission in a 1994 issue of Galaktika.
Third, comments from a Hungarian reader pointed out that back-issues of Galaktika are still available to purchase through the website or in person at their main offices. (More on this in a moment.)
Mr. Brown's story was stolen during the first iteration of Galaktika - when it was owned by Mora Publishing, and run by Péter Kuczka and Judit Trethon (who have both passed away in recent years). At first I wondered whether to even mention this.
As Metropolis Media has made clear to Mr. Brown, they do not have any responsibility for the actions of the previous publishing house. And (as Malcolm Cross pointed out in a previous post) Galaktika was originally published in a much different political and economic climate. With the folks involved in the theft of work during the '90s already gone, perhaps there isn't a point in bringing it up.
But if we are to consider the legacy of Galaktika, we must also consider how the current publisher and staff members acquire their foreign work. That means considering how they intend to address the issue going forward. That is a question they have not addressed.
Mr. Burger and Mr. Nemeth have offered vague explanations that are, quite frankly, not satisfactory given the number of years this theft has occurred. But whether it was ignorance or laziness or just the inclination that if they could get away with it, they would, something has to change drastically going forward.
I would really like to think that the offer to provide compensation for the authors whose work has been stolen indicates the problem has been resolved. Although requiring the individual authors be aware they've been stolen from and making them responsible for seeking payment does not seem a good faith step.
And there is the question that Cat Rambo raised regarding whether authors could or would be able to request their work withdrawn from Galaktika. She referenced a potential online edition (which is seems there is not one), but the response from Katalin Mund was as follows.
Free piracy sites for novels are not entirely uncommon. And, while they are certainly problematic, they mainly rely on income from ads rather than attempting to sell the [electronic] books that they are providing for download. (There are also some arguments made that those who will grab a book for free from such "collections" are generally not folks who would have purchased it in the first place.)
But Galaktika has been selling the work they've stolen, and using the names of big authors (folks like Tom Hanks and John Scalzi) to draw readers and add legitimacy to their publication. To represent that they will no longer be doing so is misleading at best and tends point to a continuing legacy of excuses and bad behavior.
First, Katalin Mund, manager of Galaktika Magazine responded to Cat Rambo's request for further clarification on several points following the initial statement made by Istvan Burger on Friday.
Second, I was contacted by Eric Brown, who told me his story, The Time-lapsed Man (Interzone #24 1988) had been published without his permission in a 1994 issue of Galaktika.
Third, comments from a Hungarian reader pointed out that back-issues of Galaktika are still available to purchase through the website or in person at their main offices. (More on this in a moment.)
Mr. Brown's story was stolen during the first iteration of Galaktika - when it was owned by Mora Publishing, and run by Péter Kuczka and Judit Trethon (who have both passed away in recent years). At first I wondered whether to even mention this.
As Metropolis Media has made clear to Mr. Brown, they do not have any responsibility for the actions of the previous publishing house. And (as Malcolm Cross pointed out in a previous post) Galaktika was originally published in a much different political and economic climate. With the folks involved in the theft of work during the '90s already gone, perhaps there isn't a point in bringing it up.
But if we are to consider the legacy of Galaktika, we must also consider how the current publisher and staff members acquire their foreign work. That means considering how they intend to address the issue going forward. That is a question they have not addressed.
Mr. Burger and Mr. Nemeth have offered vague explanations that are, quite frankly, not satisfactory given the number of years this theft has occurred. But whether it was ignorance or laziness or just the inclination that if they could get away with it, they would, something has to change drastically going forward.
I would really like to think that the offer to provide compensation for the authors whose work has been stolen indicates the problem has been resolved. Although requiring the individual authors be aware they've been stolen from and making them responsible for seeking payment does not seem a good faith step.
And there is the question that Cat Rambo raised regarding whether authors could or would be able to request their work withdrawn from Galaktika. She referenced a potential online edition (which is seems there is not one), but the response from Katalin Mund was as follows.
The short stories were published in a monthly magazine, which was sold for two months, so these prints are not available any more. So Authors don’t need to withdraw their works.As I mentioned earlier, a comment from a Hungarian reader promptly revealed the misrepresentation of that statement.
They state it, but this is a flat-out lie. Nearly ALL back issues are available for ordering on the publisher’s webshop, http://galaktikabolt.hu/. I checked, and every issue from the year 2015 is available now. (The original article on mandiner.hu was about the magazine’s 2015 issues.) They're not digital copies, the physical, paper-based issues are still sold.At the very best, Mund and Galaktika are misrepresenting the situation regarding further sales of the pirated work. And this is key - they are selling that work.
Free piracy sites for novels are not entirely uncommon. And, while they are certainly problematic, they mainly rely on income from ads rather than attempting to sell the [electronic] books that they are providing for download. (There are also some arguments made that those who will grab a book for free from such "collections" are generally not folks who would have purchased it in the first place.)
But Galaktika has been selling the work they've stolen, and using the names of big authors (folks like Tom Hanks and John Scalzi) to draw readers and add legitimacy to their publication. To represent that they will no longer be doing so is misleading at best and tends point to a continuing legacy of excuses and bad behavior.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Galaktika Magazine: More Bad Behavior
While emailing with Bence Pintér earlier in the week, he mentioned reports that the Hungarian authors were not being paid for their work on Galaktika either. He also highlighted the theft of a translation of Robert Bloch's "The Shambler From the Stars" which had been reprinted without the translator's consent. (It was one of many pieces that were available to read for free on the web. More about that shortly.)
This opened up a broader problem. By this point I was certain that the English-language stories were primarily being published without the consent or compensation of the original authors. (I have been able to confirm that work published as early as 2008 was done so without author knowledge or consent. Pintér spoke with an author whose work was published in 2006 without their consent. The full extent of the ongoing piracy is still uncertain.)
Tracking down the translators who were working for Galaktika during 2015 was a little more difficult than contacting the authors involved; all I had were the names in the bibliography and Google. The first few I tried didn't turn up anything immediately useful, but with a little more digging I was able to reach two of the translators who worked with Galaktika in 2015.
The first (who had translated nine stories over the course of the year) said simply that they were not responsible for the rights involved in the stories. They would receive a request from the publisher (likely Attila Németh - the fiction editor at Galaktika) to translate a specific story, and would return the work once they were done.
This was a pattern that was confirmed by the second editor. They had worked as a free lance translator for Galaktika for roughly two years and during that time they translated four short stories and two short novels - Close to Critical by Hal Clement (Astounding May, Jun, Jul 1958) and Back to the Future by George Gipe (Berkley, 1985). All of those translations (except for "Back to the Future") were given to them by Attila Németh.
They said they approached Galaktika for work in 2013. They had already done a couple of translations of Terry Pratchett (with permission from Colin Smythe for the rights) and sent in a letter to ask about possible work. What happened next was eerily familiar.
They said: "After a month (in October 2013) they had sent me an answer with a tryout - the short story by Jack London. I translated it, sent it back after about two weeks, and then silence. In January 2014 I accidentally stumbled upon my name in a book published by Metropolis Media - a short story collection by Jack London. So they actually published my text, but they didn't really care enough to tell me. I had to phone them and ask them for a payment which they provided in the form of some books, because I wasn't yet a freelancer at the time."
It was a situation that did not change much even as they worked for them more regularly. " Attila Németh would send me a file without too much explanation and with no deadline, I would translate it, send it back to him, and they would publish it sooner or later.* After they edited the text, he would tell me - after I've bothered him for 3 or 4 times - how much they will pay to me, I would then give them my invoice, and if I was lucky, they would pay a month later, but only if I've phoned them after the payment was due. It happened twice that they only paid after I bothered them for two months."
(The asterisk indicates a note at the end of their email that said: "The only time they didn't do it this way was when I started working on Back to the Future: I actually asked them if they have a translator for it, and in reply they simply sent me the text." [ETA: They asked me to clarify that they did not ask them to translate this work. It was given to them as the others were.])
The files, they discovered, were simply taken from stories posted online. When they noticed errors in the text they were given and did a search via Google, they found the identical text online.
They told me the effort involved to get paid for their work simply became too much and they stopped working for Galaktika. (They also became aware, after the fact, that Polenth Blake's short story - "Never the Same" (Strange Horizons Sep 8 2014) - had been taken without her permission because they contacted her about the translation.)
Another Hungarian author I spoke with said they had sold work to Galaktika in 2006 for which they had received pro-rates, but had since stopped working with the magazine due to (among other things) other authors they knew personally not being paid for their work. They said their feeling was that Hungarian authors and translators had a better chance of being paid because they could always go to the Galaktika offices to demand what was owed.
But the translator I spoke with said they had heard of other translators and Hungarian authors who had never been paid - a fact which was such common knowledge that when they told their friends about the work their first question was "And do they pay you?" They recounted calling István Burger "who was really cocky, like it was by his grace that I was allowed to work for them, because apparently it's him who sends everyone their money. So after Back to the Future I had enough."
It would seem that Galaktika's bad behavior is not limited to the theft and piracy of English-language stories, but a deliberate and continuous pattern of behavior where they attempt to profit off the work of others while making as little compensation as possible to the authors and translators providing the material for the magazine.
The translator concluded by referring to themself as a pawn and also added " I'm so sorry about what happened to these writers, and I'm even sorrier that I worked with them."
[My original post on the theft of short stories is here.]
This opened up a broader problem. By this point I was certain that the English-language stories were primarily being published without the consent or compensation of the original authors. (I have been able to confirm that work published as early as 2008 was done so without author knowledge or consent. Pintér spoke with an author whose work was published in 2006 without their consent. The full extent of the ongoing piracy is still uncertain.)
Tracking down the translators who were working for Galaktika during 2015 was a little more difficult than contacting the authors involved; all I had were the names in the bibliography and Google. The first few I tried didn't turn up anything immediately useful, but with a little more digging I was able to reach two of the translators who worked with Galaktika in 2015.
The first (who had translated nine stories over the course of the year) said simply that they were not responsible for the rights involved in the stories. They would receive a request from the publisher (likely Attila Németh - the fiction editor at Galaktika) to translate a specific story, and would return the work once they were done.
This was a pattern that was confirmed by the second editor. They had worked as a free lance translator for Galaktika for roughly two years and during that time they translated four short stories and two short novels - Close to Critical by Hal Clement (Astounding May, Jun, Jul 1958) and Back to the Future by George Gipe (Berkley, 1985). All of those translations (except for "Back to the Future") were given to them by Attila Németh.
They said they approached Galaktika for work in 2013. They had already done a couple of translations of Terry Pratchett (with permission from Colin Smythe for the rights) and sent in a letter to ask about possible work. What happened next was eerily familiar.
They said: "After a month (in October 2013) they had sent me an answer with a tryout - the short story by Jack London. I translated it, sent it back after about two weeks, and then silence. In January 2014 I accidentally stumbled upon my name in a book published by Metropolis Media - a short story collection by Jack London. So they actually published my text, but they didn't really care enough to tell me. I had to phone them and ask them for a payment which they provided in the form of some books, because I wasn't yet a freelancer at the time."
It was a situation that did not change much even as they worked for them more regularly. " Attila Németh would send me a file without too much explanation and with no deadline, I would translate it, send it back to him, and they would publish it sooner or later.* After they edited the text, he would tell me - after I've bothered him for 3 or 4 times - how much they will pay to me, I would then give them my invoice, and if I was lucky, they would pay a month later, but only if I've phoned them after the payment was due. It happened twice that they only paid after I bothered them for two months."
(The asterisk indicates a note at the end of their email that said: "The only time they didn't do it this way was when I started working on Back to the Future: I actually asked them if they have a translator for it, and in reply they simply sent me the text." [ETA: They asked me to clarify that they did not ask them to translate this work. It was given to them as the others were.])
The files, they discovered, were simply taken from stories posted online. When they noticed errors in the text they were given and did a search via Google, they found the identical text online.
They told me the effort involved to get paid for their work simply became too much and they stopped working for Galaktika. (They also became aware, after the fact, that Polenth Blake's short story - "Never the Same" (Strange Horizons Sep 8 2014) - had been taken without her permission because they contacted her about the translation.)
Another Hungarian author I spoke with said they had sold work to Galaktika in 2006 for which they had received pro-rates, but had since stopped working with the magazine due to (among other things) other authors they knew personally not being paid for their work. They said their feeling was that Hungarian authors and translators had a better chance of being paid because they could always go to the Galaktika offices to demand what was owed.
But the translator I spoke with said they had heard of other translators and Hungarian authors who had never been paid - a fact which was such common knowledge that when they told their friends about the work their first question was "And do they pay you?" They recounted calling István Burger "who was really cocky, like it was by his grace that I was allowed to work for them, because apparently it's him who sends everyone their money. So after Back to the Future I had enough."
It would seem that Galaktika's bad behavior is not limited to the theft and piracy of English-language stories, but a deliberate and continuous pattern of behavior where they attempt to profit off the work of others while making as little compensation as possible to the authors and translators providing the material for the magazine.
The translator concluded by referring to themself as a pawn and also added " I'm so sorry about what happened to these writers, and I'm even sorrier that I worked with them."
[My original post on the theft of short stories is here.]
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Galaktika Magazine; Mandiner Article available in English
Bence Pintér and Mandiner Magazine have made available an English translation of his article from last week.
Hungarian SF Magazine Galaktika Published Short Stories Without the Authors' Consent
Hungarian SF Magazine Galaktika Published Short Stories Without the Authors' Consent
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Galaktika Magazine: Theft on a Massive Scale
On March 23, 2016, Bence Pintér published an article at Mandiner Magazine regarding numerous stories published by Galaktika Magazine in 2015 - most of them translated and reprinted without the knowledge or consent of the original authors.
The summary of the article in English stated: "We started our investigation about Galaktika magazine upon coming across a warning about them on Doug Smith's website. Having reviewed each volume of last year's Galaktika, we found that the majority of the foreign stories were pirated from online portals such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Tor.com, or Popular Science; and from certain anthologies (Years Best SF 14, eds. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, Eos, 2014. and There Won't Be War, eds. Harry Harrison and Bruce McAllister, Tor, 1991.). We contacted the authors, the editors, and the websites, and have learned that Galaktika did not purchase the rights for most of these stories. The only exception we know of is Jason Sanford's short story. Also, there are reports from 2006 and 2012 about Galaktika publishing short stories without permission." [The full article is now available in English here.]
I spoke with Mr. Pintér via email on March 30, 2016, and he said that Jason Sanford's short story ("The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain, Interzone 2008) had been submitted for translation and he was aware of its publication. Mr. Sanford confirmed that with me as well, but said his records did not indicate whether he had received payment for his story, and was not certain if he had received any sort of contributor copy either.
Mr. Pintér also said that following the publication of his article, he had confirmed that Kim Stanley Robinson's story (The Lucky Strike, Universe 14, ed. Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1984) had also be printed with permission. According to the article there were a few authors still unaccounted for (Tom Hanks, for example), but, Mr. Stanford and Mr. Robinson aside, the vast majority of the short stories were published without any permission from or compensation to the authors. [Edited to correct "Ms. Robinson" to Mr. Robinson.]
I asked Mr. Pintér if the pieces by Hungarian authors were also being published without their knowledge and he said "I just know about translations stolen. As I mention in the article, a translation of a Robert Bloch story was stolen from the Hungarian translator. But it is known that Galaktika pays the domestic authors long after the publication, if it pays at all." (We could speculate on whether Galaktika is targeting overseas authors due to lack of immediate legal remedy, but that would be speculation. I think it's fair to say that they are operating in such a way they prefer not to make a monetary investment in the content of their magazine, despite selling it for 1190 HUF (or approximately 4 Euros/US Dollars) per issue.)
Note that Doug Smith's website originally stated that Galaktika's terms for payment where "Pays $50-100US generally for short stories (plus contrib copy)." [It now contains a warning " DO NOT SUBMIT HERE RIGHT NOW! – Mar 2016: Once again, I've received multiple reports of stories being translated and printed without the author's permission. This has been going on since 2012. At that time, the editor said that he was working with publisher to identify and arrange for missing payments. If you've submitted here and never heard back, check their website. If you find your story was published, contact editor."]
It was that warning that Bence Pintér stumbled across while researching Galaktika for an unrelated article he intended to write about the magazine, and prompted the investigation into the contents of every issue released in 2015.
I first became aware of the unfolding story when an author acquaintance on Twitter began urging other authors to check and see if their work had also been stolen and pointed them to the thread at the Absolute Write Water Cooler which in turn linked to a FaceBook post by Sean Wallace (shared by Ellen Datlow) which contained the link to Bence Pintér's article at Mandiner. There was also a link to the Galaktika website, which I followed and began looking through the bibliography. (Possibly the only word I am able to recognize in Hungarian.)
As I looked through the TOC for monthly magazines, I immediately began to recognize names and I reached out to a couple that I followed on Twitter.
Aliette DeBodard was the first to respond. I asked her about the translation and publication of her short story "Shipbirth" (Asimov's Feb 2011) that had appeared in the June 2012 issue of Galaktika. She confirmed that it had been published without her consent and she had contacted them when she became aware. That inquiry was apparently ignored - the editor made no attempt to offer compensation for having printed her story, and, from what she can see reviewing the email at the time, did not bother to respond at all.
Elizabeth Bear (@matociquala on Twitter) also responded and said she first became aware of the publication of "Boojum" (with Sarah Monette - Fast Ships, Black Sails, ed. Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, Night Shade Books, 2008) in the Aug 2015 issue of Galaktika was when Bence Pintér contacted her while researching his article. Nor was she aware, until I asked her about it in a follow-up email, of the publication of "Tideline" (Asimov's Jun 2007) in the October 2008 issue of Galaktika.
After posting a link to my first (very brief post) yesterday, I was contacted by Malcolm Cross via Twitter (@foozzzball) who had also found out his story (Pavlov's House, Strange Horizons Apr 21 2014) had been translated and published without his knowledge in the April 2015 issue of Galaktika when he was notified by the staff at Strange Horizons. He says: "At first I was contacted by one of the Strange Horizons staff (who are all amazing and supportive), and... I thought it must have been some kind of one off or mistake. I'd been contacted by Fantastyka - a fantastic sounding magazine from Poland - for reprint and translation rights quite a long time ago, which I was paid for. It wasn't a huge sum of money or anything, but they respected my rights. At first I thought Galaktika must have been related to Fantastyka somehow, maybe sold translation rights on, but, no. Nothing like that had happened. [...] A couple of days after the initial contact from Strange Horizons I discovered that, no, this was not some kind of one-off mistake, it's...apparently industrial level plagiarism, which is far from flattering."
He also said he was concerned about making waves because "science fiction matters." Given the historical role Galaktika has had in Hungary in the past he is concerned about the harm that might come to the magazine by talking about the plagiarism. He says this is complicated by the wider history of science fiction in Eastern Europe. "There's been difficulty in interacting with the wider world, both in the communist era and after it, a sense of being 'othered' from the English speaking fandom, a tricky situation where far more material is translated from English into Hungarian/Magyar, Czech, Polish, than gets translated back. Which is sad -- we got 'Rossum's Universal Robots' from Karel Capek, we got 'Solaris' from Stanislaw Lem... but all that's decades ago. These days eastern Europe's virtually cut off from us, we don't hear their voices, but they hear ours through translation."
Mr. Cross expressed concern that criticism of the plagiarism would remove an outlet for the Hungarian SF fandom which should be "fostering and encouraging each other to produce the best they can, to have a dialogue, to discuss the issues that matters to them through their stories, and make it something so enticing that we have people over here so eager to hear their words that we stop waiting for translations and start learning how to speak Hungarian. "
I appreciate Mr. Cross' concern, but given Bence Pintér's assertion that Hungarian contributors are not being reasonably compensated for their work either, I'm afraid Galaktika may be unable to provide any legitimate outlet for the Hungarian SF authors if it continues as it has.
Elizabeth Bear also said "I think this is a pretty ethically unsupportable action on their part, and I'm deeply disappointed in the people involved."
And this is a part of the problem. No one wants to see a magazine disappear, especially in a country with only a couple Hungarian language SF/F markets, but if that publisher is depending on either stealing or otherwise acquiring work for free, I think they are doing more damage than good. Especially now that it's become apparent that this is not an occasional problem, but habitual theft of intellectual property.
I asked Mr. Pintér if the publisher had responded to the allegations of theft and he said they had declined to comment on the matter during a separate interview. "After that they sent an email, which is in the article. The boss said that "the area of copyrights is a complicated stuff". Since then no word from them."
The summary of the article in English stated: "We started our investigation about Galaktika magazine upon coming across a warning about them on Doug Smith's website. Having reviewed each volume of last year's Galaktika, we found that the majority of the foreign stories were pirated from online portals such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Tor.com, or Popular Science; and from certain anthologies (Years Best SF 14, eds. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, Eos, 2014. and There Won't Be War, eds. Harry Harrison and Bruce McAllister, Tor, 1991.). We contacted the authors, the editors, and the websites, and have learned that Galaktika did not purchase the rights for most of these stories. The only exception we know of is Jason Sanford's short story. Also, there are reports from 2006 and 2012 about Galaktika publishing short stories without permission." [The full article is now available in English here.]
I spoke with Mr. Pintér via email on March 30, 2016, and he said that Jason Sanford's short story ("The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain, Interzone 2008) had been submitted for translation and he was aware of its publication. Mr. Sanford confirmed that with me as well, but said his records did not indicate whether he had received payment for his story, and was not certain if he had received any sort of contributor copy either.
Mr. Pintér also said that following the publication of his article, he had confirmed that Kim Stanley Robinson's story (The Lucky Strike, Universe 14, ed. Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1984) had also be printed with permission. According to the article there were a few authors still unaccounted for (Tom Hanks, for example), but, Mr. Stanford and Mr. Robinson aside, the vast majority of the short stories were published without any permission from or compensation to the authors. [Edited to correct "Ms. Robinson" to Mr. Robinson.]
I asked Mr. Pintér if the pieces by Hungarian authors were also being published without their knowledge and he said "I just know about translations stolen. As I mention in the article, a translation of a Robert Bloch story was stolen from the Hungarian translator. But it is known that Galaktika pays the domestic authors long after the publication, if it pays at all." (We could speculate on whether Galaktika is targeting overseas authors due to lack of immediate legal remedy, but that would be speculation. I think it's fair to say that they are operating in such a way they prefer not to make a monetary investment in the content of their magazine, despite selling it for 1190 HUF (or approximately 4 Euros/US Dollars) per issue.)
Note that Doug Smith's website originally stated that Galaktika's terms for payment where "Pays $50-100US generally for short stories (plus contrib copy)." [It now contains a warning " DO NOT SUBMIT HERE RIGHT NOW! – Mar 2016: Once again, I've received multiple reports of stories being translated and printed without the author's permission. This has been going on since 2012. At that time, the editor said that he was working with publisher to identify and arrange for missing payments. If you've submitted here and never heard back, check their website. If you find your story was published, contact editor."]
It was that warning that Bence Pintér stumbled across while researching Galaktika for an unrelated article he intended to write about the magazine, and prompted the investigation into the contents of every issue released in 2015.
I first became aware of the unfolding story when an author acquaintance on Twitter began urging other authors to check and see if their work had also been stolen and pointed them to the thread at the Absolute Write Water Cooler which in turn linked to a FaceBook post by Sean Wallace (shared by Ellen Datlow) which contained the link to Bence Pintér's article at Mandiner. There was also a link to the Galaktika website, which I followed and began looking through the bibliography. (Possibly the only word I am able to recognize in Hungarian.)
As I looked through the TOC for monthly magazines, I immediately began to recognize names and I reached out to a couple that I followed on Twitter.
Aliette DeBodard was the first to respond. I asked her about the translation and publication of her short story "Shipbirth" (Asimov's Feb 2011) that had appeared in the June 2012 issue of Galaktika. She confirmed that it had been published without her consent and she had contacted them when she became aware. That inquiry was apparently ignored - the editor made no attempt to offer compensation for having printed her story, and, from what she can see reviewing the email at the time, did not bother to respond at all.
Elizabeth Bear (@matociquala on Twitter) also responded and said she first became aware of the publication of "Boojum" (with Sarah Monette - Fast Ships, Black Sails, ed. Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, Night Shade Books, 2008) in the Aug 2015 issue of Galaktika was when Bence Pintér contacted her while researching his article. Nor was she aware, until I asked her about it in a follow-up email, of the publication of "Tideline" (Asimov's Jun 2007) in the October 2008 issue of Galaktika.
After posting a link to my first (very brief post) yesterday, I was contacted by Malcolm Cross via Twitter (@foozzzball) who had also found out his story (Pavlov's House, Strange Horizons Apr 21 2014) had been translated and published without his knowledge in the April 2015 issue of Galaktika when he was notified by the staff at Strange Horizons. He says: "At first I was contacted by one of the Strange Horizons staff (who are all amazing and supportive), and... I thought it must have been some kind of one off or mistake. I'd been contacted by Fantastyka - a fantastic sounding magazine from Poland - for reprint and translation rights quite a long time ago, which I was paid for. It wasn't a huge sum of money or anything, but they respected my rights. At first I thought Galaktika must have been related to Fantastyka somehow, maybe sold translation rights on, but, no. Nothing like that had happened. [...] A couple of days after the initial contact from Strange Horizons I discovered that, no, this was not some kind of one-off mistake, it's...apparently industrial level plagiarism, which is far from flattering."
He also said he was concerned about making waves because "science fiction matters." Given the historical role Galaktika has had in Hungary in the past he is concerned about the harm that might come to the magazine by talking about the plagiarism. He says this is complicated by the wider history of science fiction in Eastern Europe. "There's been difficulty in interacting with the wider world, both in the communist era and after it, a sense of being 'othered' from the English speaking fandom, a tricky situation where far more material is translated from English into Hungarian/Magyar, Czech, Polish, than gets translated back. Which is sad -- we got 'Rossum's Universal Robots' from Karel Capek, we got 'Solaris' from Stanislaw Lem... but all that's decades ago. These days eastern Europe's virtually cut off from us, we don't hear their voices, but they hear ours through translation."
Mr. Cross expressed concern that criticism of the plagiarism would remove an outlet for the Hungarian SF fandom which should be "fostering and encouraging each other to produce the best they can, to have a dialogue, to discuss the issues that matters to them through their stories, and make it something so enticing that we have people over here so eager to hear their words that we stop waiting for translations and start learning how to speak Hungarian. "
I appreciate Mr. Cross' concern, but given Bence Pintér's assertion that Hungarian contributors are not being reasonably compensated for their work either, I'm afraid Galaktika may be unable to provide any legitimate outlet for the Hungarian SF authors if it continues as it has.
Elizabeth Bear also said "I think this is a pretty ethically unsupportable action on their part, and I'm deeply disappointed in the people involved."
And this is a part of the problem. No one wants to see a magazine disappear, especially in a country with only a couple Hungarian language SF/F markets, but if that publisher is depending on either stealing or otherwise acquiring work for free, I think they are doing more damage than good. Especially now that it's become apparent that this is not an occasional problem, but habitual theft of intellectual property.
I asked Mr. Pintér if the publisher had responded to the allegations of theft and he said they had declined to comment on the matter during a separate interview. "After that they sent an email, which is in the article. The boss said that "the area of copyrights is a complicated stuff". Since then no word from them."
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Galaktika Piracy : Original Article
The article is in Hungarian, written by Pinter Bence and can be found at sci-fi.mandiner.hu
The summary in English states: "We started our investigation about Galaktika magazine upon coming across a warning about them on Doug Smith's website. Having reviewed each volume of last year's Galaktika, we found that the majority of the foreign stories were pirated from online portals such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Tor.com, or Popular Science; and from certain anthologies (Years Best SF 14, eds. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, Eos, 2014. and There Won't Be War, eds. Harry Harrison and Bruce McAllister, Tor, 1991.). We contacted the authors, the editors, and the websites, and have learned that Galaktika did not purchase the rights for most of these stories. The only exception we know of is Jason Sanford's short story. Also, there are reports from 2006 and 2012 about Galaktika publishing short stories without permission."
The article was linked to by Sean Wallace on FaceBook and then reposted by Ellen Datlow (among others, I assume) before being picked up and posted over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler. I'm trying to track down a more detailed summary in English. (Google Translate produces somewhat... muddy results.)
The summary in English states: "We started our investigation about Galaktika magazine upon coming across a warning about them on Doug Smith's website. Having reviewed each volume of last year's Galaktika, we found that the majority of the foreign stories were pirated from online portals such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Tor.com, or Popular Science; and from certain anthologies (Years Best SF 14, eds. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, Eos, 2014. and There Won't Be War, eds. Harry Harrison and Bruce McAllister, Tor, 1991.). We contacted the authors, the editors, and the websites, and have learned that Galaktika did not purchase the rights for most of these stories. The only exception we know of is Jason Sanford's short story. Also, there are reports from 2006 and 2012 about Galaktika publishing short stories without permission."
The article was linked to by Sean Wallace on FaceBook and then reposted by Ellen Datlow (among others, I assume) before being picked up and posted over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler. I'm trying to track down a more detailed summary in English. (Google Translate produces somewhat... muddy results.)
Galaktika Piracy
A few days ago Sean Wallace posted a link to an article that revealed Galaktika - a Hungarian magazine publishing primarily SF/F - had been pirating work. At this point it seems the extent of the piracy is undetermined. (It's been confirmed that some stories in past years were pirated, but it is not certain if all of them were.) It does appear that almost every story published in 2015 was done so without the authors or editors permission.
Frequent targets were pro-paying magazines (Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Popular Science, Playboy) and anthologies.
To share details on work that was stolen from you, please either comment on the new thread over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler (Galaktika Magazine - AWWC) or here. (You may also contact me directly if you are not comfortable sharing details in public - annagrace dot carpenter at gmail dot com)
To look and see if your story has been stolen you can check out this link : Galaktika Magazine - Bibliography Click on the Magazines link, then click on the year link next to the Galaktika heading. Each authors name in the TOC also links to a larger bibliography that will show any work by that author translated into Hungarian (including some that were published elsewhere legally).
I am currently working on simply collecting information on the situation and will post updates as they become available.
Frequent targets were pro-paying magazines (Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Popular Science, Playboy) and anthologies.
To share details on work that was stolen from you, please either comment on the new thread over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler (Galaktika Magazine - AWWC) or here. (You may also contact me directly if you are not comfortable sharing details in public - annagrace dot carpenter at gmail dot com)
To look and see if your story has been stolen you can check out this link : Galaktika Magazine - Bibliography Click on the Magazines link, then click on the year link next to the Galaktika heading. Each authors name in the TOC also links to a larger bibliography that will show any work by that author translated into Hungarian (including some that were published elsewhere legally).
I am currently working on simply collecting information on the situation and will post updates as they become available.
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