DisCon III fielded a question Ellen Datlow posted in their Facebook group asking why they are not making a membership list available. Here are screencaps from the dialog.
Because DisCon III made an ambiguous reply about whether the harassers are members, there remains an open question whether the committee should be enforcing their Code of Conduct against the individuals.
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On the plus side, it is now much easier for me to pretend to be a DisCon III member even though I am not.
Jeez maneez, what is wrong with people?
This is why we can’t have nice things. <sigh>
GAH
Another no-win situation.
My interpretation of that ambiguous reply is that some but not all of them are non-members.
Also note that since DisCon III hasn’t published a membership list, this might be a precautionary response to reports from another con.
But conjecture without data being what it is, I’m probably wrong.
Sigh. How much do you want to bet that some of the usual jerks have something to do with this?
Clicky
Unfortunately, in this age that’s probably going to need to be standard procedure.
Meanwhile I, of a younger generation, am looking at that going “There was a tradition of publishing a membership list publicly? Why would you EVER do that? How can you POSSIBLY think that would end well? I would never sign up to go to a con that publishes its member list on the website!”
It was possible to opt out of public membership lists, but every Worldcon I’ve been a member of up to CoNZealand last year had a public membership list somewhere on their site.Chicon 8 has a public membership list as well.
Kit Harding: There was a tradition of publishing a membership list publicly? Why would you EVER do that? How can you POSSIBLY think that would end well?
That practice goes back decades, even before the internet. Member names have always been published in the Progress Reports and Souvenir Book. People like to see who else is going that they will know, because some people base their attendance on the ability to interact with existing friends and acquaintances. And members like to know which authors, artists, and editors are going to be there, so that they can take items for signing, or set up meetings.
But members have had the ability to opt out of having their names published for many years. And a number of people, including me, have done so, often because of having been harassed by someone (not necessarily via Worldcon, I had a nasty internet stalker a decade ago).
If you think this is bad, it will blow your mind to find out that in ye olden tymes, paper fanzines included the full real names, addresses, and sometimes phone numbers of the people whose letters of comment (LOCs) were published in those zines, and those people often engaged in private correspondence with each other.
Because of that cultural custom, many old-time fen are outraged that now people post on the internet using nyms (they have never received rape and death threats for posting their opinions publicly! everyone should have to state their real identity!), and figure that if they have access to someone’s e-mail address from a group list, it’s perfectly acceptable to privately e-mail that person about something they’ve posted in a comment to that group (as I found out a while back, to my disgust; my reaction was “who the fuck are you, and why are you contacting me by e-mail without my permission?”).
After I posted my suggestions on Worldcon reform I got a haughty e-mail to my personal account from Nicholas Whyte then Deputy Hugo Administrator, currently member of the Hugo Administration Committee.
I have never given him my personal e-mail address. It is not a public e-mail address. He addressed me by my ‘real world’ name, not the name I’d attached to the proposals. He refused to explain how he had received it.
There is an unfortunate deep set disregard for privacy amongst some of the old-guard.
Comics as well, which probably had significantly higher circulation. If I really wanted to I could probably find out Kurt Busiek’s childhood address with a couple of hours up in the attic.
I once got aggrieved letters from someone in Omaha because of not feeling Sandman was a wholly original creation.
In Ye Truly Ancient Days, fandom got its start in the letter columns of the pro sf zines, which printed the full names and addresses of the writers whose letters they published.
Many of whom, of course, were kids. Teenagers and sometimes younger. You just couldn’t do that now. But at the time, it did not inspire shivers of horror as it does now, and those kids and adults started writing to each other directly. In NYC, and other large cities, they might quickly discover they lived near each other…
And thus was fandom born, with people doing something that shocks and alarms any reasonably aware adult of today. We’re all very aware of how badly that can end.
…and yet, there would be no “Fandom” without those older practices of assuming, from the get go, that someone with interests similar to your own would also likely share your sense of decorum, if not your politics and besides, we’re not going to be talking politics, we’re going to be talking about the latest issue of Cosmic Adventures magazine, the (really lousy) cover by some artist no one ever heard of and whether or not wire staples are an acceptable form of binding, and of course no one cares whether you’re a commie or a nazi, so long as you pay your club dues, finish scratching out that illo for the clubzine and read that story by that new author so we can talk about it.
No one cares which world-domination theory you support because right now we’re trying to decide whether to buy another pulp or a bag of rice and figuring out how to dodge the landlord for another week.
Starvation has a way of focusing one’s attention on what’s really important – like maintaining one’s fannish credentials.
Once again, the junior Science Fiction Fandom forgets about the senior Sherlock Holmes Fandom. Readers of the Strand’s crime stories certainly knew better than to share their home address with strangers. And the first recorded instance of a ‘Fandom Publication’, and the one we get the fandom use of ‘Cannon’ from, was a highly political and religious satire of “German Bibilical New Criticism”.
Since they haven’t posted a membershiplist I think it can be safe to assume that this was done in other cons.
Note that at last one person whose action were discused here (and in fandom generel) as harasment is proudly pointing out, that he is a member of worldcon. (I am a bit careful here in adresing it)
Indeed. No one was behaving inappropriately by the standards of the time, and because of that, we got fandom–which we’re enjoying in a very different social context. And some of our practices have to change. Sometimes it’s painful and sometimes it’s startling to realize how the real world and changing times affe t fandom, but it’s still fandom.
I check membership lists to make sure my blind friend has successfully signed up for the convention. Now I cannot.
@Kit Harding: Basically, people kept publishing mailing lists because doing so had worked well the previous time, and the time before that. People do a lot of things by habit , which means “OK we’ll need X number of chairs, and Pete, can you handle the refreshments, and Molly, here’s the membership list for the newsletter” where what people think about are “my uncle owns a chair rental company” and “Molly did well with the newsletter last time, let’s ask her to do it again” rather than what sort of seating is needed or whether to have a newsletter at all or just send everyone postcards saying “this confirms your membership, the con is at the Hotel Pennsylvania on October 1st.”
The flip side of “what if some annoying or hostile random sees that I’ll be there?” is “it would have been nice to have advance warning that the person I’m trying to avoid was going to be here.” I can sympathize with both “they shouldn’t have told my obnoxious ex that I’d be at the con” and “they should have warned me that my obnoxious ex was likely to be there.”
What surprises me here is that they aren’t publishing a list at all, rather than using an explicit opt-in like “do you want to be included on the public membership list, and if so, under what name?”
Another thing to bolster my impression that fandom and convention-running fandom has gone to hell. I always post both on SFnal and mundane sites under my own name.
I just shelled out $175 to upgrade my membership in Discon to Attending from Supporting because the alert about hotel rooms stated you could only make reservations if you’re an Attending Member.
My first worldcon, btw, was Discon I in 1963. And I won my first Hugo at Discon II in 1974.
@Andrew I. Porter–It’s not fandom that’s changed; it’s the world. Everyone is online and visible, and the trolls aren’t just in fandom, not even close.
I’ve always used my real name online, too, but I’ve gotten comfortable with people who use consistent or somewhat-consistent nyms. Those aren’t attempts to be anonymous; they’re just attempts to have some security against being found by the trolls.
@Linda Robert
Best handled by emailing [email protected], and the future equivalent at future Worldcons. (Why isn’t there a permanent e-mail account for queries like this? See the “But you see Worldcon has different traditions” discussion no.94)
All future Euro-Worldcons must use opt-in listing at the very least due to privacy laws, and the EU takes the position that if you’re selling memberships to EU citizens you have to respect EU privacy law for those EU citizens, so this isn’t really an option going forward.
I’ve enjoyed seeing my name on the list in the past, and appreciated having it confirm that all my family’s memberships were properly recorded. Also appreciated getting to know which friends were likely to be attending.
I do wonder if DisCon III has a higher than usual risk of individuals (members or not) doing harassing stuff because of the whole controversy around the Baen’s Bar forum and Toni Weisskopf getting disinvited as GoH as a result.
Chicon 8 does have a public membership list on their site, though somewhat hidden, so it may be that just Discon III is affected.
I like the public lists, too, because I like knowing which friends will be there or whether someone I want to avoid will be there, so I can put their name in the “Don’t put me on programming with X” field.
@Jay Blanc
Public membership lists are already opt-in and have been for years. When you buy a membership, they ask you if you want your name publicly displayed or not.
DisCon 3 still does have the “List you (by Badge Name) on the DisCon III website and in published directories?” check box. Do they also plan on omitting it from the printed materials?
Chicon 8 definitely has a public members list as of today, and we explicitly allow for an opt-out; when you register you can choose to uncheck the box “List name on the Chicon 8 website and in published directories?”; if that is unchecked, you won’t appear on the public website. I can’t speak for the con per se, but from where I sit that feels like a reasonable compromise that puts control over how visible you are in your hands as a member.
There’s an important distinction between “Opt-out” and “Opt-in”. If the default is that you list someone, unless they check the box, that’s “Opt-out”. The main problem with “Opt-out” for privacy concerns, is that a lot of people leave that box as the default without understanding what it means.
The EU requires “Opt-In”, meaning you default to not listing someone, unless they explicitly ask you to. So the default has to be for that box to be unchecked. Also, yes, it’s quite possible that the EU could issue a fine if you’ve used opt-out and accepted EU citizen members then published their names.
A US Worldcon might decline to pay that fine, but that puts future EU Worldcons at risk of being left on the hook for it.
Can you opt-out from Chicon’s later and be removed from the website and not appear in any subsequently published directories?
Can’t remember whether DisCon’s was opt-in or opt-out.
@Laura
You can log in and change your membership details later, including opting out of the list, if you want.
@Jay Blanc
The “List me in the public membership directory” and “Share my information with future Worldcons” boxes are unchecked by default and you have to check them. Just as you have to consent to being contacted about programming, volunteering, etc… As I told Laura, you can also uncheck the boxes later, if you want. Also, for someone who constantly has something to criticise about Worldcon, you have very little knowledge how simple things like registration work.
@Cora Buhlert
Would you like me to provide you a screenshot of the current Chicon 8 Registration page? Both “List me in the public membership directory” and “Share my information with future Worldcons” boxes are checked by default.
Sceenshot at https://twitter.com/jayblanc/status/1404165958038659074
Is it possible they’re checked by default for North American applicants and not checked by default in the EU due to those laws?
Just looked at both Chicon and DisCon — for me in the US, it was opt-out (boxes checked by default) for sharing info with future Worldcons and being listed in the directory when you go to register for a new membership.
puts on Wellington maintainer hat Yep, those are opt-out by default, in keeping with the historical Worldcon model of publishing member lists. Obviously it was necessary to support suppressing display for privacy reasons, so this made sense as a compromise for the package.
And no, I’m not super interested in getting into an argument, whether here or on Twitter, about it.
@Chris Rose, History is all well and good, but I hope that lawyers on the DisCon and Chicon boards have researched European Union privacy laws, because my non-lawyer understanding is that “opt-out” (rather than “opt-in”) may put them in direct violation of those laws. The company I work for made substantial changes to its website, because the fines for violating those laws are non-trivial.
Click
@Chris Rose
The law does not care about Worldcon Traditions. You can’t make a ‘compromise’ with the law. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to get into an argument about this. Or that “Fandom should be above Politics”.
The Law Does Not Care About Your Feelings Or Fandom’s Traditions.
‘Opt Out’ operation of a public directory of members may be causing risk to the future of WSFS’s ability to operate in the EU. GDPR clearly mandates ‘Opt In’ for directory listing and information sharing. Not even the likes of Google have been able to get around this, and have had to pay €50 million in fines for using ‘Opt out’ instead of ‘Opt In’.
And the important part of this is you don’t get to say “Well, it’s a US Worldcon, so we’ll stick to our ‘Traditions'”. Fines that the EU levy for GDPR violations could be assessed against ‘successor organisations’. This means future (or possibly even past) Worldcons organised under the WSFS in the EU is liable for GDPR violations of all previous Worldcons. It could render it impossible for the WSFS to operate so much as a dealers table at an EU convention.
I strongly suggest someone actually consult a Lawyer converse with the implications of GDPR.
I also strongly caution that many US States are also adopting the same GDPR directives, so “It’s just a problem with the EU” isn’t true either.
WSFS doesn’t really “operate” anywhere. Each Worldcon committee is a separate organization.
@Carl
I’m not sure any Government is going to agree with the view that you can skip out on paying fines and taxes by dissolving your company and creating a new one each year.
The WSFS is a continuing organisation, that is the parent body to each Worldcon. So they’re obviously Successor Organisations.
Jay Blanc: Is this nothing more than a bid for attention?
The nonprofit corporations that host a Worldcon don’t dissolve. The ones in the US are also exempt from income tax.
These nonprofit corporations carry on the operations of the year’s Worldcon — not WSFS. Even if anything occurs to create unpayable liabilities, that is dealt with under the debt-recovery laws of the country involved.
There is no transferee liability from one of these nonprofit corporations to another because no encumbered assets are passed to another Worldcon-operating corporation.
Also, the year’s Worldcon does not own the service marks — they are held in a corporation of their own, whose directors are determined by the WSFS business meeting.
@Jay Blanc: I will give your “Strongly Caution” input due consideration.
@Mike Glyer
You may well see Worldcons as independent entities, each one unique and different to the previous one. Unfettered by the decisions and choices made by the previous ones. And only associated by that distant matter that they are under the same parent organisation, that dictates terms of their operation and controls the legal right for them to name themselves Worldcon. And you may well think that the hand-shake agreement of the pass-along-fund means it’s not a real transfer of assets, merely just a loose agreement amongst friends to hand over money.
I suggest that the EU, if assessing fines for GDPR violations, would view individual Worldcon corporations as the WSFS wearing a different hat and claiming to be a different person. And they would react by seizing assets from a Worldcon to pay for the WSFS’s fines.
The hubris is almost amusing. Ticket-Master couldn’t get around GDPR with a registered corporation shell game. Google couldn’t get around GDPR by trying to negotiate a compromise. Marriott couldn’t get off the hook for GDPR fines by claiming it was all the third party contractor’s and franchises fault.
There’s nothing in the WSFS Constitution that establishes it as the parent organization of a Worldcon committee.
I am an EU citizen and find the GDPR an ill-considered law created by people who wanted to get back at Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc… for not paying taxes and – in the case of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica – blatant privacy violations. As usual, they did not realise that the regulations also affect plenty of small blogs and websites, non-profits, etc… In the end, GDPR mainly harmed EU citizens, because a lot of websites are no longer accessible to EU citizens, including e.g. a favourite recipe website of mine.
The huge fines which scare so many people are aimed at huge corporations like Google or Facebook. They were never aimed at the small newspaper sites, blogs, non-profits, cooking websites, etc… they ended up terrifying into locking their sites or taking them offline altogether. And if someone decides to sue a small website for GDPR violations, a judge would not levy a fine of 50 millions Euros but a much lower sum, if at all. It’s also possible that the offending site would simply be ordered to stop doing whatever violates the GDPR.
I looked up a list of GDPR violations tried at German courts and found only one case where a fine was involved, namely 300 EUR compensation for a woman whose former employer refused to delete a photo of her from the company website.
Also, if someone decided to sue a Worldcon of which they themselves are a member (because if you’re not a member, what are you even doing on the registration website?) for privacy violations caused by their own inability to read clear instructions and uncheck a box, that makes them a JDA-level arsehole. Of course, there might be someone like this out there – JDA exists after all.
List of recent GDPR fines assessed. https://www.enforcementtracker.com
You will note that they do indeed chase smaller entities for fines. However, since Dublin 2019’s revenue was €1,206,172, the EU might not consider Worldcons to be a small fish.
As to how much a Worldcon could be on the hook for from a GDPR violation, it depends on the severity, and the revenue the entity made over the last three years. However, failure to cooperate, which is what we’re talking about here, would severely increase the fines. Using the German enforcement calculation, they would start from wanting to seize ~€20,000.
It would also put the government financial grants that EU Worldcons currently benefit from at risk.
Just change the check box to unticked by default.
Jay Blanc: The legal house of cards you’re imagining overlooks a lot of things. The EU has the concept of due process, or something analogous to it, in GDPR Article 58. There are many tools provided for achieving compliance. You dramatize the discussion by pointing to a whopping, draconian fine but you don’t really know what you’re talking about there, either.
Jay, you’re making a lot of assertions of fact here; are you a lawyer in the EU? I’d be curious what your credentials are in terms of backing up these claims. Not saying you’re wrong, but on balance I have no reason to believe you any more than I’d lend credence to a Youtube video telling me that a COVID-19 vaccine was going to turn my blood magnetic.