By Ersatz Culture: I was super-happy that Rcade wrote up the Smofcon “What can we learn from Chengdu?” panel, as this was something that I felt definitely needed doing, but it wasn’t a task that I relished taking on personally.
However, there are a few additional comments I’d like to add, which I wouldn’t have expected Rcade or anyone else to know about, but which I feel are pretty relevant. I’ll tackle things in the order they appeared his piece, even if that’s possibly not the best logical structure for a standalone article.
These sponsorships will not be accounted for in the convention’s financial report, Chengdu Worldcon co-chair Ben Yalow revealed during a panel discussion in December at Smofcon, a conference for convention planners. “None of that appears on our financial report because we didn’t get any money out of the deal. The convention never saw that money. What the convention saw was Hugo finalists who would show up and their plane ticket was taken care of and their hotel room was taken care of. It means that our financial report is completely accurate and totally misleading.”
It is perhaps worth noting that a number of contracts covering aspects of the Worldcon do appear on various Chinese internet sites. I don’t have an exhaustive collection of these, and I believe that other people may have more complete records. For example, a contract with item number SCIT-GN-2023080147 is for the post Hugo ceremony party, and had a winning bid of 488,500 yuan, or around $68k USD. Another contract covering communications and the con websites may be of interest to Filers, as it explicitly mentions File 770 as one of a number of sites to monitor and respond to. The value of that contract is listed as 765,000 yuan, or around $107k USD.
Whether these contracts show up on any future financial report remains to be seen. [Click for larger image.]
The Smofcon discussion has drawn attention since Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford revealed last week that Chengdu Hugo Awards administrator Dave McCarty manipulated the nominations and final vote…
This is a minor and pedantic point, but it’s a bit of a touchy subject for me. As far as I’m aware, I was the first person to raise the Smofcon Chengdu panels on social media on January 28th, which was also run on that day’s Scroll. This was over two weeks before the Barkley/Sanford report was published, which makes no mention whatsoever of Smofcon or indeed Smofs. Of course, that report has massively escalated coverage of all the issues around Chengdu, but the subject of Smofcon in conjunction with that report was raised by other people.
Chengdu sponsors “were not particularly intrusive,” Yalow said, but the con could not change a sponsored panel’s scheduled time or panelists without consulting that sponsor.
I haven’t had time to dig out references to back this up, but I believe there were a high number of changes to scheduling of the non-sponsored, more fannish or literary panels. This caused stress to the people who were on those panels, causing scheduling conflicts with their other activities, etc. That’s probably not attributable to the sponsors, but it does feel like the fan and literary panels were treated as second-class citizens.
I’m going to sidetrack here slightly, but can I remind people of an item I wrote up in the November 11th Pixel Scroll, regarding how the con’s commercial activities impacted the more fannish stuff? This was part of a long write-up of a long Chinese-language article from a mainstream magazine, presented here via machine translation with minor manual edits, and with my emphasis added:
Previous conventions would set up a memorial area, which is a place for middle-aged and elderly science fiction fans to reminisce and reminisce about the past. In 2017, the British science fiction writer Brian Aldiss [who had previously visited Chengdu, and has several works published in China] passed away. There was a small space at the World Science Fiction Convention that year, displaying his works, and photos from his life, as well as some of his treasure possessions, and a black and white TV playing back interviews with him. In 2023, Aldiss’ daughter Wendy had also come to Chengdu. She told our reporters that the Chengdu Worldcon was originally going to hold an exhibition for those photos, but it was not possible “because of a lack of space.” …
[Double Hugo finalist, CEO of the publisher 8 Light Minutes, and member of the Chengdu concom] Yang Feng originally planned to stage a commemorative exhibition at the convention, in honour of Mike Resnick, the former editor-in-chief of the American science fiction magazine “Galaxy’s Edge”. After Resnick’s death in 2020, his collection and books were put up for online auction, and 8 Light Minutes bought a large number of items. “Look, this is full of his things,” said Yang Feng, pointing to a glass cabinet. Initially, the organizers promised an exhibition area of 70 square meters. Worried about missing out, “thousands of yuan [was spent] on freight shipping” the collected items. However, the exhibition area ended up being occupied by several technology companies, and Yang Feng was only given a glass cabinet.
Whilst this was probably not directly related to any of the sponsors, I believe it does show how priorities can change for what is supposed to be a fan-run con when business interests are involved.
There was one part of Chengdu that disallowed sponsors. “One of our ‘do not break this rule ever under any circumstance’ was no sponsorship in respect to the Hugos,” Yalow said.
I guess if you don’t mention that someone won a Hugo when you use them in an advertorial for one of the sponsors, that was published on the con’s website, then it doesn’t count as “in respect to the Hugos”?
The moderator Coxen read the question aloud: “One of the objections to Raytheon as a sponsor for DC 3 was not just who they were but the perceived lack of transparency around it. How do you think we could reconcile that with the effective but relatively subtle sponsorship Chengdu had?”
To be clear: no-one on the panel ever mentioned Raytheon in the main discussion about sponsorships, although they did namecheck Google and Boeing. It was only when an audience member at the very end asked a question that the most controversial Worldcon sponsor ever was included in the discussion.
She [Tammi Coxen] responded jocularly. “Nobody knew who the sponsors were, at least from the West, so nobody asked you hard questions about them from the West!”
Yalow dodged the question. “That’s a political question that is in a sense above my pay grade,” he said.
I guess SMOFs don’t read File 770?
In the October 9th Pixel Scroll, I wrote an item with the title “Who’s sponsoring the Chengdu Worldcon?”, pointing out that the two named sponsors in the Chengdu section of the just-released WSFS Business Meeting agenda did not match what had been previously announced at the June 12th Brand Conference, which named China Telecom as the first sponsor.
The photos from that Brand Conference show Yalow, McCarty and Montgomery both in the audience and on stage. The China Telecom logo can be seen on a large video wall, in English, so all three of them would surely have seen it. [Click for larger images.]
Observation 1: Per the Diane Lacey emails, June 12th is one week after Dave McCarty said that he would be arriving in China i.e. it seems almost certain that in the same visit that included this brand conference, he was also working on interfering with the Hugo nominations.
Observation 2: Whilst I wouldn’t expect someone to pick up on this in the bustle of a flashy PR event, perhaps they would have been curious enough to have researched who exactly China Telecom were after the fact? That person would have quickly learned from Wikipedia that
“In January 2021, China Telecom was delisted from the NYSE in response to a US executive order.[27] The same year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked China Telecom’s operating license in the U.S. for national security reasons.[28] However, China Telecom (Americas) Corp plans to keep offering other services on United States soil.[29] In March 2022, the FCC designated China Telecom (Americas) Corp a national security threat.[30]“
As I am not a US citizen, what US agencies might think about China Telecom is fairly academic to me. Perhaps I’m being naive, but following the 2013 revelations from Edward Snowden, I’d be surprised if their relationship with China’s government is much different from US telcos and tech companies and the NSA/CIA/etc. However, given the history with the Raytheon sponsorship, maybe someone on the Chengdu concom might have wondered whether China Telecom might not be seen as a problematic sponsor? NB: As I understand it, China Telecom are one of the big three mobile phone networks in China, so I imagine for a Chinese Worldcon attendee, their sponsorship of the event would be no more controversial than, say, AT&T or T-Mobile sponsoring a Worldcon in the west.
The October 11th Pixel Scroll contained a further update about the sponsors. In it, I linked to a Chinese language WeChat/Weixin post from the con’s account, that listed all the actual sponsors, with brief descriptions of what business sector they operated in, thanks to help from a few different people online who researched them.
If after all that coverage “[n]obody knew who the sponsors were”, then I guess I was wasting my time doing the daily Chengdu write-ups.
One slightly curious thing is that Huawei is not listed as an official sponsor, but their branding did appear on at least one panel, at which (IIRC) one or two of their employees appeared. Additionally, per the Smofcon panel, they paid, or offered to pay, the expenses for at least one guest. Huawei might be considered another controversial sponsor, given the multiple entries in the relevant section of their Wikipedia page. However, despite them being namechecked at least twice, this did not provoke any reaction at Smofcon. (Disclosure: I’ve owned a couple of Huawei Android devices in the past, and both I thought were decent and offered good value-for-money for their price point. And again, they are a mainstream mass-market brand in China and many other countries, so their inclusion would not seem surprising to a Chinese attendee.)
I still intend to write-up the other Chengdu panel from Smofcon, which features three of the employees of Chengdu Business Daily from the Chengdu concom, plus Yalow, McCarty and Montgomery. There are elements of that video that I find much more upsetting than this “What did we learn from Chengdu?” panel. However, properly writing it up will involve a fair bit of re-reading of con reports and other research, in order to properly discuss some of that video’s content. I know that at least one Chinese member of the con has now purchased a Smofcon membership in order to watch that video, and perhaps they will also have comments to make on it.
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I have not seen much evidence at all. No statements whatsoever from the Chinese nationals who served on the Hugo committee and Concom. All of them are in the “knew, or should have known” class. None of them have come forward to say they were completely kept in the dark. (If they were, I can’t see any reason not to be shouting that right now.) None have said they saw it happening and said, “WTF folks, I realize things go differently in China, but we aren’t asking you do to anything like this!” Both with the disqualifications and the SF World recommendation list.
In addition, we have evidence the other way. The leaks and interview state McCarty sent decisions up to the con leadership for approval. He doesn’t mean Ben Yalow, as Yallow would have been involved in the decisions. We have statements from McCarty about him consulting with his local colleagues. We also have references that while the North American members reviewed English language works for political acceptability, they did not review the Chinese language works and left that, it strongly appears, to the native Chinese readers.
So while, without direct statements, we do not have proof, we certainly have considerable evidence, enough so that innocence should not be concluded and we should want to know more. We have gotten silence in our effort to learn more, from all except those willing to leak. At first, we worried that people resident in the PRC might stay silent for fear of government reprisal, but that is not credible if what’s being asserted is that this was all the fault of stupid foreigners. Perhaps they stay silent out of friendship, but to do so comes with a cost, people will justifiably suspect you.
And don’t forget, as stupid and as evil as McCarty, Yallow and the other collaborators were, they didn’t do this of their own accord. That’s how collaboration with repression works — the repressors don’t have to give orders, they just create the climate in which it will happen. But they still take on much of the responsibility, no matter how much shame the collaborators deserve.
(This relates mostly to the 4 works disqualified. It’s hard to imagine local fans having much desire for the removal of ballots that voted for works recommended by SF World.)
Finally, I call for a stop to those who respond to criticism of the PRC and CPC by calling the critics “racist.” All Chinese are not the same, and criticism of the CPC and PRC is not criticism or bigotry against the Chinese people, many of whom live outside the PRC or even live within it and don’t support its policies. Yes, because the PRC insists it is the only China and ROC just a breakaway province, people often refer to the PRC as “China.” To call such criticism racist is to act as though reaction to the bad actions of some people in China must be a comment on their ethnicity. An assumption, which is… well, a word I won’t use, because it is staggeringly rude unless you are certain of it.
Brad Templeton
It’s Yalow, with one, only one, L. As in Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow.
I don’t want to sound like I’m apologising for the Chinese government but everything we learn about this mess keeps pointing to it arising from inside McCarty’s own head.
@Camestros Felapton–
Nothing about how censorship works in an authoritarian regime generally, or in China in particular, excuses McCarty et al. for their rush to cooperate with it, and maybe use it for their own purposes.
But I am really, totally, completely fed up with the determination to pretend that China’s censorship laws and practices had nothing at all to do with it, and that the Western fans personally involved came up with this all on their own, out of the clear blue sky, and that China would have been perfectly okay with, for instance, one of the Chinese-Americans who speak Mandarin winning and then giving an acceptance speech in Mandarin that criticized China for any of the many things rational and decent people would criticize China for.
That doesn’t excuse McCarty and his collaborators for being willing, indeed eager to do this. They need to never touch the Hugos again, at a minimum. And the Chinese members of the Hugo subcommittee are sufficiently unlikely to even be volunteering for such positions that they’re effectively beyond our reach.
But can we please stop pretending that the same thing would have happened if China didn’t have its censorship laws and carefully cultivated culture of self-censorship “just in case,” because you can’t know for certain exactly where the government will draw the line this time?
And no, the lack of direct Chinese government fingerprints on this doesn’t change that. Especially since we know the Chinese corporate sponsors were deciding, for instance, scheduling and panelists on the panels they cared about.
If you don’t want to make excuses for the Chinese government, by all means, stop doing that. It won’t prevent us from dealing with the Western fans who were actively involved. Really it won’t. China doesn’t have to be innocent in this, for McCarty et al. to be guilty of censorship, fraud, and shameless disregard for WSFS rules.
Lis Carey: China doesn’t have to be innocent in this, for McCarty et al. to be guilty of censorship, fraud, and shameless disregard for WSFS rules.
Exactly. I find it very hard to believe that the Chinese members of the Hugo Admin Team didn’t know this was going on. If it wasn’t encouraged / desired / needed, surely they would have told Dave that.
There’s never going to be a “smoking gun” implicating any of the Chinese members of the concom, because they would never have put anything in writing. But it’s entirely possible — likely, even — that “hints” were dropped over dinner or drinks, or in discussions of the longlists as they emerged during the nomination process.
Regardless of the level of culpability of Chinese members of the concom, we can’t do anything about them. But we sure as hell can hold future concoms accountable for never allowing any of the non-Chinese members of the Hugo Admin Team to ever be responsible for anything related to WSFS ever again.
New message from Chengdu:
It seems that there is a new plan for Glasgow Worldcon. Xiongmao Study Trip announced a product called “study trip to Glasgow”, which will attract young children to join the Glasgow worldcon. Children can visit the worldcon, work as a volunteer and join some panels set up by the company. But the cost is high:over 10000$. You can see the Twitter to have a look at it.
The plan seems to come from Chengdu Business Daily. Altough we only get the poster, I believe we can see official announcements and more details soon.
Looks like CBD doesn’t regret.
Hi Zimozi. This is not affiliated with us in any way. We have had no correspondence on this matter with anyone from Chengdu. Children are not permitted to volunteer at our convention for multiple reasons including health and safety and child protection, There are no panels of this nature being organised by Glasgow 2024 and there is no other way to host panels at Glasgow 2024 other than through our own programme team.
Though the advertisement came from WeChat Moments of a leader of Chengdu Business Daily, I believe this plan will be officially announced. And I am willing to share the details in my email, which has been sent to your committee.
Also, maybe this is an experiment to test the reaction from the fandom. But I think as a huge commercial plan, it is difficult to be cancelled. It showed the ignorance and disregard of the WSFS constitution in CBD.
This plan is set up for those parents who do not have enough knowledge of science fiction and Worldcon. It describes Worldcon as a chance to fulfil the children’s experience and education. It takes advantage of poor information and the lack of promotion of Worldcon in China.
@lis
John Chu, a Chinese-American diaspora writer who speaks Chinese (don’t know which dialect) was not disqualified.
@ Lis Carey said:
I voted and spoke against the Chengdu bid because China is a totalitarian country and free speech is strongly discouraged, sometimes with tanks. It’s also corrupt in some interesting, historically traceable ways. Plus, I’m not a fan of genocide or slave labor.
Of course China’s dysfunctions are part of the background of this shitshow.
But the evidence of direct complicity by Chinese fans, whether part of the concom or not, is currently lacking. So, I’m going to continue refuting the ‘but China’ defense and the many attempts to take the focus off the North American collaborators by pointing to a group against whom there is as yet no evidence, since I see both as attempts to somehow minimize how “our people (yes, it’s sarcasm)” chose to be completely and unapologetically unprincipled.
When there is some evidence of involvement by Chinese fans or concom members (which, if the government sees that as having caused embarrassment to China, could lead to prison terms) then I’ll spread the opprobrium more widely.
The World Science Fiction Convention is not a great place for children. It’s aimed at adults and very nearly all of the programming is centered around the interests of adults — quite old adults too, sometimes, given the steady ageing of fandom. The interests of fandom are often not suitable for the ears or eyes of minors, and the parties certainly are not.
I have just about managed … several … WorldCons with small-to-medium children in tow. But it always took a lot of pre-planning and logistics, a steady stream of distractions and amusements for the kids, and — and this is vital — one or more other adults also there to take on childcare responsibilities. Having a minimum of a one-to-one adult-to-child ratio in the group was essential.
I cannot fathom, I cannot imagine what enjoyment a group of children would get out of WorldCon on their own, even if they were completely familiar with the culture and fluent in the English language, which I gather these children might not be.
WorldCons are just not designed for children.
@Madame Hardy–Did you read John Chu’s story? You should. It’s very good.
And it’s, specifically, about the very real problem of anti-Asian bigotry in the USA. I’d call that exceptionally unlikely to push any buttons for people worried about accidentally promoting work that might offend Chinese authorities. Also, as far as I know, he hasn’t been as visible as Kuang or said critical things about China where they’ve been generally noticed.
The Xiongmao Study Trip is using Worldcon trademarks without authorization and making false claims about trip participants engaging in official Glasgow 2024 activities. The Mark Protection Committee needs to put a stop to this.
@Cheryl S.–Have you met human beings?
No we don’t have, and are unlikely ever to have, direct evidence of the Chinese members of the Hugo subcommittee saying and doing things that are evidence of direct complicity.
They’re also the people who have lived with and in this system their whole lives, and are still in China after the WorldCon.
McCarty has made it abundantly and disgustingly clear how eager he was to participate in this censorship. And it couldn’t have been done without him and the other Western members of that subcommittee. But the idea that the Chinese members of the subcommittee, who are the ones with direct experience of how Chinese censorship works, were just furniture and room decorations with zero actual participation, is beyond bizarre.
And it’s unnecessary. It doesn’t make McCarty et al. less guilty or less appalling. It doesn’t change the fact that McCarty et al. are the ones we can do something about.
But to insist that we have to pretend the Chinese subcommittee members were just lumps on a log and obviously had nothing to do with it, rejects logic, reason, common sense, and human nature.
@lis:
Yes, and it’s spectacular.
@Madame Hardy–Yes, it certainly is!
Indeed, the suggestion that the local members of the committees were completely out of the loop on this process is unlikely and patronizing. On one hand, we are seeing much discussion about how various parties (Chinese fans and concom, business interests, perhaps government interests) dramatically changed many elements of this worldcon to their own purposes. They organized 2,000 voters for their bid. They built a convention center in an eyeblink. They arranged a vast array of sponsorships and commercialized the con at a level far beyond any precedent, and paid travel expenses for many guests including many Hugo nominees. They launched related business ventures and had $1B in science fiction related business deals signed at the convention. They pretty much paid no attention to any foreign voices who said, “that’s not how we usually do worldcons” and made it their own. Because they’re smart, and aware and industrious and have different agendas.
Yes, these things were done by different people, some forces outside fandom trying to exploit fandom. But this is what happened. But suddenly, when it came to the corruption and censorship of the Hugos, it’s all “they played no part” and were even unaware of what went on and “we defer to you, our fine western colleagues” as those western colleagues banned books that were approved for publication in China, and nullified most of the local nomination votes for the Hugos. You treat them like idiots, who never even bothered to read the Chinese language wikipedia page on the Hugos or any other history which details the story of the puppies slate and other related matters.
This strains credulity. Unless they come make a public statement about how they were total idiots, and just put their names on the committee list but had no awareness of what was transpiring, I am not going to be so patronizing as to presume they were dupes and idiots.
Well it all happened in China and the Chinese government does routinely censor media and popular culture along lines that very much look arbitrary. So, yes, we can rule out there being zero impact on McCarty’s actions but:
1. The censorship he enacted was high-handed, unaccountable, slapdash and inconsistent
2. Everything else he did during the nomination process appears to have nothing to do with censorship and was also high-handed, unaccountable, slapdash and inconsistent
The Chinese government is relevant context but I’m confident that if McCarty had the same degree of power over the Hugo Awards but was placed in a different country some of the specifics might have changed but the Hugo awards would still be facing scandal of a similar magnitude.
Since he has been Hugo admin before, and there were not scandals of even remotely similar magnitude, but rather just a few oddities, I am not sure of the reason for this confidence; it is counter to history. Not that I would trust him within 100 feet of a rocket.
We can’t say what would have happened without McCarty at the helm, but we do know that several other experienced western SMOFs were also involved, and they all went along. It’s just just him.
I would be very wary of any claim that it is safe to conduct the Hugos in a country with the level of censorship that the PRC has, or even 1/4 of it. No matter who is administering. I think it could be made safe if the administrators are dedicated to principles, and cancel the Hugos if they can’t be run fully in line with WSFS principles and rules, and if their actions are subject to audit by those under no influence of censoring parties.
@Lis Carey said:
Have you heard anyone say the Chinese concom are somehow uninvolved? Because I haven’t. What I have heard is that anyone involved in the Chengdu concom can’t ever participate in WSFS events again, and even that isn’t happening. I don’t know what Chen Shi and Ben Yalow are still doing on the MPC, for instance.
What we don’t have is evidence of how they were involved. Dave McCarty was, I dunno, White Savioring all over the place and there are reciepts, but whatever the Chinese members of the concom were doing is still opaque. As long as that holds true, plus that potential consequences to Chinese citizens of embarrassing China can be weighty without my voice, I’m not going to apportion the blame in an equal fashion, because what I think probably happened isn’t evidence and I’ve been known to be wrong.
I also have sympathy for Chinese fans who are unlikely to have agreed to eliminate most Chinese language science fiction from the vote. (Please note that at least one SMOF was totally okay with that, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been a very good party, even for the Chinese fans.)
I think you might be taking the very real reluctance to embrace pointing fingers at the Chinese fans and subcommittee members as a way to let North American Quislings off the worst points of the hooks on which they gladly leapt upon as evidence that we’re infantilizing or absolving the Chinese members of the subcommittee. That’s not happening. It’s the lack of evidence, plus rejecting the self-serving underlying defense of ‘we all agreed to not say anything more for reasons (noble reasons, obvs)’ proffered by McCarty and his apologists.
TL;DR – No heroes here, but I’m lighting my torches for McCarty and Yalow first, with some left over for Chen Shi and the other Chinese members of Chengdu Worldcon.
@Camestros Felapton–Maybe you haven’t noticed the terms I’ve been using to describe McCarty and his actions. Or that what I’ve been objecting to is the “The Chinese government and Chinese members of the Hugo subcommittee obviously have nothing to do with this because we don’t have emails from them saying they did it” bullshit.
Dave McCarty was Hugo administrator in 2016. He’s been involved in other years. No, he didn’t pull anything similar. It’s not the first time he’s been an arrogant jerk, but no, as eager as he was to engage in censorship and other shenanigans in a setting that encouraged it, he hasn’t done it previously or caused a scandal of anything like similar magnitude.
With someone else in charge, someone with some moral fiber, things would have unfolded differently–but probably with the Western Hugo subcommittee members resigning in protest, not with a smoothly running and uncontroversial Hugo Awards. And based on what we’ve seen this time, some people would be calling subcommittee members who resigned in protest “racist.”
@Lis Carey: “No, he didn’t pull anything similar.”
He wasn’t caught pulling anything similar.
Cheryl S
If this is aimed at me, where do you get the idea that “I’m totally okay with that?” I think it was a shitty thing to do, regardless of who did it. But there are people in this thread saying “The Chinese would have no motivation to minimize the number of Chinese works on the ballot” and I was pointing out that I think there’s an obvious reason they might have wanted to. As Brad Templeton has written above, it’s the height of patronizing to imply that the Chinese members of the committee didn’t have full insight into what was going on. You don’t know anything about what they might or might not have done because they have stayed silent.
At least one person involved in the 2016 Hugos has claimed that he DID try to pull something similar then: https://bsky.app/profile/scifantasy.bsky.social/post/3klnwsd5ug52k The difference this time was the degree to which there were not people to keep him in check. Placed in a position of authority with less accountability he did more because he could get away with doing more. We know from the statements he has made since that he sees the WSFS rules as essentially giving the Hugo admin carte-blanche to make decisions about the eligibility of both ballots and nominees.
@Jake–
The full numbers were released much more quickly. They hot looked at in detail, because the Puppies would have loved to find evidence of Evil SMOF Chicanery. They didn’t.
@Camestros Felapton–He had the same authority in 2016.
There was less accountability because people deferring to the fact that he was the one working with the Chinese members of the subcommittee, and “Chinese conventions are run differently.
But you said he would have created an equally bad scandal anywhere else, and now you’re falling back on explaining why, in fact, he didn’t and wasn’t able to.
To clarify I said ” I’m confident that if McCarty had the same degree of power over the Hugo Awards but was placed in a different country some of the specifics might have changed but the Hugo awards would still be facing scandal of a similar magnitude.” [emphasis added]
Dave also talked about doing it in 2014. He’s been a ticking time bomb in more ways than one.
@rcade
“The Mark Protection Committee needs to put a stop to this.”
What can it do? China has a near-official policy of ignoring Western IP rights.
Do you think a sternly-worded letter would work?
@bill–The Mark Protection Committee may not be able to do much inside China, but CBD will apparently be trying to use WSFS marks in countries that do respect intellectual property law.
@Lis Carey said:
The only part of this that I will concede is that McCarty had previously not caused an open scandal. Now that whatever shield of invisibility he was wearing got left behind in Chengdu, other instances of his bad guy behavior are floating to the surface, leading to a lot of ‘this is my surprised face’ reactions.
ETA – nothing, just fixing a subject/verb issue.
i don’t think you should assume that nothing can be done when it’s a using the marks for a trip to Scotland.
@Lis — the question stands — what can the MPC do about it? Suppose CBD or other Chinese interests take out full page ads in the Glasgow Times, and rent billboards around the convention during the week of Worldcon, using WSFS marks. The most that can be done is to sue a Chinese entity after the fact. The damage is done. And the cost of chasing them would likely be more than provable damages.
@rcade — I’m not assuming nothing can be done, but I don’t see what could be done to prevent it (that is, in advance), or what could be done after the fact that ameliorates the situation.
The same things any other IP holder would do to protect the use of their marks.
If the entity in China doing this has any need for international goodwill, doing things with WSFS marks in other countries in ways that we oppose could be a risk for them.
I think you are being a little glib about a problem that American movie and television studios, record labels, clothing companies, book publishers, semiconductor manufacturers, defense contractors, and other concerns cannot solve. Nike releases a new pair of shoes, and two weeks later you can buy fakes on the street in China, compete with Nike trademarks.
These companies have exponentially more money to throw at the problem than the MPC, and it still goes on. If China decides it is in their interest to violate WSFS IP, then they will do so. They don’t care about International Goodwill — as the 500 lb gorilla in the room, they don’t have to.
Cheryl S:
Dave was so bad at manipulating the Hugo, that I can’t imagine him doing it before and getting away with it.
Even without EPH the numbers would have looked very strange and I can’t imagine that not getting caught.
I don’t trust him doing the math correctly in this time.
You’re talking about the entirety of China and I’m talking about a group trying to make $10,000 a student on a field trip to a Worldcon. If they don’t do what the Mark Protection Committee tells them is permitted they’ll be unwelcome at Worldcon and the experience they’re selling will be a sham.
They already seem to be unwelcome at Glasgow, and not because of use of Worldcon trademarks. They are unwelcome because it’s a bad idea and they are not trying to coordinate with Glasgow staff. Whether or not they use the trademarks is irrelevant.
If the MPC sends them a nastygram saying “don’t use our marks”, and they comply, and they still show up with 100 kids expecting to be on panels and welcomed into the con, it will still be a major disaster.
The Marks are not the issue.
I can imagine them organizing their own panels at a different venue in Glasgow in parallel with Worldcon, in a way that would look like part of the same event for outsiders.
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