DisCon III chair Mary Robinette Kowal today took responsibility and apologized for the Raytheon Intelligence and Space sponsorship that the convention accepted: “Statement and Apology on DisCon III Sponsorship”.
The sponsor’s corporate logo was on the backdrop used for red carpet photos before the Hugo Awards ceremony, and acknowledged from the stage during the ceremony. The ceremony also seems to be the first place people became generally aware of the sponsorship. Unlike Google, which was also thanked during the ceremony, Raytheon was not one of the sponsors acknowledged in the DisCon III Souvenir Book (page 54).
Statement on DisCon III Sponsorship
I am Mary Robinette Kowal, and I was the chair for DisCon III. I take full responsibility for accepting Raytheon Intelligence and Space as a sponsor, and I apologize for doing so.
The decision tree that led us to this point is filled with branches that sound like excuses for my own culpability. At the root of it is simply that in accepting funding from Raytheon Intelligence and Space and partnering with them for the members’ red carpet event, I was wrong.
That choice has caused harm and damage to people: the finalists, who were unaware; the people in our communities; the members and staff of Worldcon, who trusted me to make good choices.
I am sorry that I let you all down.
DisCon III is making an anonymous contribution to an organization dedicated to peace, equal to the amount we received from Raytheon. I am also personally contributing to the same organization.
The delay in responding added to the distress that we caused. For this, I ask your forgiveness. We needed to have conversations that were slowed by post-convention travel.
For the past several days, we have read your comments in email and on social media. Thank you for sharing them with us and trusting that you would be heard and taken seriously. Your honesty and sincerity are what make our community a better place.
Future conrunners can avoid our mistakes by:
- Developing a sponsorship policy for your organization that reflects the values and concerns of our community.
- Creating a robust plan for doing due diligence on potential sponsors.
- Creating a mission and value statement against which to measure actions.
We did none of those. Our Code of Conduct says that DisCon III aims to build an inclusive community for all fans. This sponsorship did not achieve that goal.
I cannot erase the harm that my actions caused. This happened on my watch. It is my fault, and I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused.
Signed,
Mary Robinette Kowal
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@Ryan H
This tweet – https://twitter.com/worldcon2021/status/1472361395148648448 – appears to be a direct use of the Hugo Award service mark for Raytheon’s promotional purposes?
Ryan H: Oh, now Jay is going to try and talk past me like I’m not in this conversation. What a juvenile maneuver.
The picture Jay links to is of the photo backdrop at DisCon III’s red carpet photo session. A backdrop publicized by DisCon III social media. It is DisCon III making use of the Hugo icon. And advertising a sponsor alongside it. Not at all Raytheon being given authority to use the mark however they want.
@Mike Glyer
Can you please cite the explicit authorisation that allowed DisCon III to offer Rayethon use of the Hugo Award service mark in a sponsorship agreement for a ‘Red Carpet Event’?
Jay Blanc: WSFS Constitution sections 1.6 and 2.1.
I hope you don’t think you are cosplaying Tom Cruise and asking me to find the page in the manual that tells where the mess hall is.
And for the third time, Raytheon didn’t use the mark. Stop trying to construct an argument from a fallacious premise.
@Mike Glyer.
1.6 – “Authority and responsibility for all matters concerning the Worldcon, except those reserved herein to WSFS, shall rest with the Worldcon Committee, which shall act in its own name and not in that of WSFS.”
So, two things… First The Worldcon and The Hugo Awards are not the same entities. Second, even if they were, the ‘except reserved herein’ clause means that the immediately following section 1.7 retains all control of Service Marks to the Marks Committee.
2.1 – “administering the Hugo Awards” means “administering the Hugo Awards”, it does not mean anything other than that. And again, is immediately followed by section 2.2 requiring the Worldcon committee to acknowledge WSFS ownership and control of service marks.
Your belief that people are asking in bad faith demonstrates ignorance of the people in this discussion who are seeking the amount.
The incentive DisCon III has to provide the information is to further the goals expressed in Kowal’s apology.
Jay Blanc: Do you read your own comments before you hit send? You’re now arguing that the Worldcon committee doesn’t have the authority to use the Hugo service marks.
@Mike Glyer
Do you understand that there’s a difference between ‘having the right to use the marks’ and ‘having control of the marks’? Because you seem to conflate the two.
I’m a member of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. Right now, many members of the MPC are traveling or busy with family and holiday commitments. I would expect that the MPC will issue a statement sometime after the new year, when members have had the chance to discuss this issue and determine the appropriate response.
In the meantime, I would advise considering anything said by someone who is not officially representing the MPC as nothing more than uninformed speculation.
@Tammy Coxen
That sounds about right. IIRC (and it’s been a long long time), LACon II had a budget of about 900K to pay for all the stuff people wanted.
Jay Blanc: No, I’m continuing to dispute your notion that the Worldcon committee requires the MPC’s prior permission to display the Hugo icon in the vicinity of a sponsor’s logo. That is an arrangement that exists solely in your imagination,
This sounds backwards to me. DisCon III was always in control, deciding how a sponsor could be presented in conjunction with the Hugo marks and how much that sponsorship would cost. Anything Raytheon wanted had to be approved by DisCon III to happen.
“$1.5 million”
Good LORD.
I will say that I felt distinctly uncomfortable at the pre-ceremony banquet in 2018, that we were eating off the backs of all the folks who had to pay so much to attend (and even just to vote). I left the banquet early to be with the folks in Callahan’s (that was a really neat setup; thanks Baycon folks) and in the event that we’re 1) on the ballot again and 2) able to attend, I’ll be giving future banquets a miss.
@Mike
Why are you intent on misrepresenting what I said so you can argue against that instead?
I said that I did not think an individual Worldcon has independent authority to enter into a Sponsorship deal that grants the Sponsor rights to associate themselves directly in the presentation of the Hugo awards and benefit from direct association with that service mark.
Having a sponsored ‘Red Carpet Event’ as part of the Hugo Award Ceremony is not comparable to an advertising slot in the convention book. It deliberately produces the impression that the Awards were being presented this year in association with that sponsor.
Why are you trying to diminish this to ‘display the Hugo icon in the vicinity of a sponsor’s logo’? That’s clearly not what happened here, this was a direct involvement and association sponsorship where Raytheon benefitted from the prestige of associating with the Hugo service mark.
Now, it may well be that the MPC authorised it. Or failed to say ‘this isn’t yours to authorise’ quickly enough. Or no one thought that such things needed official authorisation at all, because the Worldcon is ‘just our thing’.
The problem is We Don’t Know. No one with inside information is saying how this decision got made. But your independent assertion that it was entirely above board for an individual Worldcon to make such a decision without authorisation from the WSFS does not appear to be supported by the text of the WSFS constitution.
Sure, but it’s probably less in 1966 Constant Dollars. 🙂
@gideon Marcus…
My sisters Kelly and Heather were in charge of Callahan’s Place. I’m not sure why you are thanking Baycon. (We did have a number of Bay Area fans volunteer for Worldcon 76 who also volunteer for Baycon.)
Heather actually created the fireplace prop for doing toasts.
Ah, I had the impression Worldcon 76 was primarily a Baycon writ large. Thank you for setting me straight. Callahan’s was absolutely lovely. I watched the ceremony from there with friends I’d made at the convention, and it was delightful.
A lot of the cost is renting chairs and tables for several days. And insurance – that’s always $$$.
@Gideon Marcus:
Ah, I had the impression Worldcon 76 was primarily a Baycon writ large.
*chuckling* Oh, my sweet summer child. Suffice to say, S.F. Bay Area fandom is its own fractious set of overlapping circles. BayCon is formally run by Artistic Solutions, Inc., a California corporation. Worldcon 76 was formally run by San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (SFSFC), a California non-profit public benefit corporation. There is/was a great deal of overlap. We all know each other. Practically everyone is on speaking terms.
This pattern will be familiar to fannish groups around the globe and possibly even in orbit.
A couple of random thoughts:
1) A financial report that says:
Income $XXX
Expenses $YYY
Surplus = $(XXX-YYY)= $ZZZ
Amount passed forward to other committees $AAA (where AAA<ZZZ)
Assorted names and addresses.
is suffiicient to meet the requirements. If the management doesn’t want to publicly state the Raytheon amount, there’s no reason they have to put it into a financial report.
2) Hypothetical — John Doe, WSFS member, works for a company that makes and sells toxic waste to kindergartens. He makes a donation to Worldcon, and his employer, being a good corporate citizen, matches the employee’s amount with a similar donation. What does Worldcon do?
3)
Money is fungible, and any $ donated to an peace organization is money that isn’t available for other things that are more directly related to the objectives of the WSFS and its conventions. Assume for the moment that Discon will end up in surplus, like most Worldcons do. The $ that went to the unnamed organization are dollars that won’t be available for pass-along to Chicon, Chengdu, etc. Is that a good thing? Is it in keeping with the sec. 1.2 Objectives of the WSFS? “Incidental” is a little ambiguous, but I don’t think the donation is necessary or incidental to WSFS Objectives.
I understand why MRK made the decision to do so, but it doesn’t solve any problems, and it makes the Peace organization the unwitting recipient of Raytheon $ and they may have their own objections to being the beneficiary.
4) There are Peace organizations that I agree with and would donate to (and have), and there are Peace organizations that I don’t agree with, and would object to donations being made to. An organization devoted to, for example, Israel BDS goals would be agreeable to some, and problematic for others. All this is to say that giving Raytheon $ to an unnamed organization may just be replacing one outrage with another.
Jay Blanc: Further evidence that your faith is misplaced that Worldcon committees get the Mark Protection Committee’s permission for the use of the marks is the complete absence of any such transactions in the MPC’s minutes and report to the business meeting. Every Worldcon produces Hugo trophies, uses service marks in publications, physical displays at the convention — never mentioned in the MPC reports because it all occurs without recourse to the MPC.
But I do notice you are developing more elaborate circumlocutions to evade the fact that Raytheon did not use the service mark. I get it — you don’t like that the Raytheon logo was displayed in places at the Hugo ceremony. You’re just not right that doing so violated anything in the WSFS Constitution.
@Mike
I do not understand how you can look at the official photos from the ‘Raytheon Red Carpet’, and not acknowledge that Raytheon were using the Hugo Award service mark in direct association with their own branding? Can you not see the logo branding wall?
And why do you keep claiming Worldons need to ask permission to use the WSFS marks themselves, when I’ve repeatedly told you I’m not saying that. Permission to use the marks themselves, and authority to allow a sponsor use of the mark, are two very different things.
I don’t mind you arguing with me, I do mind you condescendingly misrepresenting what I’ve said.
Jay Blanc: You were the one that pointed us to DisCon III’s tweet promoting the red carpet photo session with the backdrop showing Raytheon’s logo and the Hugo icon. Is it not clear that what happened had the authority of the committee behind it? It was DisCon III’s event. They were the entity using the service mark.
@Mike
The question is “Was Raytheon’s use of the Hugo Award mark authorised directly by the WSFS Mark Protection Committee or implicitly by the WSFS constitution”?
The ‘Red Carpet’ event was a Raytheon branded and sponsored event, organised by and on behalf of Raytheon for the purposes of promoting Raytheon by association with the Hugo Awards, during which they used the Hugo Award marks as part of their branding. Photos of the event clearly show a branding wall where Raytheon use their branding alongside the Hugo Awards mark. And Raytheon paid the Worldcon an undisclosed sum of money in order to have this sponsered event occur.
You propose that all Worldcons have a blanket implied right to grant licenses of WSFS marks to any third party without prior approval. I don’t see that in the text of the WSFS constitution. And the text that does refer to the marks, is explicitly clear that the WSFS retains rights to control and protect the marks. Individual Worldcons do not have carte blanche to let third parties use of WSFS marks.
So “who authorised Raytheon to use the Hugo Award mark” is a question that has yet to be answered.
@Jay Blanc: Weird that you keep presuming Raytheon was using the Hugo logo. Surely Discon III was using the Raytheon logo. 😉
Look it was a Worldcon event, not a Raytheon event, despite how oddly you try to spin it. Now, who paid for/printed the backdrop . . . meh that’s kinda irrelevant, methinks. It was a Worldcon event, with sponsorship. Not a Raytheon event somewhere random where the Hugos were brought to Raytheon. Raytheon was clearly the visitor there, not the host of the Hugo Awards.
(P.S. Wow, what a busy comment thread!)
If you’re going to complain about having your views misrepresented, you should take care to describe mine accurately.
You also have a bad habit of resorting to legal terminology (“grant licenses”) in an attempt to assert facts not in evidence. Nobody granted a license to Raytheon.
@rcade: “The incentive DisCon III has to provide the information is to further the goals expressed in Kowal’s apology.”
I don’t see it.
Re. knowing the cost to “know” whether they should’ve rejected it . . . yeah, that ship sailed quite a while ago (they accepted it!). So this makes it seem like the only reason is to have more opportunity to criticize the con. The con which already admitted it shouldn’t have been done and apologized super, super profuseley.
@Kendel
To most people, if someone pays for it, plasters their name on it, requires you to do it to their specification, and provides a branding wall for it… Then now it’s their event.
Do you really think that if Discon III decided to cancel the Red Carpet, they could have kept the money?
Golden Rule applies here.
@Kendal
Well, my issue is that there’s supposed to be a WSFS Marks Protection Committee that are supposed to protect the Hugo Award service mark. And I’d like to know if they knew about this, and if they approved of it.
At the moment, it sure looks a whole lot like this was all done without much discussion or approval from anyone outside the people who put together the sponsorship deal. And that reaches into the long standing issues with how the Hugo Awards are operated.
@Jay Blanc: Lots of assumptions in just one sentence there, wow.
@Jay Blanc: I’ve been to some MPC meetings; they seem to be mostly concerned with (a) domain registrations, (b) service mark registrations, and (c) third parties using it outside WSFS/Worldcon. Not first parties (Worldcons) using it at Worldcon events. (There may be a few other, closely-related things, but those are the ones I remember coming up when I went to meetings for a few Worldcons. I couldn’t make it this time around.)
(ETA: Given the name: Mark Protection Committee . . . it’s not really surprising what the meetings tend to cover.)
“. . . the long standing issues with how the Hugo Awards are operated.” – er, by Worldcons. The MPC doesn’t run the Hugo Awards. I’m sure you know that, but your phrasing is kinda weird. I have no idea what “long standing issues” you’re talking about (and I don’t really care), but what a weird sentence.
I can understand that DisCon3 would like to avoid putting a peace organisation in the cross fire (even if all peace organisations are well used to being in that place). Personally, I hope that the money is not given to Amnesty (who was instrumental in laying the ground work for a war against Iraq) nor HRW (who in many ways is an instrument for US powers). I’d much more prefer the Red Cross, Veterans for Peace, War Resisters League or Doctors Without Borders.
Right now, many members of the MPC are traveling or busy with family and holiday commitments. I would expect that the MPC will issue a statement sometime after the new year, when members have had the chance to discuss this issue and determine the appropriate response.
I do not understand the dogged insistence on flagellating a deceased equine with uninformed speculation, when this has already been made clear.
@Jay Blanc, my good man, as @Kendal said, it’s abundantly evident that you are rather out of your depth on both the work of the MPC and on real-world application of trademark law. It would be excellent, at this point, if MPC member @Jo Van’s polite upthread request were heeded. Please consider doing so. Thanks. (In the unlikely event MPC action is required, they’ll be on it.)
I’m not saying there needs to be immediate answers from the MPC, I’m just saying that there are some important questions that need answers from the MPC.
I don’t understand the argument that individual Worldcons get full and arbitrary control over the Hugo Award service mark, so there’s no need for anyone to ask any questions about it. This seems to actively contradict what the WSFS constitution says about the Service Marks.
Would it be okay, for instance, if a Future Worldcon sold all rights to The Hugo Awards Presentations to HBO-GO? What if the person who did so didn’t fully understand the contract they were signing, and it’s an ‘in perpetuity’ signing over of those rights?
The intent of the WSFS Marks being retained by the WSFS not the individual Worldcons was precisely to allow those rights to be kept on a short leash and prevent a Worldcon selling the Hugo Awards to a third party.
I’d also like it if the MPC considered the following pointed question while they’re discussing the Raytheon sponsorship.
What happens if the 2023 Worldcon signs a Hugo Awards sponsorship deal with Huawei, considering their being on the US’s Sanctions Entity List but the local laws of China requiring US Sanctions to be ignored?
Jay Blanc: What happens when somebody sells something they don’t own? Civil litigation. Possibly an attempt by Big Corporation Inc. to bring criminal charges against the fan who makes that mistake, which may or may not be thrown out by the court (there being no bad motive on the part of the misunderstanding fan you specified.)
@Jay Blanc, I will again suggest heeding the First Rule of Holes (“When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”). Your alleged “questions” are (again) inane and are wasting time. E.g., it would neither be physically possible nor “OK” for a future Worldcon to sell WSFS service marks to anyone at all, for the simple reason of that future Worldcon not owning title. (WSFS, an unincorporated literary society owns the statutory and common-law tradermark title, and delegates administration of those properties to the MPC, WSFS’s sole permanent body created so that a year-round-essential part of the society is non-dormant and can take action between Worldcons.).
Whoever (if anyone) used the phrase “full and arbitrary control”, it was not I, but in all likelihood (not having personally the stamina to dig through upthread exchanges yet again) you’re making some sort of strained interpretation to attribute a dubious premise (“individual Worldcons get full and arbitrary control over the Hugo Award service mark”) to unidentified interlocutors and then imagine a non-sequitur conclusion (“so there’s no need for anyone to ask any questions about it”) in order to portray yourself as bravely fighting actually nonexistent and also irrelevant opposition. Which is to say, the issue isn’t whether it’s allowable to ask questions; the issue is that you just haven’t asked particularly sensible ones.
Speaking of that, what you are now saying about the WSFS Constitution doesn’t even make a particle of sense. All it says about the society’s service marks (paraphrasing) is that the MPC registers and protects them, that it reports to the Business Meeting, that its membership and officers get picked in certain ways and have certain terms of office, and that it will notify each seated Worldcon of the correct form that trademark notices should take. (And Worldcon and NASFiC concoms, as chartered by WSFS imprimatur under agreement to the society, are required to print those notices in their publications.)
Perhaps you will at some point ask a relevant and interesting question. I frankly haven’t yet seen you do it. But, again, the smart move would be to heed @Jo Van Ekeren’s eminently sensible request.
(Disclosure: Not an attorney, let alone a trademark attorney, just a WSFS Business Meeting regular and interested observer of the MPC, and who coincidentally spearheaded and won a trademark squabble in a wholly different nonprofit area for the late online magazine Linux Gazette, which had been leaned on by its former host SSC, Inc. using trademark threats that proved ultimately toothless.)
(Edited to add: And, Jay? Are you aware that, in arguing with Our Good Host Mike Glyer about Worldcon/WSFS matters, you’re arguing with a former Worldcon chair? Honestly, do take a breath and reconsider. And ponder the wisdom of hole-directional orientation. That’s the hole truth, sirrah.)
So, if we’re all agreed that the individual Worldcons do not own the Hugo Award service mark, how can they sign a sponsorship deal with a third party for the Hugo Awards?
@Jay Blanc, ah, I see your core problem, right here:
The question is “Was Raytheon’s use of the Hugo Award mark authorised directly by the WSFS Mark Protection Committee or implicitly by the WSFS constitution”?
Having been a live-body DisCon III attendee, and having walked past (and shot figurative daggers at) the Raytheon “logo branding wall” every time I walked through that corridor on Saturday, I deny your premise. BWAWA, Inc. d/b/a/ DisCon III was using one of WSFS’s service marks — not the irksome Beltway bandit.
Call me a cynic, but overall you’re striking me as one of those “How about you and him fight?” people, i.e., just yet another Internet s???kicker. But please do feel free to prove me wrong.
@bill, as to your thought #2 with the somewhat contrived whiteboard hypothetical, we of WSFS trust Worldcon chairs to display adaptability in solving problems to the net benefit of the Worldcon, and that would doubtless include not borrowing trouble by answering hypothetical questions. But you’re welcome to find some big donors in the name of science for Chicon, so we can observe con-chair (and division head) performance in the wild.
As to your thought #3, as a Business Meeting regular, I’m willing to wager you US $50 or so that the Chicon Business Meeting will not second-guess the 2021 Worldcon chair’s judgement in re-donating that sponsorship money as neither necessary nor incidental to WSFS objectives. I mean, if you seriously think otherwise, you could try to make a motion, but it’ll get staked through the heart with Postpone Indefinitely so expeditiously, the motion will detectably blue-shift.
On thought #4, having seen Ms. Kowal in action for some years, I have another loose US $50 waiting to walk off with yours, wagering that whenever the recipient’s identity emerges, the only “outrage” will be of the Internet Church of Bogosity variety.
If I paid for a full-page ad in the current Worldcon’s publication it would be to my specification with my company’s name on it. None of that would make it my publication. The con would control whether to run the ad or cancel it and refund my money.
@rcade
And how about if instead of a full-page advert, you got to write the leading article in the publication? And the cover of the publication had your company’s logo given the same prominence, focus and size as the convention’s?
@Rick Moen.
1) The hypothetical in #2 wasn’t posed with the expectation of someone at WSFS to respond to it.
2) Even if Chicon* has no issue with the anonymous peace donation, they aren’t the only party with an interest. If the instant controversy establishes anything, it’s that gripes are priviledged above funding issues.
3) You may be right. Transparency may solve this completely. Which is why it is a good thing. (OTOH, who received the money is a separate issue from that they received the money).
*Every time I see “Chicon” (Worldcon 2022), I think of the Korean War-era term “Chicom” (Chinese Communist) as it might refer to Worldcon 2023, and hit a mental speedbump. YMMV.
Further —
Obviously, your “we” is not fully inclusive of a number of people who think decisions to accept sponsorship are subject to second-guessing.
Although, personally, I’m in agreement with you, and I think it would make for a healthier convention environment if Committee and Convention chairs had a firm policy of ignoring social media.
@bill, in a formal, legal sense, there are the various entities discussed. However, for most practical purposes, there’s just us Worldcon volunteers, who’re like a weird little clan distributed all over the world, but get together once a year to raise the figurative barn.
But anyway, if you raised thought #2’s hypothetical with the notion that some official is going to “respond to” it (and, sorry, but what was the question? Oh, right…), I predict you’re going to have a long wait. I mean, if you’re seriously intending to ask either the current or any former, or seated, Worldcon chair what he/she would do about your contrived hypothetical question, good luck on that, but in their shoes I’d see no gain whatsoever from dealing with it.
The “other parties with an interest” would logically refer to us, the membership. And the sharp point of that interest is a Business Meeting motion — about which, IMO, see previous.
And yeah, I sometimes flash to that wording near-hit, too, so it’s not just you. But even we old Cold Warriors learn to hear and speak words in implied, necessary context.
As to transparency, my sense is that WSFS members as a whole have absolutely no problem with Ms. Kowal’s masterfully crafted communication, including what details are omitted (for amply explained reasons) and will presumably be a line-item in the financial report presented to the next Main Business Meeting on Sept. 3, 2022. If you’re impatient, as the Man in Black said to Inigo, “Get used to disappointment.”
And yes, I indeed deliberately disregarded “a number of people who think decisions to accept sponsorship are subject to second-guessing” for purposes of present discussion, because I’ve been many decades on the Internet, and have accidentally learned a lesson or two.
@Jay Blanc:
So, if we’re all agreed that the individual Worldcons do not own the Hugo Award service mark, how can they sign a sponsorship deal with a third party for the Hugo Awards?
You are bizarrely confused, even though former Worldcon con-chair Mike Glyer already explained it to you. BWAWA, Inc. d/b/a DisCon III did not, at any time, license, let alone sell, any WSFS service mark to Raytheon Technologies Corporation or anyone else.
In the Unix computing culture (which of course overlaps rather a lot with fandom), we would thus say the answer to your question is “Mu”, the traditional Zen Buddhism response signifying “Your question cannot be properly addressed, because it rests on incorrect, if not nonsensical, assumptions.”
Please reset your thinking. Perhaps some coffee will help.
@Rick Moen
Please see my comment above, where I specifically said “The hypothetical in #2 wasn’t posed with the expectation of someone at WSFS to respond to it.”
I looked at several Worldcon financial reports. While some of them were detailed enough to have a line item
“Sponsorships —— $XXX”,
some of them didn’t break out income into that much detail. And none of the ones I saw named their sponsors in the Financial reports (although you could sometimes work it out by comparing to con programs). So, given that Discon is currently avoiding these details, I don’t expect them to provide them in the financial report.
Rick Moen: I hadn’t realized there was that much candy left in the piñata!
Boy, ain’t SF Fandom fun!