(1) TICKET AGENCY OFFERS CHENGDU WORLDCON ADMISSIONS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The SF Light Year Weibo account posted on August 11 that Chengdu Worldcon tickets would be put up for sale on a Ticketmaster-style service. [Screencap of computer-translated post.]
Damai listing page which has much the same info. [Screencap of computer-translated post.]
Here’s a 2017 text story in Google’s cache confirming that Damai is a Ticketmaster equivalent: “Alibaba acquires China’s biggest ticket seller Damai”.
In itself, I don’t think this story is particularly controversial or bad, but just another indicator that this is a Worldcon like no other before…
(2) SOMETHING BORROWED. WorldCat identifies the “Top 25 books requested via interlibrary loan January through June 2023”. There are at least three sff books including R.F. Kuang’s Babel.
Here are the 25 books most frequently requested for interlibrary loan from January through June 2023 through the OCLC resource sharing network of 10,000+ libraries worldwide.
(3) SUPERMEN BEFORE SUPERMAN. Bleeding Cool remembers when “George Bernard Shaw Sent Lawyers After DC Comics About Superman”. The post is based on the “Superman 1939 Jerry Siegel Internal Memo Memorabilia” up for auction at ComicConnect.
…But back in 1938, there were other accusations in play. Readers have noted that Superman bore some resemblance to the lead character of Philip Wylie‘s Gladiator novel from 1930. Less than a year after Superman debuted in Action Comics #1, National Comics executive Jack Liebowitz was sending this letter to Siegel that suggests that Wylie had actually acted upon his threats of a lawsuit. And that the same attorney was also representing George Bernard Shaw, author of the play Man and Superman, suggesting George Bernard Shaw he was also being represented in legal negotiations with National Comics….
(4) ROUND TWO. {Item by Mike Kennedy.] Here’s a companion piece for the ongoing Internet Archive book copyright issue. “Record Labels File $412 Million Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against Internet Archive” at Rolling Stone.
Complaint claims organization’s “Great 78 Project,” which includes music from Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more serves as an “illegal record store”
Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Capitol, and other record labels filed a copyright lawsuit on Friday against Internet Archive, founder Brewster Kahle, and others over the organization’s “Great 78 Project,” accusing them of behaving as an “illegal record store.” The suit lists 2,749 pre-1972 musical works available via Internet Archive by late artists, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby, among others.
The suit, which was filed in federal court and reviewed by Rolling Stone, claims the Internet Archive’s “Great 78 Project” — launched by Internet Archive as a community project for “the preservation, research and discovery of 78rpm records,” according to its blog — has violated copyright laws. By “transferring copies of those files to members of the public, Internet Archive has reproduced and distributed without authorization Plaintiffs’ protected sound recordings,” the suit alleges.
The Internet Archive blog’s explanation of the The Great 78 Project says in part:
…We aim to bring to light the decisions by music collectors over the decades and a digital reference collection of underrepresented artists and genres. The digitization will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artifacts. We have preserved the often very prominent surface noise and imperfections and included files generated by different sizes and shapes of stylus to facilitate different kinds of analysis.
78s were mostly made from shellac, i.e., beetle resin, and were the brittle predecessors to the LP (microgroove) era. The format is obsolete, and just picking them up can cause them to break apart in your hands. There’s no way to predict if the digital versions of these 78s will outlast the physical items, so we are preserving both to ensure the survival of these cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy…
(5) REASONS TO LISTEN. [Item by Steven French.] Interesting review of a BBC Proms – Prom 36: A Space Odyssey, a concert available on BBC Sounds until October 9th:
The Guardian’s Tim Ashley says: “Prom 36 A Space Odyssey: LPO/Gardner review – unsettling and awesome”.
Strauss’s Zarathustra, meanwhile, was rich in drama and detail, the playing finely focused and sensually immediate. We can easily forget that, like 2001, it deals with human evolution. But it also has points in common with Ligeti’s Requiem, notably its comparably ambivalent ending, oscillating between keys to an irresolute silence and asking more questions than it can ever answer. Ligeti was apparently uncertain about their juxtaposition. Kubrick, you realise, knew exactly what he was doing in putting them together.
(6) A TELE-ALL BOOK. Tom Easton and Frank Wu have a new book coming out – ESPionage: Regime Change — Frank’s first novel, Tom’s 13th. It’s about psychics in the CIA battling Russians trying to assassinate the US President. Pre-order the ebook on Amazon.com, or order the paperback edition when it’s available on August 28.
There’s mind-reading, telekinesis, and telepyrosis! Love and romance! Guns & explosions! A gun hidden in a camera! A fighting style based on 70’s rock! A bad iPhone game that’s really spy software! Secret messages sent in a Paul Simon song! Excitement and action action action!
Amazing Stories did a Q&A with Frank in honor of the occasion: “Unexpected Questions with Frank Wu”. It includes a whole alternate history scenario built around the career of astronaut John Glenn.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born August 13, 1895 — Bert Lahr. Best remembered and certainly beloved as The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, as well as his counterpart who was a Kansas farmworker. It’s his only genre role, though in the film Meet the People, he would say “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” which was later popularized by a cartoon character named Snagglepuss. (Died 1967.)
- Born August 13, 1899 — Alfred Hitchcock. If he’d only done his two Alfred Hitchcock series which for the most part was awesome, that’d be enough to get him Birthday Honors. But he did some fifty films of which a number are genre such as The Birds and Psycho. Though I’ve not yet read it, I’ve heard good things about Peter Ackroyd’s Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life. (Died 1980.)
- Born August 13, 1909 — Tristram Coffin. He’s best remembered for being Jeff King in King of the Rocket Men, a Forties SF serial, the first of three serials featuring this character. He showed up on the Fifties Superman series in different roles, sometimes on the side of Good, sometimes not. He played The Ambassador twice on Batman in “When the Rat’s Away the Mice Will Play” and “A Riddle a Day Keeps the Riddler Away”. (Died 1990.)
- Born August 13, 1922 — Willard Sage. He showed up on Trek as Thann, one of the Vians in “The Empath”. He was Dr. Blake in Colossus: The Forbin Project, and had roles in The Land of Giants, Invaders, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Outer Limits and The Sixth Sense. (Died 1974.)
- Born August 13, 1932 — John Berkey. Artist whose best-known work includes much of the original poster art for the Star Wars trilogy. He also did a lot of genre cover art such as the 1974 Ballantine Books cover of Herbert’s Under Pressure (I read that edition), and the 1981 Ace cover of Zelazny’s Madwand which I think is the edition I read. (Died 2008.)
- Born August 13, 1965 — Michael De Luca, 58. Producer, second Suicide Squad film, Childhood’s End, Ghost Rider and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Dracula Untold, Lost in Space, Blade and Blade II, Pleasantville and Zathura: A Space Adventure which is not a complete listing. Also writer for an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the first Dredd film (oh well), the Freddy’s Nightmares series and the Dark Justice series which though not quite genre was rather fun. Anyone remember the latter? I liked it a lot.
- Born August 13, 1977 — Damian O’Hare, 46. Though you might know him from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Curse of the Black Pearl and On Stranger Tides where he played Gillette, I know him as the voice of John Constantine on the animated Justice League Action. He also showed up in Agent Carter.
- Born August 13, 1990 — Sara Serraiocco, 33. She plays the complex role of Baldwin on the Counterpart series which I finally got around to watching and it’s absolutely fascinating. I will also admit it’s nice to see a SF series that’s truly adult in nature with realistic violence.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- The Argyle Sweater has pretty much the darkest take on Winnie-the-Pooh ever.
(9) SUGGESTED PROTECTIVE CONTRACT LANGUAGE. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Deborah Beale — who, in addition to being married to Tad Williams, has a substantial background in the business side of genre publishing — posted a useful boilerplate statement for authors concerned about large language models based on something in one of Mercedes Lackey’s contracts.
(10) MAKE A CRITICAL ROLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Herein is the tale of how one man turned being a D&D Game Master into a full time job and a multi-million dollar business. “The Game Master” at Slate.
…Today he is, without question, the most famous Dungeons & Dragons player in the world. Every Thursday, he and a group of friends gather in a studio for the latest episode of Critical Role—a show, broadcast on the livestreaming platform Twitch, which doubles as Mercer’s weekly tabletop RPG campaign. The structure should be familiar to anyone who’s palmed a 20-sided die in their youth: Mercer, as Game Master, is the primary storyteller. He provides the narrative elements, motifs, and obstacles for his players, who reciprocate by embodying a band of high-fantasy ne’er-do-wells who explore the world he’s created. (There’s been Pike the gnomish cleric, Vex the half-elf ranger, and Grog the Goliath barbarian to name a few.) Together—seated around a set made to look like the torchlit halls of a stone-wrought castle—they roll dice, slay monsters, and dream up their very own Lord of the Rings–sized epic. In one episode, the crew descends into a labyrinthine sewer system to fight off a massive spider. In another, they infiltrate a royal ball that exists between dimensions. Dungeons & Dragons is essentially an exercise in collaborative storytelling, which means Critical Role is unedited and unscripted—those who tune in watch the saga unfold in real time.
This was a radical premise when the show launched in 2015. Dungeons & Dragons was not considered to be spectator entertainment—much less an entrepreneurial enterprise—at any point throughout its previous 40-year history. Nobody, least of all Mercer, expected Critical Role to be a hit….
(11) I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW. “How The Witcher Will Explain Geralt Changing from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth Seems Clear Now” according to Redanian Intelligence. Their theory is at the link.
The Witcher Season 4 will replace its titular character, Geralt of Rivia. Henry Cavill will no longer don the ash-white wig, the suit of armor, and the twin swords. The Hunger Games star Liam Hemsworth will step into Cavill’s very large shoes and become the new Geralt starting with Season 4. Though we reported not long ago that filming of Season 4 has been delayed to 2024 due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Netflix is still very much determined to produce this next season of the show. One of the few officially confirmed plot points of this fourth season involves Geralt of Rivia’s new face….
(12) AI UP TO BAT. [Item by Steven French.] “’Only AI made it possible’: scientists hail breakthrough in tracking British wildlife” reports the Guardian. If they help us spot more pipistrelle bats, then I for one welcome our AI overlords!
…“Bats almost certainly use railway bridges for roosting,” Dancer told the Observer. “So if we can get more detailed information about the exact locations of their roosts using AI monitors, we can help protect them.”
This point was underlined by Strong. “In the past, we have had to estimate local wildlife populations from the dead animals – such as badgers – that have been left by the track or the roadside. This way we get a much better idea of population sizes.”…
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Ersatz Culture, Rich Horton, Danny Sichel, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Thanks for the Title Credit!
Wait a minute. Are we saying that notifications actually went out? How can that be?
Shh. We don’t want Jetpack to know that we noticed
Yep. Now everyone can take out their tallywhackers and start skeet pissing on whatever it looks like I’m trying to promote like yesterday.
(1) This is completely unacceptable. They’re making it a commercial$$$ con. Sounds like more to submit to WSFS….
(4) So, perhaps the Internet Archice should request statements of the royalties TO THE ARTISTS AND WRITERS that they claim they lost… and compare it to what they claim to have paid.
(6) So, esp. the woman on the cover, why does this remind me of Her Majesty’s FBI? https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-adventures-of-special-agent-kenneth-malone-of-her-majestys-fbi-laurence-janifer/1113537856
Birthdays: Tristam Coffin, King of the Rocketmen! (Why, yes, I do have the two VCR tapes (and a player) of Radar Men From The Moon….
(8) Actually, Tom Smith (filkertom) has a pretty dark take on it.
(9) Thank you for publicizing this. I need to try to push it on my next contract.
(10) Why does all games have to be turned into a spectator sport?
(3) The Shaw thing is really odd… I know Wylie’s “Gladiator” is believed to have influenced Superman (among other creations). But I don’t consider that sort of thing to be “plagiarism” (or even copyright infringment). It might be one of those zeitgeist things where multiple people got similar ideas. Also, ideas can’t be copyrighted. Is it really “plagiarism” when two people write about different men who have superpowers? I hope not!)
But … Shaw?!
The 1951 letter from the National Comics owner accusing Siegel of admitting he “plagiarized” Superman from Wylie’s books is gross. And that’s not the worst part of the letter.
And considering that National Comics/DC sued other companies (and won) over their superheroes because they considered them to be Superman copies…
(7) If I started writing down great Hitchcock films, I’d be here all night. 🙂 Though I don’t think it’s one of his best, I recommend getting “Rebecca” on disk with film historian commentary. (There’s more than one edition, and I can’t remember which one I listened to.)
For “lesser-known” Hitch movies, I recommend “I Confess” and “The Lodger” and “Frenzy.” Oh, and “Shadow of a Doubt.”
(1) This is definitely a sign that fans aren’t making the decisions.
(4) The Internet Archive folks clearly believe that whatever they do, as long as they have what they think is a good motive, it can’t possibly violate copyright. Which is not just about getting paid, and whether the copyright holder lost money due to your unauthorized copying, but literally The right to make copies, or to allow copies to be made.
We definitely don’t want Jetpack to notice we noticed.
(7) “John Berkey. Artist whose best-known work includes much of the original poster art for the Star Wars trilogy.”
This overstates it a bit. Berkey did some art based on the first film that ended up being on some posters (a Death Star poster inserted in the soundtrack, and his cover art for the novelization of the first movie was used on some promotional posters), but none of theatrical posters for the original trilogy were by Berkey. I know him best from the many SF books that used his art for covers.
(2) Assuming that most librarians try to anticipate what books will be in demand and make them available locally, I’m not quite sure what is being measured here. Books that were unexpectedly popular?
Reminds me of a small con (honestly don’t remember which one) that announced “Welcome Sci Fi Fans” on their marquee.
The lobby was fronted by enormous glass panels.
All weekend long, throngs of mundanes on the sidewalk pressed their noses to the glass and gawked at the freaks.
Despite constant invitation, not a one ventured inside.
3) I must admit to being a bit sceptical about this one – Shaw was surely canny enough to know that ideas and titles can’t be copyrighted. On the other hand, he was also vain enough to think those principles didn’t apply to him… so, maybe, maybe not. (Besides, shouldn’t Friedrich Nietzsche have something to say about Supermen?)
4) There tends to be a polarized debate on the Internet Archive, one side saying “The Internet Archive is nothing but a bunch of intellectual property thieves” and the other saying “The Internet Archive is pure and holy and does nothing but good works.” I’m inclined towards a middle course, along the lines of: the Internet Archive does many good things and is an invaluable resource, but it does sometimes get things wrong (like, distributing living authors’ works without consent.) I think the 78 thing might be another one where they’ve overstepped the mark…. yes, it is pure and holy and a good work to preserve things that might otherwise be lost. and, yes, original 78s are incredibly delicate and preserving their content on something more durable is a good thing. Allowing anybody to make free copies of it… is a bit more dubious. And how many Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald numbers are there, that were only released as 78s?
7) Alfred Hitchcock was a very nasty man who made some very good films… I found it very interesting, one time, to pick three Hitchcock films and compare them with the books they were based on – the films in question being Psycho, Rebecca, and Strangers on a Train. As you might guess, Psycho‘s text maps pretty directly onto the film version, Robert Bloch being a screenwriter and thriller writer himself, whereas Strangers on a Train undergoes quite a number of significant changes. (Some of them might not have been Hitchcock’s own choice – I can’t imagine studios in those days sanctioning the production of a movie that was faithful to Patricia Highsmith’s original plot.)
mark on August 13, 2023 at 7:35 pm said:
Mark: Did you have the same reaction when the 1995 NASFiC was held as part of Dragon*Con, which is run by a for-profit corporation?
When you say say “submit to WSFS,” what do you mean? I’m honestly curious as to what entity you seem to think would have the right to Do Something.
Interesting pairing on (2) and (4) given how publishers have fought (and lost) for decades against Interlibrary Loan: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37374618/The%20Publisher%20Playbook%20Pre-Print%203.14.23.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Pingback: Today's Favorite V1N1 Magazine - and a Word About Chengdu - Amazing Stories
Kevin, What exactly the meaning for the sentense in Worldcon page in your opinion : “Worldcons sell “memberships,” not “tickets.” To attend a Worldcon, you must purchase an attending membership from that Worldcon.
Isn’t it easy to understand that if committee are trying to Sell Tickets then this is aginest the WSFS Constitution/Rule below:
1.5.9: No convention committee shall sell a membership that is available to persons of the age of majority at the time of the convention (as defined by the laws of the country and other jurisdictions where the convention is being held), that allows attendance and full participation for the entire duration of the convention and that does not include all WSFS voting rights. Should no law of the country and other jurisdictions where the convention is being held define an age of majority, the convention shall consider all persons 18 years of age or older as being of age of majority.
@Adaoli: Is it actually the case that what they’re selling doesn’t include full membership?
1) Kinda sounds like the CPC is envisioning trying to turn this into something more along the lines of SDCC or DragonCon than a traditional WorldCon. Which, to be honest, isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Buuuuuuut given what a complete shitshow every other facet of this experience has been, my faith in their ability to pull it off is in negative numbers.
6) I read this and had the same reaction that I did when I finally saw Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’: it’s like this was made specifically just for me.
Jake, if you open the this Damai link Mike also posted, you can see screenshot with details including also English description. Its not membership but Admission ticket which including rights to join Panel(they call it Salon) and Hugo Award Ceremony on 21st night. And when try to purchase the system does not ask you to specify a date, and instead shows only ‘from 18th Oct – 22nd Oct (10:00 – 22:00) ‘ so it look like a 5 days full admission ticket to me.
Its not something new, as in Chengdu Worldcon Page you can also see there are WSFS Membership and In-Person Admission different type but with similar fee. What mentioned in the page is.
Q. What is special for the fees plan of 2023 Chengdu Worldcon? A: We have set up a pre-packaged five-day on-site admission pass bundle, which does not include WSFS MEMBERSHIP rights (Hugo nominating/voting, site selection voting). It is not a full ATTENDING MEMBERSHIP. This is designed mainly to attract more young fans from our local community who are not familiar with Worldcon system but enthusiastic about science fiction and fantasy genre. You can also consider it as an introduction gateway to the Worldcon community. We will be offering Single-Day Admission passes next year, starting from July 1st, 2023.
Its your conclusion now whether this is againest the WSFS Constitution but for me its funny that committee is doing exactly what previous business meetings until now try to avoid, thought this committe tyring to avoid the word ‘ticket’.
@Steve Wright–I agree on your “middle ground” on the Internet Archive. It’s a valuable resource that has done and continues to do a lot of good–and also does some things that are just way over the line. And online discussion of this tends to be very polarized.
@Jake–Libraries actually buy the books, and for physical books, the first sale doctrine applies. They can lend or sell those physical books as they choose. They can’t scan them and convert them to ebooks to increase their lending capacity for them.
When libraries buy ebooks, what they really buy is a license. They can lend that ebook a fixed number of times, a number which I think is ridiculously low compared to the actual life expectancy of a physical book in most libraries, but that’s another argument. When they reach that number of lending instances, they have to either stop lending it, or buy a new license.
The Internet Archive isn’t behaving in accordance with any of those restrictions. What they’ve actually been doing with books, especially during the height of the pandemic, is just outright stealing from authors and publishers.
Publishers Weekly reports that the publishers and Internet Archive have submitted a proposed judgment:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/92971-publishers-internet-archive-submit-proposed-judgment-in-copyright-case.html
However, now music labels are suing the Internet Archive, particularly over the “Great 78 Project” — which, as you might guess, preserves a lot of 78 rpm records from the 1900s to 1950s. Yes, 79 rpm records. The music labels are pointing out that people can stream those songs if they want to hear them. (But of course, if fans actually want to listen to the original sound, streaming doesn’t help them…)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/music-labels-sue-internet-archive-over-digitized-record-collection-2023-08-12/
@Jim Janney–Those are books that are requested via interlibrary loan. I.e., books that were not present, or not resent in sufficient quantity, in the home library systems of the readers requesting them.
This list can be useful in two ways. One, “these are authors or subject areas we should pay more attention to in collection development.” Two, “See how we are able to serve our readers, even when we don’t have the book locally, due to these library networks the beancounters stare suspiciously at?”
No library can have everything a reader might want. Interlibrary loan helps them meet the needs of readers who want things the library doesn’t have. Paying attention to what’s frequently requested via ILL when doing collection development can help the library align its collection with what its readers want that the library doesn’t currently have enough depth or breadth in.
Part of the reason I didn’t go to the NASFIC held with Dragoncon was the date and what I had heard about Dragoncon. I was disappointed that this was the way it was done.
Maybe the Chinese Ticketmaster thing will result in more people going to the Chengdu Worldcon expecting a commercial con. It will not change Worldcon. I can see by laws being discussed banning this in the future.
@Lis Carey: “first sale doctrine” isn’t some kind of fundamental axiom, it exists only because the supreme court ruled against publishers and congress enacted that into law.
I was speaking in the context of Interlibrary Loan, in which, for example, there’s the
“Gentleman’s Agreement of 1935” that allows libraries to copy stuff onto microfiche, and Williams & Wilkins Co. v. United States which says they can use photocopiers.
@Quartermain: Kind of odd that the Communist Party is simultaneously strong enough to micromanage (much less care about) a Worldcon and weak enough to not do a very god job of it.
Jake: Seems to me that’s not a good way of testing the claim that the CCP is engaged in running the Worldcon. You don’t think the US government could screw up running a Worldcon?
I recall a joke about the CIA from about 60 years ago on the theme of conspiracies and competence
Sixties pop songs now?
“Don’t You Want Some Pixels To Scroll
Don’t You Need Some Pixels To Scroll
Wouldn’t You Scroll Some Pixels To Scroll
You’d Better Find Some Pixels To Scroll”
I think it was always understood that Chengdu was going to be more akin to a Comicon than what people traditionally understood a Worldcon to be.
@Jake–
So, you are aware that it is, in fact, the law.
And which, as I’m sure you’re aware, allows libraries to make single copies of portions of a copyrighted work, not the whole work, or many copies of the excerpted portion. Single copies. Portion of.
As for Williams & Wilkins v. United States (1973; later upheld per curiam by an evenly divided Supreme Court, decided in 1975)–again, the law, even if we stop there.
But why stop there? In 1976, the US Congress enacted the Copyright Act of 1976, which among other things codified fair use doctrine. Again, law, not a weird thing librarians made up.
And here’s something more recent, though still not last week. My own experience as a research librarian for both law firms, and bioresearch companies. When one of my lawyers or scientists needed an article from a publication we didn’t have in our own library, I found the article elsewhere, requested it, and then reported it to the Copyright Clearance Center (a private company, not a government agency.) Along with reporting the copying, I submitted monthly payment of the copyright fees to CCC, which distributed the fees to the appropriate copyright holders. If copying from a specific journal we didn’t have exceeded a set limit, we were required to purchase a subscription to that journal.
We were not copying whatever the heck we wanted, as much as we wanted, with no payment of copyright fees. Even though, at least at the biotech company I worked for the longest, we really were Doing Good, i.e., finding treatments and cures for deadly or crippling diseases. Hoping to make money at it eventually, of course, but still, Doing Good.
None of this at all resembles what the Internet Archive has been doing in those of its activities that rely on claiming they’re exempt from copyright, or that their large-scale copying is “fair use.”
To attend a Worldcon, you must do whatever the organizers of that Worldcon ask you to do as a condition of entry. Or, I suppose, ask a court to issue and the local executive to enforce an order that you be admitted and people you disfavor not be admitted on account of something something WSFS Constitution/Rule, though I doubt that’s going to work very well in China.
As for rule 1.5.9, if Team Chengdu is actually worried that a Chinese court might enforce the letter of that “law”, they can just define some small portion of the convention off-limits to mere ticket-holders. Maybe a filk session or something. Therefore the tickets aren’t for “full participation”, and don’t have to be memberships or carry voting rights.
If you all didn’t want something like this to happen, you probably should have set up a stronger central organization to administer Worldcons and you definitely shouldn’t have let one go to China. As is, Worldcon has basically always been up for sale to the first commercial organization that wanted to pay for it. Or religious or governmental organization, for that matter.
@Jake “@Lis Carey: “first sale doctrine” isn’t some kind of fundamental axiom, it exists only because the supreme court ruled against publishers and congress enacted that into law.”
For that matter, copyright itself isn’t some kind of fundamental axion. Unlike tangible property, which can be possessed by an individual to the exclusion of others, intellectual property is entirely made up by government.
RE: Bert Lahr, he sued over the character Snagglepuss, which was voiced by Daws Butler, when the character was used to promote Kellogg’s cereal. He won the case, as the copying of his voice might make people think he was the voice hawking the product.
bill: Laws about tangible property come from the government, too. If someone steals your car, it’s those laws that continue to uphold your ownership. The concept of any kind of property ownership is an abstraction.
Yes, laws come from the government, but the “concept of any kind of property ownership” predates organized government and laws. Hunter-gatherers had personal property. Even a wolf can mark its own territory.
A “thing” you can possess, land you can control — these are fundamentally different than creative works from an author’s mind. The fact that we also call the creative works “property” of a sort does not change this difference.
Look What They’ve Done to My Con, Ma
bill: The idea of any kind of personal ownership is a human abstraction. And you can’t distinguish tangible property by claiming ancient precedent. Nobody knows very much about how intellectual property has been dealt with throughout history. Could anybody help themselves to the plays of Aristophanes? Where’s your proof?
(8) George Alec Effinger wrote a much darker take on Winnie the Pooh.
“Human abstraction” — Have you never owned dogs? They know which toys are theirs, and which toys aren’t.
“And you can’t distinguish tangible property by claiming ancient precedent.” Sure I can. Cave paintings show that prehistoric people marked their livestock with ear cuts, brands, etc., to designate ownership. Long before there was anything like police to enforce criminal law, people used safes and locks to protect what was theirs.
“Nobody knows very much about how intellectual property has been dealt with throughout history. ” Mike, you are mistaken here. There are books on this very subject. Patents came about in the 1300s, from proprietary guild knowledge, and copyrights in the 1400s, soon after the European introduction of the printing press.
@Kevin Standlee: I actually consider that to be the beginning of Worldcon’s inevitable slide into commercialism: certainly the moment it lost its labor day weekend primacy.
@Lis Carey: thanks, that makes sense. I’ve used interlibrary loan in the somewhat distant past, but it was always for obscure books I couldn’t get any other way.
Adaoli on August 14, 2023 at 6:56 am said:
Yes, I understand what you are saying. So who makes them do something different?
John Schilling on August 14, 2023 at 7:54 pm said:
There are two items at the entire convention that these five-day-admission-ticket-purchasers may not attend or participate in, because they don’t include WSFS membership: The WSFS Business Meeting, and 2025 Worldcon Site Selection.
I’d like to remind people that my pointing out how the rules work does not necessarily represent my personal opinion about whether those rules are good or whether the actions of an individual organization are good. I can agree that an action is legal without personally thinking that it is the right thing to do.
And as John said, if the members of WSFS wanted stronger control of Worldcons in cases like this, the members should have set up a stronger central organization that was capable of exercising such control. As it is, nearly all efforts to create anything of that nature have been met with strong opposition.
@bill
You’ve never seen dogs engage in a dispute over which toy is “theirs”? Certainly doesn’t always SEEM they’ve got the abstract concept straight.
And even if some primordial canine Adam Smith decreed that dogs indicate property ownership when they mark, why do they ALL pee on the same hydrant?
For historical context, the U.S. Constitution does not say “the right to intellectual property shall not be infringed.” What it does say, in Article 1, Section 8, is
Which to my reading suggests that the authors regarded intellectual property as distinct from physical property (which does get explicit protection in the 5th and 14th amendments), and copyright not as a natural right but as an artifact of government in order to encourage creative work as a general benefit to society. Authors should get a fair deal, but the exact terms are subject to change as technology evolves.
bill: We got started down this track when you said —
At some point in the development of human society, means of enforcing ownership that were alternatives to individual strength or violence — customs or rules — were agreed to by groups of people. And that’s the same tradition which is the source of rights to intellectual property.
@Jim Janney–Copying for mass distribution without the consent of or payment to authors & publishers is not “a fair deal.” We’re talking about the works of living, and mostly midlist, authors, for whom those royalty payments really matter.
Theft is not okay, even if you claim to be doing it for noble reasons.
Note: This is sadly probably a necessary point to remind people of: Taxation is not “theft.” It’s set by laws passed by our elected representatives.
@Lis Carey: yes, I agree, the Internet Archive went too far.
” Cave paintings show that prehistoric people marked their livestock with ear cuts, brands, etc., to designate ownership.”
Can you elaborate on this? I can see that cave paintings could (and do) illustrate that livestock were marked in various ways, but without writing, it seems risky to interpret that as definitely indicating ownership. That being said, it’s clear that branding for ownership purposes dates back several thousand years (to ancient Egypt).
@Anne Marble
If only that were true, but even for well known artists, there are sizable gaps in the streaming catalogs. I’m far from an “information wants to be free” absolutist, but I’m really bothered by books and music being stuck in the limbo of being not valuable enough to keep being offered commercially in any form, yet staying locked up by copyright for nearly a century.
@microtherion
Yup. The record companies — I mean music labels, whoops — always bring up the famous performers who are available from streaming services, MP3 sales, etc. But they forget the B-sides that didn’t end up getting re-released, the artists who aren’t available, etc. (They might have to answer uncomfortable questions like, “Well, why aren’t they available?”)
I’m also annoyed about a lot of the fiction (and other writing) that has been forgotten by the digital age. As one example, J. N. Williamson was a prolific and popular horror author, but because he died without a literary estate, his novels aren’t available in Kindle format. (There’s an episode of The Horror Show with Brian Keene that gets into the circumstances, and it’s heartbreaking and infuriating.) So surely it should be OK if someone wants to read one of those books in a “gray area” way, but some people want to lump those readers in with the pirates, even though those people just want a way to read books they grew up with (or discover lost pieces of the genre that they never got to read).
And don’t get me started on the old Gothic, Regency, and other early romance authors who are almost all out of print. 🙁 Many of those authors died before ebooks were a big thing. So I can’t buy a new copy of an Elsie Lee Gothic through current bookstores (either Kindle or print). I can’t buy a new copy of “The Silver Devil” by Teresa Denys. But at least the Internet Archive might give me a chance to attempt to read a scanned copy. (My eyes are not a fan of the format, but it will have to do if it’s the only option other than an expensive collectible paperback.)
Speaking of the format, are that many readers really straining their eyes to read those scans on the Internet Archive? If they’re that desperate to read those books, publishers should find a way to track down the estates (wherever possible) to make it happen. But because of copyright laws, it’s not always possible. (IIRC some people tried to get new laws changed to free up “orphaned works,” but that was controversial and squashed.)