The WSFS Mark Protection Committee, chaired by Donald E. Eastlake III, issued the following press release on February 25.
The World Science Fiction Society (www.wsfs.org, WSFS) is an unincorporated non-profit association whose activities include the annual awarding of the Hugo Awards via the selected World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) each year. WSFS, through its Mark Protection Committee (MPC), manages Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), a non-profit corporation that holds intellectual property on behalf of WSFS, which previously issued a Press Release on January 30 addressing some of these issues.
The WSFS MPC takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process and comments made by persons holding official positions in the MPC. In connection with these concerns, the MPC notes the following. There may be actions taken or to be taken that are not in this announcement.
- Dave McCarty has resigned as a Member of the WSFS MPC. The MPC has elected Bruce Farr to fill the remainder of Dave McCarty’s term until the 2024 WSFS Business Meeting. Thereby Mr. Farr automatically became a voting member of the WIP Board of Directors (BoD).
- Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the WSFS MPC and Donald Eastlake has been elected Chair of the WSFS MPC. Notwithstanding his resignation as Chair of both the WSFS MPC and the WIP BoD, Mr. Standlee remains a WSFS MPC Member and WIP BoD Director.
- The Hugo Award Marketing Committee (HAMC) of the WSFS MPC has been dissolved and its activities transferred to the WSFS Marketing Committee, an advisory board to the WIP BoD. At this time those activities include the management of the WSFS.org, Worldcon.org, TheHugoAwards.org, and NASFiC.org web sites.
- To avoid any possibility of confusion, note that the “Tianwen Program” is not a part of WSFS and has not been approved or endorsed by the WSFS MPC or WIP.
- Minutes of the special meetings of the WIP BoD held on January 28 and 30 and minutes of the meeting of the WSFS MPC on January 30 are posted here.
Please note that each year’s Worldcon is run by a separate organization which administers the Hugo Awards for that year. The Chengdu 2023 Worldcon has asked that any specific questions about the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards be sent to [email protected]. The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon will be administering the 2024 Hugo Awards and can be contacted at [email protected]. For media enquiries on other topics related to MPC or WIP, you may contact [email protected].
“World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon”, “NASFiC”, “Lodestar Award”, “The Hugo Award”, the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award Rocket are service marks of Worldcon Intellectual Property, a California non-profit corporation managed by the Mark Protection Committee of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society. You can contact the WSFS Mark Protection Committee at [email protected].
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Will anybody ever answer emails sent to [email protected]?
Laura, I wouldn’t bet 10 cents on getting an answer from that email address.
Laura: Probably not, but that was the address we were given.
I wouldn’t bet a penny on that. Or whatever denomination of coin in any country is less than that.
All those emails are at best going into the bit bucket, which will eventually be turned off and leave nothing but bounces.
Nothing about Ben Yalow?
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Michael Arthur Pinnick: Nothing about Ben Yalow?
The MPC doesn’t have the ability force Yalow to resign. But it’s almost certain that he will be censured and removed from the MPC by the WSFS Business Meeting in Glasgow (if he isn’t smart enough to resign quietly before then).
Is the “commitee of the whole” thing a standard technique to move discussion outside the scope of the minutes?
ChewyGlacier: Apparently so. It’s kind of shocking. They’re not even trying to hide how much of an “old boys’ network” “No one outside the club needs to know what’s happening” scam they’re trying to pull.
ChewyGlacier: Is the “commitee of the whole” thing a standard technique to move discussion outside the scope of the minutes?
At the WSFS Business Meeting, suspending to go into a COTW is a way to get a lot of discussion done quickly without having to follow parliamentary procedure, which involves strict time limits and alternating viewpoints. The COTW can then come back to the main meeting with a recommendation and a brief summary of justification for that recommendation.
In this case, I suspect a COTW was done to avoid having “What the fuck were you thinking???” and “Do you understand just how much damage you’ve done to Worldcon and the Hugo Awards here???” and “You realize you can never be entrusted with any involvement whatsoever on the Hugo Awards ever again now???” on the official record. But I’m pretty sure that was said in some form.
Yeah, there’s a few holdouts on the MPC who aren’t willing to condemn one of their own. But I’m quite sure that the rest of them are extremely pissed off. And I suspect that the holdouts are somehow mysteriously not going to be re-elected when their terms are up.
Laura: To be fair the MPC is the wrong group (with a few exceptions) to ask the question. I am sure they would like to have that answer themselve.
Ben Yalow was elected by a prior business meeting, and his mandate lasts until the 2025 Worldcon. I am not sure if or how the statutes of the MPC or the WSFS constitution allow the removal of an elected member.
As far as the Committee of the Whole, I believe it’s a standard procedure used whenever a complex question comes up, that need more a free-form initial discussion. I wouldn’t necessarily judge it to be for hiding stuff.
@Karl-Johan Norèn:
We can certainly try. I asked Kevin and he didn’t say it was imposible.
@ChewyGlacier:
Committee of the Whole is a procedure that we have seen Worldconbuisnessmeatings use. It did not hinder it there that this part of the meating was public awaible on the internet. From what I understand it is a different procedure of Robert Rule of Order and was probably done because the MPC did think that would make the discusion easier or/and take less time.
Slight detour, I find it fascinating that the MPC uses Roberts Rule of Order, because I would think that as it is smaler than the buisnessmeating, there would be more informal ways that are more practical and this is one of the parts that the MPC could rule independendly.
Once again a news release directs inquiries to the Chengdu email, which for months now has been a black hole where emails go to vanish. Argh.
@ChewyGlacier : No, the usual reason for a “committee of the whole” is to relax parliamentary rules, since the body sitting is not the actual chamber, but a committee of that chamber that can set its own rules. It’s just the odd case that this committee happens to have the exact same membership.
It’s usually used to quickly edit a motion/bill without having to follow the more complicated process normally used. The Worldcon Business Meeting has used it recently to do just that, they handle a bunch of amendments as a CotW under relaxed rules, then return the bill as an amendment by substitution to the main business meeting.
As to minutes – CotW usually do minute their proceedings, and remember that the MPC is nobody’s day job (and unpaid) so this may be a simple case of “haven’t gotten around to publishing it.”
@StefanB: Roberts Rules do in fact include some simplified rules for small group meetings that streamline the procedures for smaller groups like the MPC. In particular, a lot of the stuff that’s there to help ensure the public neutrality of the chair in a large meeting goes away when you have a smaller group where the chair is simply first among equals. The debate rules are also a lot simpler.
Soooo… who gave you that address? And can anybody who ran a WorldCon with physical human beings they seem to have had communication with try to hold them accountable?
(Not singling you out Linda, but this repeating “the appropriate email address is [email protected]” is starting to grate a bit.)
The WiP could remove any Director, by amending its by-laws to allow for that action, and then doing so. No business meeting required.
Since Ben Yalow is in until the Seattle Worldcon, can the Glasgow business meeting at least vote to censor him?
The MPC does not have the authority to remove Ben, since he was elected by a WSFS business meeting. Since he was elected by that body, he can be removed by Glasgow’s WSFS BM. And since members of the MPC are by definition members of the WIP, we cannot remove him from that either. There was nothing “juicy” about the COTW.
The Business Meeting controls the WIP Board only because the WIP by-laws specify that. The WIP Board can alter those by-laws at any meeting, allowing it to remove a member for mal- or misfeasance regardless of their position on the MPC.
It isn’t that the WIP can’t remove Ben Yalow, it’s that the WIP Board is unwilling to do so.
Indeed; I can find nothing explicit in the WSFS Constitution about removing MPC members elected for an explicit term.
I suppose that one could argue that in the final instance the Business Meeting is the sovereign, but one would have to dig deep into the Robert’s or Standing Rules to find a supportive interpretation.
Basically, Ben Yalow is continuing to impede any regaining of trust in the Hugos by not resigning at this point. WIP/MPC is not helping by keeping the bulk of their meetings under wraps.
To be fair to the WIP/MPC, discussions of personnel issues should be conducted in executive session.
The problem isn’t the discussion. It is the unwillingness to act on the results of those sessions in any meaningful way.
This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any official position of any organization of which I am now or have ever been a member, officer, or employee. I do not speak officially for anyone except myself unless otherwise noted. Do not read into anything I say an official position of any other group.]
Dave Weinstein: Are you saying that you want the WIP Board of Directors to change its bylaws so that WSFS no longer manages WIP by electing its Board of Directors? Personally (and speaking only for myself), I think that’s a terrible idea.
If we need a mechanism for removing members of the MPC, then we, the members of WSFS, can adopt such a mechanism.
This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any official position of any organization of which I am now or have ever been a member, officer, or employee. I do not speak officially for anyone except myself unless otherwise noted. Do not read into anything I say an official position of any other group.]
I am saying that the WIP Board of Directors should change its bylaws so that a Director can be removed by a supermajority of the rest of the Board for misconduct.
We now know that the 2023 Hugo Awards were NOT conducted as per the rules, and yet the WIP Board (which is tasked with protecting the integrity of the Service Marks) has done nothing to either address that issue publicly OR to act to remove the bad actors from its own membership. Someone resigning isn’t a board action.
I find it interesting that WIP/MPC can apparently do some things, such as “interpret” a WSFS resolution authorizing the creation of a trust to permit the creation of a 501(c)(3) instead, that are not directly addressed by either the WSFS constitution or WSFS resolutions, yet it cannot do other things, such as address the apparent gross misconduct of its own members, that are also not directly addressed by either the WSFS constitution or resolutions.
I also find the insistence that the WIP board can’t act independently of WSFS interesting in light of the decision to disband the MPC’s marketing committee and re-create it within WIP. (Also an action that also does not appear to be expressly contemplated by WSFS resolution or constitution.)
Yes, that was more or less a rhetorical question, but thank you.
I have a couple questions which presumably they could answer, but my emails have undoubtedly been drowned in all the questions they will never answer.
I know no one but 2023 Hugo team can answer, but for the record here’s what I’d like to know:
1. What was the 7th place nominee in Lodestar? Was it Unraveller by Frances Hardinge?
Is one of the listings of Song of Fungus by Chen Qiufan for the novelette or the short story nominations suppose to be another story?
At least here maybe someone is reading this, instead of it just disappearing into the void. Not that anyone here knows any more than I.
@Mike Dunford: To be fair the WIP did somethink, they told the members that they were very angry at their bad behaving members. They just didn’t somethink that was more than a week signal.
This discusion is also very interesting, because in Germany in a verein, their would be exactly the situation that was discripte above, the Vorstand can’t kick out one of their members, this is the job of the members. Problem is the members can do this in an emergency faster than only once a year.
The problem seams to be that their isn’t a preseature to deal with emergency, waiting until August is to long.
Kevin Standlee,
You know those disclaimers don’t magically place you outside the group you are part of for the space of a comment? This isn’t Severance. What you say about a group you are part of still reflects on that group whether you are officially speaking for them or not. If you’d rather it not get misconstrued, then keep it to yourself. Especially since it boils down to one of the bad actors in the current mess still being right there in the center of things, and you’re saying nothing can be done by WIP/MPC. Exactly what got you censured in the first place.
This is the right time for the Worldcon Intellectual Property board of directors to amend its by-laws to enable a member to be removed by a two-thirds vote.
Ben Yalow remaining in a leadership position is a terrible message to send the world if we are serious about accountability.
Out of curiosity, has any WSFS business meeting ever formally approved WIP’s bylaws? Or, for that matter, it’s existence?
I’m not a lawyer, so take it for what it’s worth, but it seems to me that “we won’t take actions that we could take to protect the Hugo Service Marks without authorization from the Business Meeting (which doesn’t own the Service Marks anymore) because that’s how we’ve always done things” doesn’t help defend on the question of abandonment of the marks.
Just FYI: WIP was created because we needed a legal entity so we could register our marks in Europe. WIP reports to the MPC; the MPC reports to the BM.
WIP only reports to the MPC because WIP wants to. Again, the only thing giving MPC (or WSFS at all) any say over the WIP is that the WIP bylaws as currently written defer to the Business Meeting to determine who is a Director.
This isn’t an inability to act, it is an unwillingness to do so.
I think it’s fairly well understood what the motivations were. They’re outlined in the discussion of the authorization of the formation of WIPT.
But that doesn’t seem to answer any of the questions asked.
There needs to be a way to remove members from the MPC, and without question. The issue becomes would they ever actually do it? Kevin clearly over-stepped massively and was only reprimanded 8-6. The damage done by Chengdu should warrent every member of the MPC who was in a position of power being removed.
Sadly, I get the feeling that there’s a lot more goign on in that committee of the whole that we shoudl really know about in far more detail.
I saw, spoke to Ben Yalow at Boskone. Topic A was not brought up by either of us. IMHO, he seemed kind of sad. I personally do not believe he saw his fannish worldcon experience drawing to a close in just this way.
FWIW, I’ve known Ben for more than 40 years.
The Board couldn’t even muster up more support than an 8-5 vote in favor of doing nothing more than essentially just pointing at McCarty and Yalow and saying “Bad Hugo admins. Bad!” Whether also squirting them in the face with a spray bottle of water was discussed in the off-the-minutes meeting is unknown, but unlikely.
Ironically, it was 10-3 in favor of telling McCarty that he should have just kept his damn mouth shut, so there was a greater degree of unanimity on that one, with two members who (so I will infer from the differing votes) seem to think that was the main thing he did wrong.
With that tepid level of concern, it feels unlikely that they’d exercise any nuclear options like giving themselves the power to unilaterally eject someone appointed by the business meeting.
It honestly baffles me that Yalow hasn’t resigned. It feels like the obvious choice on every level, particularly since he doesn’t seem interested in defending himself. I mean, I could comprehend a “I want to stay and fight what I think are unfair smears against me” position, even though I think “I’m just going to post an apology on Twitter, exit stage left, go quiet for a few years, and then emerge after enough time has passed for my friends to declare me rehabilitated” is the obvious path.
Just hunkering down, staying silent and hoping it’s going to blow over feels like the worst of all worlds. Can anyone tell me what I’m missing? Am I just insufficiently jaded about the possibility of a long-time SMOF actually riding this one out?
From the minutes of the Worldcon Intellectual Property Board of Directors, Jan. 28, 2024:
I see it as somewhat disappointing that there were 5 votes against censuring Dave, Ben, and Chen for disqualifying nominees without authorization or even providing a justification. Even if Dave and Ben voted against censuring themselves (Chen Shi was not at the meeting, and apparently 2 people did not vote on this resolution), that still leaves at least 3 other board members who were unwilling to support the censure.
Mike Dunford: It looks to me like the 2014 Worldcon Business Meeting unanimously voted in favor of a resolution that Worldcon Intellectual Property Inc. to take on its initial work for service marks in some locales. Which you know and isn’t the answer to your questions. I just mention it here because I see it was done with a resolution, which painful experience has reminded us is not a form of motion that binds anyone. So the question still needs to be answered. However I expect the answer is implicit in the fact that every entity since 2014 has treated WIP as having legal authority. And Business Meetings have erected other rules around its existence, another implicit ratification.
Given that previous statements have indicated that the Business Meeting can replace elected members of the MPC, and that the seated conventions can replace their own representatives, it seems that members of the Business Meeting should know how individual board members voted on the motions to censure.
How else would the Business Meeting be able to offer oversight?
One thing to remember about these minutes is that they are a throwback in time: they are from meetings held a month ago. This was after the release of the (purported) Hugo nomination statistics, but before the release of the reporting by Chris M. Barkeley and Jason Sanford on the actions taken by the 2023 Hugo committee.
As for the MPC kicking off members involved members involved in the 2023 Hugos, my first question would be if there is any form of statutory support for such an action. I’m a big believer in the rule of law. (I do agree that the best thing those members can do is voluntarily resign.)
The MPC? I don’t think it can.
The WIP Board? They could by amending the bylaws to allow it.
@Mike Glyer:
My read of the 2014 and 2015 minutes is that the MPC went to the meeting, asked for a resolution to establish a trust (which is a specific form of entity that imposes specific responsibilities on the trustee), and a vote was held on that motion. The MPC then determined, on its own recognizance, that a trust was the “wrong” entity, created WIP, Inc as a 501(c)(3) instead (a different form of entity that imposes different obligations on its board), and subsequently informed the 2015 meeting that they had done so. It is not clear (at least without reviewing the video) that the membership were provided an explanation other than that the trust was the wrong kind of entity, or given information about the differences.
If I’m wrong about that sequence of events, I’m happy to look at anything that shows my error.
Implicit ratification through acquiescence is certainly a thing that can happen, and it’s obviously important that the membership doesn’t seem to have a problem with what happened. But there are two things that I think deserve some notice.
The first is that approving (implicitly or explicitly) a fait accompli is different from consciously approving a future course of action.
The second is that the MPC’s willingness to take actions with substantial legal effects in the absence of express approvals where things like the ownership of the WSFS marks and goodwill are concerned seems very different from their position with regard to the Hugos. The appearance is that whether they take the position that “anything not forbidden is permitted” or “anything not permitted is forbidden” is situational.
@Mike Dunford:
I would assume the answer is that the MPC has the authority to create the WIP through the implicit powers given to it to carry out its responsibilities under Section 1.7 of the WSFS Constitution (“There shall be a Mark Protection Committee of WSFS, which shall be responsible for registration and protection of the marks used by or under the authority of WSFS.”).
The transfer of trademark rights from WSFS to Worldcon IP last August was executed by the chair of the MPC signing on behalf of the WSFS, so the transfer was formal rather than implicit.
@Brian G –
That goes to what I’ve said about implicit powers – there appears to a willingness to wield broad implicit powers. Sometimes.
And, yes. The transfer of the entirety of the WSFS marks and all the associated goodwill was executed by the chair of the MPC signing on behalf of WSFS, also apparently under a very expansive view of implicit powers.
Dave Weinstein (et al.) is right that the current WIP Bylaws (or “Byalws” per the PDF title) say
which, of course, is to take place at the Worldcon. (There are also provisions for a “special meeting” that are not principally different.) Still, looking at the recent voting figures, I consider it unlikely that the super-majority could be achieved.
Kevin Standlee’s “WIP change its bylaws so that WSFS no longer manages WIP by electing its Board of Directors …’s a terrible idea” is overly literalist: an option to expel a member if found detrimental to the WIP as a whole would hardly mean the WSFS would no longer manage and elect.
Jan Vanek:
That strikes me as an especially charitable interpretation of a post where Standlee interprets Weinstein in the way most advantageous to Standlee’s postion.
Ben Yalow called a CotW during the looong business meeting of deciding where Westercon 66 was going to be. Because it was getting a bit heated and confusing, and there was Stuff to be discussed quickly. Everyone who was live-casting shut off their cameras and we had a good old-fashioned random fannish discussion for about 20? minutes which was slightly more forceful and candid than under RRoO. It was very productive, and a good stress reliever for all.
Ben’s always been conscious of his dignity and I hope his friends can convince him that a dignified resignation/hiatus is best, as @Brian G suggested.
If it was up to the Glasgow business meeting, I bet 2/3 of the attending members would vote against anyone who was involved with this year’s Hugos. People SHOW UP when there’s a wrong that needs to be fixed, as we saw in the Puppy years and adoption of EPH.