266 thoughts on “Worldcon Intellectual Property Announces Censure of McCarty, Chen Shi and Yalow; McCarty Resigns; Eastlake Succeeds Standlee as Chair of B.O.D.”

1. OUTSTANDING!

2. In California there are three elements to a franchise relationship. One that is absent here is paying a fee to the entity granting a franchise. Worldcons don’t pay a fee to WSFS to run the con and use the marks.

   At the end if there is a surplus the Worldcon may contribute something to the MPC or W.I.P. for its continued operations. A court would understand that is a donation not a franchise fee.

3. I also think — but would be curious for evidence to the contrary — that if you were to ask all players in this space,

   I don’t think it matters much what all players in this space think; what matters is how a lawyer with a grudge and time on their hands would interpret it.

   Besides, we’re all weird.

4. @Ed Green

   rahaeli said:

   Stop. Talking. About. WSFS.

   This is beginning to sound like the “Sit down, John” refrain from

   1776

   I love that song and musical. It’s amazingly well done, and funny as hell.

   Apropos of nothing: you’d be amazed, or possibly appalled, at what a properbastard of a litigator can do with public statements at a deposition. Even disclaimered ones. Actually, no. Especially disclaimered ones. I should know – while I’m not going to publicly denigrate the circumstances of my own birth, I am a litigator.

   @Brad Templeton:

   I presume WSFS has an agreement with WIP which gives it the right to use the marks it formerly owned, like Hugo Award. WSFS gives out the hugos, not the individual conventions. When you delegate a task to an agent/employee/volunteer, they don’t need or get a licence to use your trademarks, they use them as you, in your name.

   There are a few issues with this attempt to explain trademark law at us:
   1. The technical term for the ‘agreement’ in “WSFS has an agreement with WIP which gives it the right to use the marks it formerly owned” is “a license.”
   2. Setting that aside, your approach only works if it’s a concession that WIP has the right to run the Hugos.
   3: Setting that aside, what do you think it would cost WSFS to litigate that theory?

5. I am actually waiting for someone to call to all non lawyers to shut up.
   I also wouldn’t call the construction of the Worldcon a typical francise(like McDonalds) its way more complicated and unpractical than that.
   Just 3 points: 1. We can’t ignore what is actually the construct and call it irelevant like Jay Blanc did in his last post.
   2. Most of us are far from experts of californian law, so I can’t say that perhaps the Worldcons are a francise in this.
   3. What is (again I know very little of Californian law) clear is that the Hugos are protected if someone who has no right to use them uses them, the protection against someone who principle uses the right but does screw up the process is another problem. The question is now, if we fix this which takes 2 years, is that enough or no matter what we do are the Hugos kaputt?

6. @Brad Templeton:

   The hypothetical under discussion here is some party might get sued for infringement of the Hugo mark by WIP, and their defence would be, “You abandoned this mark by naked licencing to all those worldcons.” I don’t think that would be a good strategy as they would need both a ruling that the cons aren’t acting in the name of WSFS when they use the mark, and a ruling that WSFS abandoned its duties to monitor and control use of the mark, even though they have a committee whose only job is to do that, and it attends every convention. I would not want to risk such a strategy.

   Brad, what’s the relationship between WIP and WSFS, and what does/doesn’t WIP have the right to do?

7. Mike Dunford

   I love that song and musical. It’s amazingly well done, and funny as hell.

   These days I’m actor. I would love to play Ben Franklin. But my singing is horrific at best.

   I should know – while I’m not going to publicly denigrate the circumstances of my own birth, I am a litigator.

   Having confessed to being an actor, how can I chastise another’s profession?

8. @Mike, I do think there is consideration, though not cash, in this relationship. A committee applies to WSFS (bids) to host the con. If selected, it can now sell memberships, both WSFS memberships and what are now called attending supplements which are the only way to get voting rights at a WSFS business meeting. As said, this structure WSFS has is not tremendously clear, and needs improving so we can no longer debate what it means because we all know what it means.

   Earlier we discussed what sort of agreement exists between WSFS and a worldcon. I argue there is a strong implication (and certainly very well followed practice) that the constitution defines this agreement and its terms. Whether you could sue under that remains to be seen as of course nobody has tried. You could make a good argument that each year’s worldcon is a franchisee in terms of running a convention, and that the constitution effectively says this in 1.6. But it also carves out the Hugos and site selection and says those are done by WSFS. WSFS awards the hugos. WSFS members vote. The convention does the counting for WSFS. (You can debate if the statues and ceremony are done for WSFS to are done by the convention, but I think 1.2.5 puts them in the WSFS carve-out.) Somebody in a lawsuit would have to argue that, in spite of the fact that 1.6 carves the Hugos/Site Selection out from the activities that might be franchised to the con, that it has no force. Maybe they could prevail, but it doesn’t seem that great a case to me. What does the carve-out mean, otherwise?

9. @Brad,

   You are not a lawyer. Law is genuinely complex, which is why I can’t just read the text of an act and assume I know how it will play out in court. You know who’s an expert in how the case could play out? An IP lawyer.

   As a friend of mine learned at Harvard Law, “what’s right ain’t legal, and what’s legal ain’t right.”

10. Brad:
    You still miss the point. The issue is not the relationship between WSFS and Hugo, or Con and Hugo, or even WSFS and Con and Hugo.

    The issue is the relationship BETWEEN WIP AND ANYONE ELSE INVOLVED – that’s the issue.

11. How can anyone say Worldcon Intellectual Property was inattentive in monitoring the use of its trademarks by Chengdu Worldcon when several WIP board members ran that con and the Hugo Awards?

    I am not seeing the trademark doomsday scenario where a mark holder ignored infringement. I am seeing an entirely different doomsday scenario where the marks are valid but their value is severely diminished by the corruption of the awards.

12. @StefanB

    I’m not saying we ignore the WSFS constitution, I’m saying that the way it’s read and intended to be used by WSFS Fandom, and the way a regulator would read the actual practice and organisation of the WSFS, and the way a court would rule on how it should be read, are all different things.

    @Mike Dunford

    I agree that actually unpicking the structure of WSFS is a nightmare. But the long standing argument for how “Worldcons Work” looks more like a Franchise than any other ordinary organisation to me. Highly informal, with a blurring of roles and responsibilities, and a hash of “implicit licensing”…

    But also people do simultaneously argue that WSFS doesn’t exist outside of Worldcons, with the WSFS being an entity that is passed between Worldcons. And that the Hugo Awards are always under the direct control of the individual Worldcons.

    I’m not sure how that works as a legal construct.

13. @Madam Hardy – thanks, but as a person who has run multiple corporations and served on several boards, for-profit and non-profit, and was chair of one of the world’s best respected legal foundations, I do know what lawyers do, and more to the point don’t do. Some are better than others. But it’s not about credentials and appeal to authority in any event.

    (One example of the danger of appeal to authority occurred in this case, where a bad lawyer attempted to claim that a famous trademark lawyer backup up his claims. I talked to her–she has helped the EFF and did an amicus in my brother’s recent famous copyright case that was reported in file770– and she reported that she had not said what he claimed, and had mostly said the opposite. So be wary of that.)

14. Brad Templeton: In your example money — paid for site selection voting memberships and other memberships — flows to the individual Worldcon. A franchise fee would flow from the Worldcon to WSFS. There is no “franchise fee” happening.

15. Jay Blanc: So long as it looks like a franchise to you and Humpty Dumpty who needs California law?

    ETA. And that is an Alice reference only not a play on anyone’s name.

16. @Brad

    There is a difference between “I’ve worked with and seen a lot of good lawyers” and “I understand how trademark law in specific applies to this specific case”.

    “Appeal to authority” is beside the point when the actual authority is speaking. And as it happens, I have Marshall McLuhan right here…

17. @RedWombat: Brilliant (and of course I pronounce it ‘Wisfuss’)

    @Ed Green, etc: 1776 is one of my favorite things. I’ve seen the movie more times than I can count, and have seen it on stage as well. And many, many of the lines are paraphrases of things the people portrayed really said, like this: “The History of our Revolution will be one continued Lye from one End to the other. The Essence of the whole will be that Dr Franklins electrical Rod, Smote the Earth and out Spring General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his Rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy Negotiations Legislation and War.” from a letter Adams wrote in 1790.

18. @Andrew (not Werdna)
    Oh dear Ghu, was Washington “Franklin’s Monster”?

19. @ Brad

    as a person who has run multiple corporations and served on several boards, for-profit and non-profit, and was chair of one of the world’s best respected legal foundations, I do know what lawyers do, and more to the point don’t do. Some are better than others.

    My first six years in the military I spent handling bomb sniffing dogs. Although a cop, I spent a lot of time with the EOD teams. They helped with the training of my dog by setting up live explosives (with any detonation device). They showed me their equipment, explained what it did. Gave me copies of the monthly FBI bomb data sheets.

    Learned the best places to plant explosives on things that needed exploding.

    Heck at one assignment, I got to watch them dispose of a couple of WWII ammo caches left over. Rumors that they let me help with the laying of charges are strictly rumors.

    Why am I telling you all this?

    In spite of all that, I would never be a guy you could rely on to defuse a bomb. I was not formally trained. If you asked me to, I’d leave the area.

    I know stuff, but that doesn’t translate to being able to do it.

    You aren’t a lawyer. We got in this situation because non-lawyers were talking.

20. Franklin’s Fine Monster.

21. @Mike Glyer

    I keep having to bring up 2.9.3, and that the WSFS gets the benefit of any surplus funds held by the Worldcons. It’s simply not true that the WSFS has no consideration from the Worldcons, it’s just all handled informally and by a ‘voluntary’ third party taking the money and redistributing it, and ‘voluntary donations’ to cover WIP’s expences. But that’s all money that is covered by 2.9.3’s direction that the Surplus is to be directed back to WSFS’s benefit.

    “We’ve been handling the accounts in a complicated and at-a-distance fashion that at first glance seems like it might be intended to be obscure” is not a great argument against there being an actual written arrangement that WSFS takes the benefit of any surplus from Worldcons. Even if you declare it all held in trust by those Worldcons, and never returned or directly touched by either WSFS or WIP, that’s still a consideration.

    I have no idea why they didn’t organise this all as a formalised Discretionary Trust that individual Worldcons could apply to for grants from, then return their surplus to. But that’s something that needs to be explicitly organised in writing.

22. PJ Evans

    Yes. At the end of his Presidency, he leaped on an ice floe and was never seen again.

23. Jay Blanc: It’s not a franchise fee. All this handwaving and smoke blowing won’t change that.

    I think other people aren’t having a problem understanding that an actual franchise fee gets financed up front and doesn’t fall out of a surplus at the end if there happens to be any money left over, which there isn’t always.

24. @Mike Glyer

    Is this a formal and proper franchise arrangement, with all the correct paperwork and filings according to California Law? No.

    But does that mean this isn’t an informal franchise arrangement? I sugges it’s an informal arrangement that looks a lot like and has been handled like individual franchises that bid on a licence to operate the Worldcon and Hugo Awards.

    I also suggest there’s a lot that’s gone on around WSFS organisation that wasn’t formally organised with all the paperwork filed as it should have been.

    As to “You can’t call something a Franchise unless they paid up front”, I can give you examples such as the Railway Franchise system where operating franchises are granted in exchange for a surplus being returned. It even includes initial subsidies.

25. Jay Blanc: Financed up front and “paid up front” are not the same thing. And the UK government’s Railway Franchise system sounds like “franchise” is a label with a highly specialized definition in its own right, and should not be conflated with the term as used under California law.

26. Goddamnit, someone else web pointed out that “We don’t talk about Hugos” was RIGHT THERE

27. @Mike Glyer

    Okay, let’s use your narrow definition.

    Would you like to explain where the money from a Site Location Ballot comes from, and where it goes? And explain how this does not qualify as the supporting membership of the next Worldcon financing the winning bid of a Worldcon?

28. Jay Blanc: Look, we know nobody ever admits being “wrong on the internet” so why would you be the exception to that rule? I’ll have to settle for your dodgy effort to confuse trusteeship of money (site selection voting fees) with “financing”. This is really pathetic.

29. @Mike Glyer

    It is not actually made clear in 4.1.3 that the funds are being held in trust, and there’s no arrangements made for escrow. The current Worldcon take bid fees from WSFS membership who want to support a bid. This doesn’t go into any protected account, there’s just an informal assurance that it’ll be given to the winning Bid. Not to mention that the winning bid really needs to have given some kind of consideration to WSFS/WIP if it’s considered to have any kind of contract, written, verbal or implied.

    The problem with a lack of formality to arrangements handling money, is that it’s possible to end up being interpreted as the worst possible interpretations for what ever case is being examined by what ever regulator is doing the examination. So you could end up with Worldcons being considered Franchises by one regulator in one jurisdiction, and not Franchises by another regulator in another jurisdiction. Particularly since WSFS doesn’t specify California as the legal forum where disputes have to be settled. (This might be why no one wants to run a Worldcon in Delaware…)

    And even then, I think it was clear I was not using the word “franchise”, in my description of how Trademark abandonment can happen, in the narrow and specific California definition of the formalised business filing. IANAL. Nether are you. So I kinda think you’re just looking for reasons that you can dismiss the upstart who keeps saying there’s problems with the way WSFS is organised.

30. Is there any way in WordPress to implement a kill filter, like we used to use for Usenet?

31. Would someone oooooooooopen up a window?!

32. @Michael Brooks: “No! Too many Files (but it’s hot as Hell in Fanadelphia)”

33. John Lorentz:

    Balloon-Juice, which is also a wordpress blog, has a Pie Filter to turn the commenter of your choice into delicious pie. If OGH likes, I could ask over there and find out how it works and how easy it would be to install …

34. @John Lorentz
    I use this one: Blog Kill File: https://github.com/fizbin/killfile-extension
    Definitely works with Firefox, and there’s a Chrome version.
    Basically, it hushes the person (by username), so you don’t have to see their comments, but you can read them if you want.

35. I feel like half this thread is people materially missing the point: the relationship between the WSFS, the WIP, and the individual cons is not and cannot be adversarial, nor presumed to become such. If it was, then the WSFS would need to run the cons itself, not try to tie them up in amateur-written constitutions.

    That is to say, if the WSFS finds itself in the situation that they need to write down laws to protect itself/the Hugos from the individual cons that they can’t trust, then the entire independent con setup is pointless. You trust them to run it, or you need to treat them like a hired management company. Any pretend-lawyering about California contract law and “what if the WSFS can’t trust the cons but still lets them run worldcon independently” is just engaging in weird hypotheticals. You trust them or you don’t.

    What if you ask a friend to water your plants while they’re away for a case of beer? If they overwater the plants, can you sue them under California law? Are they independent contractors now? If you’re that worried, maybe you need to have a deep think about if you need to hire a company instead. Alternately, just don’t ask friends you know might have issues with plants.

36. Thanks!

37. I’m obnoxious and disliked.

    I hadn’t noticed.

38. I simply came to nth the love for 1776, and also @Wombat’s cogent statement.

    It’s gone very musical here and I am all for it.

39. @Ed Green–Nah. It’s just that it’s 90° in here.

40. 1776 helped me pass the AP American History exam.

    There was a multiple-choice question: which was not part of the Triangle Trade?

    ObSF: Brent Spiner played John Adams in a late-90s Broadway revival.

41. Pingback: Pixel Scroll 2/1/24 Scroll Pixel Like Fritos, Scroll Pixel Like Tab And Mountain Dew - File 770

42. Jay Blanc: I’m very tired of you trying to play drum major to a parade of WSFS defects, some of which are actual defects, some of which are just verbal sleight-of-hand tricks, and some are just wrong.

    4.1.3: The current Worldcon Committee shall administer the voting, collect the advance membership fees, and turn over those funds to the winning Committee before the end of the current Worldcon.

    There doesn’t need to be a formal trust, an escrow account, or a contract for this rule to have effect. The administering Worldcon doesn’t own the money, and even Worldcons that have lost money, or nearly so, have never failed to turn over the site selection voting fees to the next con. The administering Worldcon holds the account the funds are held in — that is control, not ownership of the money.

    And we’re talking about California because you wanted to talk about California when you were churning out that smoke about W.I.P. Inc. and its supposed role in your ever-changing theories about WSFS and Worldcons graced by the use of the word franchise. The relationship between WSFS and individual Worldcons fails the California definition of franchise. And your best shot after that was to reference Railway Franchises, so I guess WSFS better not get into the passenger rail business in the UK.

43. Mike, I’ve got to agree with Jay, but maybe from a slightly different standpoint: Worldcon rules are not law. Imagine that the Worldcon goes to court: The judge (who is a lawyer) says, “What does the law say about these rules the not-lawyers have tried to make? Did they use the right legal language? Are the rules they tried to implement legal? What are the legal precedents for this kind of case? Are these agreements a valid contract? Are their rules, in fact, legal. If the rules use a word like ‘franchise’ which has a legal interpretation under the law of the County/State/Country I work for, naturally I must interpret it according to the laws I’m charged with enforcing, and not as the rules-writers (who might not be lawyers) intended it.” And so forth, probably reaching conclusions no sane member of any Worldcon affiliated organization would ever have reached about the rules of the Worldcon. SF culture/jargon/language is very different from legal culture/jargon/language, but courts use the legal version, not the SF version, and in the current social hierarchy the court’s interpretation can be enforced with ugly and painful legal penalties, and the SF fan’s cannot.

    If I understand him correctly, that’s the only message Jay is trying to convey. You can argue the Worldcon rules all you want, but if you go to court… you’re automatically wrong.

    So hopefully the Worldcon stays out of court until they have sorted the language of their rules into something a court can parse as a member of the organization would like it parsed.

44. Troutwaxer. The rules don’t use the word franchise. That’s a word Jay pulled in because it seemed to lend itself to an argument he wanted to make. Except it doesn’t.

    Nobody is confused that the Worldcon rules are law.

    It’s great that you’re aware of the concept of caselaw. Then you also know that the jurisdiction in which action is brought affects the weight to be given precedent decisions.

45. “The rules don’t use the word franchise.”

    That’s why I used the word “if” above – this is an example, and I’m not echoing Jay’s use of the word. The point is very simply this: You’re speaking as if legal rules are Worldcon rules. They aren’t. Once a case involving the Worldcon gets to court the differences between Worldcon rules vs. legal rules vs. actual laws will be very apparent, and very much to Worldcon’s disadvantage. That’s all I’m saying. (And I think that’s all Jay’s saying.)

    The obvious advantages of making sure the Worldcon doesn’t get to court until it’s ready should be immediately obvious. I’m sorry if you don’t see it.

46. Troutwaxer: No, I’m not “speaking as if legal rules are Worldcon rules”. I’m engaging Jay’s assertions about the applications of law to WSFS rules. I don’t understand where you get such a strange idea about the discussion Jay and I are having. Since you don’t understand perhaps you can stop telling me what Jay and I are saying.

47. @Red Wombat: we’re always making plans for Hugos; we only want what’s best for fen.

48. @michael brooks

    Might i suggest:

    “It’s hot as Hell in Pixeldelphia”

    My favorite line:

    “Mr. Adams, leave me ALOOOONE!”

    Closely followed by the part where Jefferson sings “Mr Adams, you are driving me to homicide!” And the chorus gleefully chimes in with “Homicide! Homicide! We may see murder yet!”

49. Doctor Science on February 1, 2024 at 5:45 pm said:
    “Balloon-Juice, which is also a wordpress blog, has a Pie Filter to turn the commenter of your choice into delicious pie. If OGH likes, I could ask over there and find out how it works and how easy it would be to install.”

    With OGH’s luck it would probably work as well as JetPack. 😮

50. @Nathaniel G

    There’s an excluded middle between Trust and Do Not Trust. It’s called “Trust but Verify”, and in the case of large organisations involves internal or external auditors.

    I’ve yet to hear anyone explain why WSFS doesn’t have auditors, and why WIP can’t immediately call in auditors under their mark protection powers.

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