Hugo Eligibility Amendment

[kevin_standlee]

As I expected, a WSFS constitutional amendment disqualifying Mark Protection Committee and subcommittee members from Hugo Award eligibility has been submitted to the WSFS Business Meeting. This is effectively the converse of the resolution ordering the MPC to rescind the disqualification rule it adopted last year.

So the battle lines are drawn: If you think there's no reason MPC/HAMC members shouldn't be able to win a Hugo Award themselves, you want to vote for resolution 4.1.2 and against 4.2.4. The first resolution will come up for its final vote at the Preliminary Business Meeting on Thursday. The second, a constitutional amendment, will only come up for initial consideration. An Objection to Consideration could be lodged against it, but that requires a 2/3 vote against consideration and is unlikely to work, although you might try it anyway.

Assuming 4.2.4 doesn't get squashed, I expect to offer a number of amendments to it on Thursday, starting with an amendment that would remove the existing firewall separating the rest of the Worldcon committee from the Hugo Administration Subcommittee. My reasoning is that if a completely independent organization that is clearly defined as not being part of the current Worldcon is supposedly subject to a conflict of interest, then certainly every member of the actual Worldcon committee has the same conflict of interest.

If 4.2.4 survives the Preliminary Business Meeting, it will come up for debate and passage relatively late on Friday. Yes, if all of the submitted business makes it through to Friday and if everyone uses all of their available debate time, it could get to be a very long meeting.

It does help that two of the items-passed-on are technical changes that are unlikely to be controversial and that I expect will be ratified by unanimous consent.

Update, 1100: Inserted a word that should have been there and was pointed out in comments.

Comments

[drplokta]

It's by no means the converse, and it's perfectly possible to support both. One can certainly take the view that decisions about Hugo eligibility are rightly the province of the Business Meeting and not the MPC, while also taking the view that are genuine conflicts of interest involved.

What might work best is to proceed by analogy with the current rules and allow the MPC to establish a subcommitee to which it delegates all responsibility for matters concerning the Hugos (other than simply ensuring that the service mark is protected), and restrict ineligibility to members of that subcommittee.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I suggest that giving the MPC any authority over Hugo Award eligibility is a step toward WSFS Inc. If moving closer to a centralized WSFS Inc. is what people really want, that's fine. If there really was a WSFS Inc. that ran the Hugo Awards (rather than it being the responsibility of individual Worldcon committees), it would make sense to disqualify the Board of Directors and the administration subcommittee. But right now that's not the case, and implying that it is seems like a bad idea to me.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Are there any matters that the Mark Protection Committee takes under consideration that are NOT to do with the Hugos? The Hugo Award is its raison d'etre after all, as is the HAMC.

Quick question -- what is the formal title of the Mark Protection Committee? Does it have the words "Hugo Award" in it, like the HAMC or is it just assumed to be prefixed and everyone discussing it knows that it's the Hugo Award mark that is its area of interest?

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

The Mark Protection Committee's remit is a bit wider than that, in that their role is to protect *all* of Worldcon's trademarks. Arguably, the more important one is the "Worldcon" trademark itself, with the Hugo Awards almost tagged on as an afterthought. ("Worldcon" certainly seems to be the one that is more often infringed, whether deliberately or accidentally.)

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

As a f'rinstance, I was involved in a lot of the preliminary discussions around the setting up of the World Diplomacy Convention in 1988 (yes, the boardgame). We deliberately chose the name "World Dip Con" (three words, with spaces), in order to minimise any theoretical or actual confusion with either the Worldcon or Dipcon (US Diplomacy convention) trademarks.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Yep, you're right. The "Worldcon" trademark had slipped my mind for some reason.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Just as a technical correction, a Service Mark is very different than a Trademark as regards the law and protection.

What WSFS have are service marks, not trademarks.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but in practical terms they are the same things, and they're both managed by the same government agencies. (The US Patent and Trademark Office in the USA, for instance.) So I try not to get too hung up over people conflating the two. And the circle-R registration symbol is the same for both of them.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The official name of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee is "Mark Protection Committee." It is defined in the WSFS Constitution thus:

1.7.1: 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.

There is the little matter of "Worldcon," and "WSFS" and "World Science Fiction Convention" and "World Science Fiction Society," which are also the MPC's responsibility. The worldcon.org and wsfs.org web sites are under the MPC's charge. In fact, the most serious challenge to WSFS's intellectual property that caused the MPC to have to go into overdrive was when it had to challenge the Association of Energy Engineers over their convention they called "Worldcon" (they later changed it to "Globalcon."

The MPC actually is responsible for more non-Hugo-related service marks than Hugo-related ones.

(Note: posted before I saw the subsequent posts. I'm leaving it up because it quotes the MPC's formal authority and charter as the only permanent body of WSFS. The other semi-permanent bodies are charted as committees of the Business Meeting, not of WSFS, which is a fine distinction, I know, but relatively important.)

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

Then certainly every member of the actual Worldcon has the same conflict of interest.

Every member of the Worldcon committee, or every member of the Worldcon? The latter is equally arguable, but would reduce the electorate down to zero. Which, if you're looking for a reductio ad absurdem, is fair enough, I suppose.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Whoops, you're right and that is what I meant. I've fixed it.

And note that by "committee," I take a very broad approach. It's not just the board of directors or the chairman and division managers. Think about how many people on a Worldcon committee who could be perceived as self-promoting or in a position to be self-promoting.

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that my electronic site selection voting amendment, though subject to vigorous debate on smofs last year, passed and seems likely to be ratified. I think it will greatly increase the voting.

As for the MPC amendment, they claim it's a ratification of existing, unwritten practice. But really, had it been tested at all? After all, the committee is fairly new. And I don't see their reasoning. If the MPC isn't eligible for the Hugo, then nobody at all in the entire WSFS division should be, including the people running the BM (such as the timekeeper). And since they can vote in new Hugos, nobody who attends the BM; which means the entire Worldcon membership. (Reducto ad absurdum...)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I reached similar conclusions, which I intend to offer as amendments to the proposal to point out the absurdity.