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

[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.