Forum:Charity Stories that are TECHNICALLY licensed...: Difference between revisions

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Scrooge MacDuck

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-{{Forumheader|The Panopticon}}
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 == Opening post ==
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 {{quote|…the rule is also only meant to apply to ''DWU'' concepts — if it should hypothetically turn out that ''[[Assimilation² (comic story)|Assimilation²]]'' did not actually have the license to use the [[Borg (species)|Borg]], we would still cover it as valid, because it was licensed to use [[the Doctor]], the [[Cyberman|Cybermen]] and so on.|[[Tardis:Valid sources]]}}
 :: If Rule 2 does not apply to unauthorised use of non-DWU fictional concepts, I think it's a stretch to argue that likeness rights and suchlike, ''as distinct'' from the license to the characters themselves, would be a concern. Rule 2 is about fictional DWU elements, of the type listed at [[List of DWU concepts not owned by the BBC]]; elements of the type that ''could ground coverage of a spin-off work''. If likeness rights distinct from character copyright counted for that sort of thing, we'd have been covering ''[[The Stranger (series)|The Stranger]]'' a long time ago. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 00:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+:::I'm pretty sure the fact that the actors weren't paid and makes all of the likeness, etc, rights noncommercial is ''explicitly'' part of the reasoning that Czech used to invalidate DiT on R2 grounds. See [[Thread:211495]] at [[User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates 2]]. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 00:42, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+: So it would seem, yes. But crucially, says I, ''Rule 2 does not in fact mean this''. I do not think it meant it ''then'', and even generously assuming it ever did, it certainly does not mean that ''now''. This ruling is an aberrant little blip against a long and steady history of Rule 2 being interpreted as concerning commercially licenses ''to use preexisting DWU concepts'', not commercially licenses for each and every component part of a work in general.
+: I think there's two ways you can read that closing post. One, Czech just got it wrong — got muddled between two different meanings of something "being commercially licensed", and delivered a closing post which the policy he claimed to be citing simply did not support, and never has. Two, his thinking was more "the fact that the actor-likenesses weren't commercially licensed is not a Rule 2 breach ''in and of itself'', but if ''that'' wasn't licensed, we have no reason to think ''any'' of it, including the DWU concepts, was". I think #2 is more sensible in terms of broader precedent. (Though still arguably wrong on a different level i.e. the "it is ontologically impossible for the BBC to create something which is not commercially licensed to use things that it owns, for the same reason it is impossible for Magrs to write a story which is not commercially licensed to use Iris Wildthyme" thing on which this entire thread is founded.) [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 01:13, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+::I mean, he said it ''twice'', both there and at [[Thread:125064]] at [[User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon I]]. I cited the other thread because I felt it summarized his point better than this one, which was a bit more all over the place. But this one is pretty close to when [[T:VS]] was written and Czech explicitly states that he's asserting his authorial intent on the meaning of [[T:VS]] on other parts of it. I'm enough of an [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/beyond-aesthetics/art-intention-and-conversation/CBCAFAC60D4EB400B8C78609868A40B3 actual intentionalist] that this is pretty persuasive to me. Does this mean we have to abide by this going forward? Of course not. But we're definitely changing things in R2 imo, unlike what the OP contends. I think the intent of [[T:VS]] is against us here. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 01:41, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+:::I think you can argue that this is what Czech meant in 2017 and that it thereby became standing policy at the time as a result of his ruling — but I think it was successfully left behind, and logically ceased to be policy by the time the clarification that "Rule 2 only applies to DWU concepts" was added to [[T:VS]]. Thus it's no longer standing policy now, just a bad ruling that's since been overwritten. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 15:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+::::I mean, given it was you who [https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Tardis:Valid_sources?type=revision&diff=3029770&oldid=3029762 changed the policy] in 2020 surely this raises the question, did you intend for this to erase a previous implication of the policy that you were aware of or were you trying to elaborate on the reasoning behind the policy and incidentally retooled it in a way that inadvertently shifted it away from the original intent slightly? What was ''your'' intent here? When you were writing this did you actively intend for "''DWU'' concepts" to refer to DWU '''''concepts''''' ''specifically as a line of text in the policy in a way that disqualifies other forms of IP'', or was it meant as a clarification that we don't care about copyright infringement related to non DW related issues? The paragraph does literally begin:
+:::::However, "''relevant'' copyright holders" is an important word.
+::::The other reading seems deeply plausible to me if we're doing textualist games, which I really wish to avoid. What precisely was your intent here? [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:27, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+:: I meant what I wrote. I did intend to clarify Rule 2 as applying exclusively to "<u>DWU</u> <u>concepts</u>", with both words being meaningful. The reason "DWU" is italicised and "concept" isn't is not that the "concept" part is optional, it's that I thought it went without saying. The fact is that I cannot think of another case ''than'' ''DiT'', ever, where likeness rights (or other non-DWU-license-related legal issues) were brought up in an inclusion debate.
+:: My thinking at the time was to codify the ''de facto'' policy I had observed across the Wiki by then, of us not caring about an unauthorised John Steed or the like. I later made the same point at [[Talk:Tara King]], pointing at the cameos in ''[[Party Animals (comic story)|Party Animals]]'', which were already a prominent example on my mind in 2020. But if you had asked me then where likeness rights fit in, I would certainly have said the same thing I say now. McCoy's face is not in and of itself a DWU concept any more than John Steed is; there is a widespread precedent that we don't care about the copyright to John Steed; therefore it is only logical that we not care about McCoy's face.
+:: Indeed, other aspects of the edit you linked bear this out. In the same "Rule 2" section, I added an explainer-box summarising a key aspect of the rule as "''A story has to exploit a lawful, commercial license to at least one DWU concept to qualify for coverage on this Wiki — invalid or otherwise''". I think this, again, demonstrates where I was coming from in that part of the redraft: that the concept of "commercial DWU license" in Rule 2 is synonymous with the thing that a spin-off needs to be shown to possess, if it is to pass muster in an inclusion debate. '''If ''having it'' would not be grounds for coverage, then ''lacking it'' is not grounds for exclusion.''' It seems only logical. And that reasoning applies just as well to Sylvester McCoy's likeness as to Special Agent John Steed.
+:: So, did I specifically realise I was overwriting that one old Czech closure (slash ruling out your default reading thereof)? No. But I did view myself as codifying an understanding of Rule 2 to which that ruling would have been contradictory; and having been pointed to your interpretation of that thread in 2020 would not have changed my wording, except perhaps in the direction of ''more explicitly'' ruling it out so as to avoid a conversation like this one. I would have viewed it then, as I view it now, as a one-off aberration that is clearly working from a different logic than how Rule 2 is otherwise applied across the Wiki — and part of the work of synthetising a policy page from a mass of closing posts and "current practice" is knowing when that means driving a stake through the heart of an old and narrow ruling that was clearly going against the tide of other rulings and precedents. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 18:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+:::To be clear here, I don't think that Czech is as much concerned with likeness rights as he is the reproduction rights. The issue seems to be from my reading that literally nobody owns the full work in his view. But IANAL, so, you know, defer to your local IP lawyer here. (He also explicitly rejects that it's about ''the ability to be reproduced'', a la the FP audios, but the legal status of people signing away rights ''for the production''. Entire situation is a mess.)
+:::Look, here's the reality of the situation. [[T:WRITE POLICY]] applies. I think this should have waited for a forum thread, it's a big change, but if you're insisting that you really did want to enshrine the idea that only IP rights to IU concepts matter, well, alright. I think it was poorly done, but fair enough. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 19:40, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+:: I don't think it ''was'' a big change (in terms of scope, it only applies, as far as we know, to a single source; and again, I viewed myself as very much spelling out what seemed to be the underlying assumption overall). But that being said, if you want to start a sort of devil's-advocate thread reviewing the decision — that is, as a general question of policy, distinct from the thread about reviewing the facts of ''DiT'' that you're doing anyway? or perhaps you'd want to fold it into that? — I don't intend to forbid you from doing such a thing! Still, I personally stand by it as both a saner policy, and one that reflected current practice ''in all cases other than DiT'' at the time it was written.
+:: (I say "all cases other than ''DiT'', but given ''DiT'' was covered-as-{{tlx|invalid}} rather than deleted as outright fanfic, one could argue that this aspect of Czech's closing post had never really been implemented anyway.) [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 19:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
+== Conclusion ==
+<div class="tech">
+A lot of space in this thread was taken up by the controversy about ''[[Dimensions in Time (TV story)|Dimensions in Time]]''. However, it was really always somewhat outside of its scope. It was covered-as-{{tlx|invalid}} (rather than banished-as-fanfic) for most of its history, and by the time the thread was opened, this had been changed to ''validity''; right or wrong, it has never been filed in the same category as the small group of prose stories [[User:OttselSpy25]] actually proposed to validate.
+As I stated in one of the final messages above, [[User:Najawin]] is welcome to start a thread reviewing the decisions which applied to the likeness-rights stuff in the case of ''[[Dimensions in Time (TV story)|Dimensions in Time]]''. However, this has little bearing on the stories at stake here, which ''do'' only make use of stuff to which the relevant publishers had full rights which they simply chose not to exploit. It is hard to conclude without simply rephrasing: the simple fact of the matter is that we've always allowed ''free'' releases so long as they had commercial licenses. '''Rule 2 is concerned with commercial ''licenses'', not commercial ''releases'''''. And it is simply not logically possible for Paul Magrs to not ''possess'' the commercial license to Iris Wildthyme just because he happens to be writing a charity story. He owns it. Any story he writes is by definition commercially licensed to use Iris, whether it's ''released'' commercially or not.
+The decision to exclude licensed charity stories was taken not for a principled reason flowing from [[T:VS]], but simply for simplicity's sake. In line with the ongoing crusade against shortcuts that result in loss of information, it is time to repeal this and tidy it away. The "unless it's published for charity" exception to T:VS does ''not'' by any true stretch of the imagination flow from the [[four little rules]].
+Thus: ''[[Baron (Count) Dracula and Count (Baron) Frankenstein (short story)|Baron (Count) Dracula and Count (Baron) Frankenstein]]'', ''[[Being an extract from "The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune" (short story)|The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune]]'', ''[[Moon Eyes (short story)|Moon Eyes]]'' and ''[[It's Raining Gin (short story)|It's Raining Gin]]'' are hereby officially added to our treasury of valid sources. The anthologies in which they appear should be given pages while making clear that other entries in the book are ''not'' licensed and ''not'' covered, much as we do for DWU short stories appearing in primarily-non-DWU anthologies, such as ''[[Resurrection Engines (anthology)|Resurrection Engines]]'' or ''[[Decalog 5: Wonders]]''.
+(The scruples about ''It's Raining Gin'' are understandable, but ultimately, both the presence of unlicensed non-DWU-elements, and the plot-inconsequential namedrop of an unlicensed BBC concepts, are both squarely within permissible precedent. Rule 2 is about ''relevant DWU concepts'', and every word in that summary is important. Sooty's not a DWU concept and Metebelis IV is not relevant.)
+As concerns further examples of the form, however, I think the slope is potentially slippery enough — if people started creating pages about license-breaking stories in bad faith — to warrant caution. Thus, '''any new purported licensed-story-printed-in-a-charity-book should get an inclusion debate reviewing its status''', by default, albeit sometimes a cursory one.
+Thank you to everyone who participated! [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 16:43, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
+</div>
+[[Category:Panopticon archives]]
+[[Category:Inclusion debates]]

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Revision as of 16:43, 19 August 2023