Forum:Charity Stories that are TECHNICALLY licensed...

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Opening post

Before the "new forums" officially returned, I was working on the "Validity Speedround 2," which was supposed to have 5 very mundane topics all pertaining to validity and coverage. But now that we have the regular forms, I'll naturally be posting these by themselves, although not all at once. So if you think this debate is a little underwhelming it's probably because I wrote it to go with four other topics.

However, in spite of not exactly being the most controversial forum ever, this post will be changing existing policy which has been around for over ten years. Because of this, I am choosing to put it in the Panopticon rather than the Inclusion space, although I'm also doing this because I'm not certain that the inclusion space has ever "opened" officially. But anyways - if this is a case that involves changing historical policy, why did I ever consider it for the speedround system?

Well... because I can literally only come up with three stories that I'm certain will be impacted by this. And they're short stories - the kind you'd find in a completely forgotten back-issue of Short Trips or the like. But I think it's clear that we have a situation here where our rules got really, well, confused about something and we should just quickly correct it past judgements. Trust me, when you hear what I'm talking about it won't sound so sensational.

So our rules about Charity novels and anthologies basically date back to one of the first rules we ever had on the website: No fan fiction. The belief was that Charity publications, while occasionally made with approval passive or otherwise from the BBC, were still fan creations. You can see this cited in Forum:Response to user introducing info from charity publications into in-universe articles. This was apparently especially a controversial topic when it came to the famous Time's Champion, a Sixth Doctor Charity novel that began as an official pitch.

In February 2011, Forum:Charity anthology short stories was launched. The forum meant to clarify that Charity stories which used licensed DW concepts and characters were no different from fan fiction. User:CzechOut, User:Tangerineduel, and User:Revanvolatrelundar spoke of this through June before the forum closed after few words. The topic was seen as unanimous and quite obvious and saw no pushback from any other users (at least in those few months).

Since this, it has consistently been policy that whenever the BBC occasionally allows someone to use BBC-owned concepts only if the work benefits Charity and the creator sees no other profits, we recognize the existence of these stories but do not even create special pages for them. This is why Rule 2 in Tardis:Valid sources has that specific phrasing. "A work of fiction which isn't commercially licensed by all of the relevant copyright holders doesn't count."

So what am I seeking to change about this policy today? Not a damn thing. I don't want to change a single thing about everything we've spoken of so far.

However, we have recently come across at least three stories which are more complicated that this topic has historically been treated.

Consider this. Paul Magrs owns the character Iris Wildthyme. If Magrs writes a charity story with Iris and the Sixth Doctor, we don't cover it, obviously. But what if he's writing a charity story, uses Iris, and no other concepts he would need permission to use... Would we cover that story?

Historically, you might be shocked to hear, the answer is no. Because it has essentially been our position that in said case, Paul Magrs has given himself a non-commercial license to use his own creation. This... Doesn't make any legal sense.

Basically, while someone needing a "commercial license" is written into Rule 2 of T:VS, Rule 3 has no such distinction. It's "a work of fiction must be officially released to be valid", not "a work of fiction must be commercially released to be valid." So if someone has a commercial license, then uses that commercial license to create a non-commercial story, that is not against our rules! But we functionally act as if it is.

I'd also like to bring up that, realistically, there are probably several Red Nose Day and Children in Need segments which should be effected by this implied rule but aren't because... Duh. The BBC doesn't give themselves a non-commercial license. So it's just a rule we're not using in a coherent way!

Again, changing how we do this is moving against active precedent. BUT it's for the sake of validating, as far as I can tell, three short stories while codifying a novel which is already valid despite being an example of this. And it's a topic the original debates never even brought up because they were clearly discussing charity publications that used the Doccy, the TARDIS, etc. Not Paul Magrs doing a little charity work with a character that is owned only by him.

So, as far as I can tell, these are the stories which would be effected by this idea:

1. Baron (Count) Dracula and Count (Baron) Frankenstein in Perfect Timing - Features licensed use of Miles Dashing and Crocker, uses some public domain characters but there's no Doctor, TARDIS, etc.
2. Being an extract from "The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune" by Paul Magrs - Features Iris but no other DW characters or concepts.
3. Moon Eyes by Stuart Douglas, featured in "Storyteller – A Found Book". Features the Manleigh Halt Irregulars, who originate in an Iris short story. It's important to note that while Storyteller is a charity anthology, it is not a Who charity anthology.
4. Mother, Maiden, Crone - This almost is kind of an example of this, as we currently cover it as valid but with a long paragraph explaining why it should be okay. Something I hate is when an article has as much or more content explaining our rules than the actual material of the story... :/

On top of that, these are stories that I'm less certain about, but might be an example under a slanted reading of this:

1. It's Raining Gin from The Curse of Fanfic! - This one's a little more contentious than the rest, and not only because it's from a book titled The Curse of Fanfic! It features Iris crossing over with the BBC TV series The Sooty Show. Now, the Sooty elements are not licensed as far as I can tell... But that's not against our rules technically? For instance, Spock cameos in a lot of DW stories without being licensed. Rule 2 only applies to DWU concepts. HOWEVER, the story does name drop Metebelis IV from The Edge of Time. This alone might be disqualifying, but it's complicated. If a non-Charity Iris story did something like this, I'd think we'd just look the other way. Additionally, T:VS specifically states in the fine text of Rule 2 that "a one-line namedrop is not legally a form of copyright infringement." But some might want us to have a much higher standard for these stories.

I've also come across quite a few charity stories which qualify for this and were later republished in non-charity works. For instance, Team Up reprinted material from 2011's Voices from the Past, thus meaning they're already allowed on-site if they had a validity debate. I think the existence of "charity-only" stories being reprinted in non-charity publications indicates that this is a more complex situation than Paul Margs giving himself a non-commercial license to use his own characters.

If you can think of any more examples or have any reason we shouldn't call these valid, please tell me. OS25🤙☎️ 21:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Not much to say other than I support this minor change being implemented. It makes sense to codify a unwritten rule that we've followed while extending it to cover four more stories; I do also feel It's Raining Gin should be covered. Although it does mention Metebelis Four (IIRC it doesn't even use Roman numerals) it isn't really a reference to The Edge of Time but more of a "if there is a Metebelis Three, is there a Four?". I do feel our policy about letting technically-unlicensed-references-slide should cover charity works, given we apply it universally to everything else. The reference was so brief you could change the name of the planet and literally nothing else would change — when discussing the story online I've even forgotten about the reference and cited this story as one of those "licensed charity stories the Wiki doesn't cover".

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:43, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I support validity of the stories mentioned here, and agree with the proposed change. Pluto2☎ 19:52, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I think there ought to be a way to cover charity stories written with a license in a way that is willing to accept that they are written under different circumstances than commercial stories. All of that said, I'm in support of validating those first four stories. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 20:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Yep, I support this proposal to enact our policy consistently. Definitely for those first 3 short stories, and I personally see no issue with the last either. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 20:22, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I think the stories mentioned should be valid, and treated the same way as any other story. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 20:27, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I fully support validity (I think their are a few you might have missed however I might be wrong as I only own three charity anthologies and I don’t think any of them are fully licensed, however we do need to talk about partial licensing and how we treat them at some point)Anastasia Cousins ☎ 20:48, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I also fully support validity. It seems like it allows our rules to be applied more consistently, and that's a good thing. Time God Eon ☎ 02:12, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Wait a second, this is obvious how it applies to short stories, but how does it apply to other mediums? If we have a charity audio where the VAs weren't paid, the license holders were involved and waived their rights, and then, let's just make up a hypothetical here, because the VAs weren't paid it was impossible for the audio to ever be resold or rebroadcast in any form? The production company literally would not own the right to copy it. Hypothetically, about an audio, of course. Of course. Is this now valid? (Do CiN and RND pay actors? Do they pay licensors? The hypothetical - hypothetical - audio seems to be in a slightly different status than these two situations, at least recently.) Najawin ☎ 06:00, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

If you're talking about what I infer you're talking about, it may interest you to know that as of latest reports that seems to have been a misconception, and it would just be prohibitively expensive to repeat, not literally impossible.

But I'm also not worried about that hypothetical, honestly. "Is there a legal pathway to it ever being rereleased" has never been a condition of validity. For example, the apparent reacquisition of exclusive rights to the Sontarans by the BBC means that Wilderness Years spin-offs involving them have essentially nil chances of ever getting a second release, but that's never been an objection to The Faction Paradox Protocols. Besides, for different reasons, there is something of a large sample of valid stories which were broadcast once on television and which we are fairly sure will never, ever, ever be aired again.

Rule 3 requires one official release; not the possibility of arbitrary further rereleases. If your hypothetical audio was once publicly, professionally broadcast with the license-holders' assent, then that should be good enough. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:09, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Well I'd love for us to discuss that in a thread dedicated to it, rather than have it grandfathered in with a rule change that doesn't quite seem to be thought out as to how it applies to it. (I do plan on making one, just after R4bp.)

There's a distinction between "we agreed to not rerelease this as a condition of making it in the first place" and "we had the ability to do so and then lost that ability later down the line as circumstances changed".

Look, I'll be honest, I don't even know what "commercial license" means in this context, it seems to have been placed there by Czech to stop a fan production that had an agreement not to make money but were actually licensed. Is this a real term of art? I can't find it as a general term, I can find "commercial X license" of various types. But not the specific term "commercial license". Seems kinda important for how we have these discussions, no? Najawin ☎ 18:45, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I still contend that it is of absolute importance that our rules say it might be a commercial license, not that it must be a commercial release. Indeed, we cover a lot of charity stories and I'd wager a good number of said material was only approved for one release, especially when crossovers were involved. We'll probably never see a new batch of Assimilation², so why does it matter? I'd say the logic here is quite well thought-out, really. OS25🤙☎️ 19:17, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

But this just doesn't answer my criticism, that the term itself isn't obviously clearly defined, and was put there in a reaction to a fear that we'd have to cover a fan work. (Also, given that many of these charity stories we cover have been rereleased in some form or fashion, I'm not sure I buy that. Not all, but, for instance, Time Crash, just off the top of my head. So especially the more modern stuff seems to be under a different agreement than what we're describing in my - hypothetical.) Najawin ☎ 19:32, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

By my understanding, "commercial license" is not a specific term of art but is just being used as a "not-x" to the very-much-real notion of a "non-commercial license" (of which the "creative license" granted to the Doctor Who Online Adventures is an example), i.e. a license to use intellectual property that is limited to strictly non-profit-driven aims. It does not seem unreasonable to round off "a license that is not non-commercial" to "a commercial license", without necessarily implying that "commercial license" is a recognised, specific category in the abstract.

But Rule 2, it is important to remember, normally applies to the preexisting DWU elements used in the source under consideration; not to the subsequent licensing of the contents of the source itself. That is, provided the blanket ban on charity releases were lfited, the question would not be whether the contents of Dimensions in Time itself are under a commercial or non-commercial license; but rather, whether its makers were in possession of a commercial license to the DWU elements included. Given that it was produced and broadcast by the BBC, who own the commercial license to the Doctor and the various companions used, this standard would be fulfilled, no matter the terms under which the footage itself was created.

Mark that I do not say all this against the idea of a specific thread on DiT down the line. No matter what the present thread decides about charity releases with commercial licenses to DWU concepts, there will remain a factual question of what DiT's situation is, exactly, in that respect. For one thing, it remains an open question whether all the non-BBC-owner monsters were technically covered by commercial licenses actively held by the BBC at the time. We could talk of a Legacies-precedent situation, maybe? They're pretty much just cameos… But if not, I suppose we have a problem: it'd be our first cold, hard case of a story that's commercially licensed to use the Doctor, TARDIS & Co., but not e.g. the Sontarans. There has been much speculation about Lethbridge-Stewarts and the Great Intelligence in NuWho, but nothing solid, so we don't actually have set policy on this… though I think it's fair to say we would not suddenly declare The Snowmen uncoverable fanfic even if we did get confirmation that the Intelligence's use was unauthorised. But it does all need to be formally discussed. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:42, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know this was being discussed. I have created a page for Faking It from Bafflement & Devotion: Iris at the Edges as it was a) originally published outside of a charity work and b) does not feature any unlicensed DWU material - Iris doesn't even appear. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 20:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Part of the issue here is that it's very easy to understand what it means to use a particular IP for a work for a commercial or noncommercial purpose, but it's more complicated when we get to performances of actors (and the other rights that go along with performing in a production, such as the right to use their likeness in promotion, etc etc). R2 is technically worded broadly enough that it applies to those as well. This bit is where I'm having real hesitations with OS25's proposal. We all know that there's a tension in how we cover charity works. But OS25's proposal doesn't avoid it, it has just the same problems. And unless we deal with this tension it has the same issues. imo, at least. Najawin ☎ 21:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I understand the qualm. But ‘technically’ is doing a lot of load-bearing work in “R2 is technically worded broadly enough that it applies to those as well”; I think precedent and indeed other parts of T:VS clarify that this is not the spirit of the rule, even if reading the sentence ". It is noted at Tardis:Valid sources#Rule 2 that…

…the rule is also only meant to apply to DWU concepts — if it should hypothetically turn out that Assimilation² did not actually have the license to use the Borg, we would still cover it as valid, because it was licensed to use the Doctor, the 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 a long time ago. 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. Najawin ☎ 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.) 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 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. Najawin ☎ 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. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I mean, given it was you who 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? Najawin ☎ 17:27, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I meant what I wrote. I did intend to clarify Rule 2 as applying exclusively to "DWU concepts", 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, 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. 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. Najawin ☎ 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-{{invalid}} rather than deleted as outright fanfic, one could argue that this aspect of Czech's closing post had never really been implemented anyway.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion

A lot of space in this thread was taken up by the controversy about Dimensions in Time. However, it was really always somewhat outside of its scope. It was covered-as-{{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. 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, The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune, Moon Eyes and 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 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! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 16:43, 19 August 2023 (UTC)