Forum:BBC writer's comics 3.0

Index → The Panopticon → BBC writer's comics 3.0

Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

OP

Important prior reading: Forum:Web comics and Thread:272468 at User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates 2.

What we're talking about.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually read these, mainly because, as far as I can tell, they're kind of lost media, and I know that's kind of against the rules, but wrongly invalid lost media needs to be validated somehow.

I'm putting this in the Panopticon because it's going against prior precedent; the last thread ruled this as policy, and a kind of weird extension of T:NO FANFIC apparently based off of a misapprehension, but if this should have been in Forum:Inclusion debates, please do complain.

Arguably this is against T:BOUND, but I'm assuming Scrooge's comment about being allowed to start a new thread about an old topic over at Forum:The New Forums still applies.

So, this is a very strange case. There are a bunch of decent arguments that hold up very well for it over at the second thread I linked, but SOTO's closing post disqualified these comics (as did CzechOut's before it) due to the notion that "If we let these in, then we'd have to let every comic made with the comic maker in" (this was never actually said, this is my summary of the general argument).

Strangely enough, we still cover them, and have always covered them, albeit as invalid.

I do not think this argument holds up, because these were, from what I can make out, properly published on the official Doctor Who website, while the fan-made comic maker ones were not.

There was also what seems to me to be an argument that these fail rule 4 due to being made by Doctor Who writers, and then promoted on the official website, which I don't think makes an awful lot of sense, but there you are. I may be missing the general gist of the thing, but here you are: I think that these stories were intended by their original authors to be part of the DWU, and I don't think that covering these as valid necessitates the validation of every random fan-made comic story made using the comic maker. Najawin summed it up thusly:

Let's consider our four little rules shall we?

Rule 1

Both these and some (probably most) fan made stories pass.

Rule 2

Both these and all fan made stories pass.

Rule 3

Only these pass. Perhaps, if Connor's memory is correct, it could be argued that the "comic of the week" might also count, but that's very, very tenuous. Especially if the comic of the week wasn't archived, but was just rotated each week, we might have precedent for ruling them all invalid, see near the bottom of Burning with Optimism's Flames (anthology)? (tbh I really don't understand the Wallowing in Pessimism's Mire ruling, I understand the situation, but not the ruling and how to apply it to "unpublished" work)

Rule 4

Arguable that neither grouping of these pass, but if either one passes, the writers comics do and the "comic of week" does not, as it wasn't commissioned by the copyright holder and they're obviously just promoting it to get people engaged.

Okay, so, four little rules, arguable that neither group passes all four, but it's clear that fan comics don't pass all four. Is there anything else relevant? Yes. Yes there is. Note that T:VALID does not begin and end with the four little rules. They are a shortcut, a rule of thumb. There is something else that makes all fan comics invalid.

And what is that?

T:NO FANFIC

Technically it says that fanfic is an example of violating rule 2, which isn't always the case, as we see in this instance. But we are explicitly told "Fan fiction isn't allowed." And given this, no matter the outcome of the four little rules, the fan comics cannot be ruled as valid.

User:Najawin, Thread:272468

Of course, the four little rules are now the be-all and end-all of validity, and so the last point doesn't hold up at all, not least because if we were to disqualify these on the basis of being fan fiction, then we'd have to disqualify every story since 1989, and a good deal from before them. Our current definition of T:NO FANFIC only applies to stories that break rule 2, as far as I understand it.

I'm not sure I fully understand the rule 4 position, because fan fiction passes rule 4. A random story on fanfiction.net totally passes rule 4, because the person writing it intends for it to be set in the Doctor Who universe. That's what fanfiction's all about; writing stories set in the Doctor Who universe without the licence to any of the characters. Frankly, I find the argument that it doesn't pass rule 4 due to being fan fiction slightly baffling.

And I think that's just about everything, although I'm probably missing lots. Thanks for reading, Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 15:57, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I'd like to note that I now consider it substantially less clear whether these pass R2. Mainly because R2 is a mess as to the "commercially licensed" bit, which is what's gonna ding us here. I'm not sure anything on comics maker has that, and I'm not entirely sure what it even means, generally speaking. (I understand examples, not the underlying principle, etc etc) Najawin ☎ 17:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

As far as I understand it, they were released on the official website, which ought to make this officially (commercially) licenced. And as Scrooge pointed out in the previous thread, they're being used for the promotion of the comic creator, a commercial product, so that seems more or less like a commercial licence. (Hang on, I think there might be a flaw in that rule; the BBC isn't a commercial entity.) Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 17:44, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Presumably the end users also agreed to a license, either explicitly or one tacitly embedded on the comic maker. It is... less than clear that the BBC would have been okay with you making money from these things. Najawin ☎ 18:03, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I mean, yes, the user-created ones clearly didn't have the commercial licence. But the writers' comics were published by the BBC on the official BBC website, and Forum:Charity Stories that are TECHNICALLY licensed... precedent applies; the BBC can't publish something which they have the IP for without it being commercially licenced. Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 18:14, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I knew that thread was gonna bite us in the ass. Yeah, still not sure, is my position. I'm not a hard no. Just saying that my position is more ambiguous than it was previously in the earlier discussion. Najawin ☎ 19:41, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I lean towards validity however not strongly. I feel it passes the rules but r2 I feel is inherently flawed as Aquanafranudy has said the BBC is not a commercial entity. And what exactly do we mean by commercial? Released for money would discount every Doctor who TV story as you get them all under a TV license which to watch TV you have to have so all TV Who is noncommercial so should we only cover the Books, the Comics and the audios? I think Rule 2 needs an update sooner rather than latter. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 18:06, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Commercially licensed, not commercially released. The BBC is commercially licensed to publish Doctor Who comics on the Internet, on account of [checks notes] owning Doctor Who. Whether they exercise that right with a particular release is a different question but not what Rule 2 is about. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:03, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I see no issue with validating these. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 12:13, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

So Scrooge, your analysis of this is that they have the IP that they've the commercial license to, they create a product that (theoretically) strips away this commercial license from the end user, ensuring that they can create and share their products noncommercially but not commercially, and then after they have some end users create specific comics using this tool their decision to share these products in a noncommercial manner once again has the commercial license. Yes? It's not unreasonable, but given that this last step is literally what the noncommercial license is about, it seems... a tad bit tenuous. Najawin ☎ 18:21, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so! My argument is that (similar to the "charity stories that are technically licensed" business) things on the BBC website have a commercial Who license by definition. The licensing agreement for the end user of the comic-creator simply means that using the service does not independently grant you a license to commercially the results, but it does not and cannot impinge on the results of publishing the end product on a medium which is itself commercially licensed to release fiction that features BBC copyrights, e.g. an outlet of the BBC itself. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

This is precisely what I said. You just think the last step, the decision to share these products in a noncommercial manner, does so in a specific way that it necessarily has a commercial license. Najawin ☎ 19:31, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

the results of publishing the end product on a medium which is itself commercially licensed to release fiction that features BBC copyrights, e.g. an outlet of the BBC itself.

So you're saying that all of the fan-made comics published on the thing pass our rules, then? Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 19:35, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I would be inclined to think that they all warrant coverage. I would say there's questions to be asked about Rule 4 for the non-"spotlighted" ones, so I think only the Writers' Comics have surefire validity — one is reminded of how we treated the Lockdown Fan Gallery back when we still thought the website itself was similarly an inherently licensed BBC outlet! — but coverage, yeah, I think so. I really do think so.

(I would be inclined, if that much is agreed upon, to validate the Writers' Comics now and then do a "Part Two" thread to hash out the validity status of the rest.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:40, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it tells us anything that we shouldn't have been assuming all along, but it has come to my attention that Peter Anghelides recently wrote at length about the making of The Baktek Illusion. Most notable is the fact that this was anything but the B"BC Writers" creating the comics at home using the app, and then the BBC agreeing to highlight them: the scripts were formally commissioned, and in most cases the visualisation was handled internally by the BBC after the scripts were submitted, with Anghelides being unusual in attempting to visualise his script himself.

The other was a six-page comic for BBC online, who commissioned it as one of ten stories to demonstrate the capabilities of one of their online interactive elements. (…) Eight of the commissioned authors were TV writers and script editors: Lindsey Alford, Stephen Greenhorn, Keith Temple, Joseph Lidster, Brian Minchin, Paul Cornell and Helen Raynor. Two other professional authors, Jacqueline Rayner and I, were asked to write stories too because of our previous work on Doctor Who tie-ins. I had written novels, short stories and audio scripts, and was known to the online team as one of the authors of the Doctor Who Fear Forecast web series. So I wrote the final comic strip of the ten. BBC online suggested that we each submit a script and they would create the online version. I thought the Comic Maker tool was impressive and easy to use, and I wanted to create my own comic with it for them to copy across to the public site.Peter Anghelides

I think this really seals the deal that these comics were formal BBC productions. By no reasonable definition were they fan fiction, let alone the specific, licensing-related definition of fan fiction we use. The old rulings were completely in error about the facts of the case there.

They might have been prohibited from validity from the old rule against promotional stories, but with that policy long overturned, I really think these are a shoe-in for validity. The BBC formally commissioned Doctor Who scripts from professional writers, and had them visualised by other people using the Game Maker — they really are no different from e.g. A Stitch in Time. I would, as I say, support closing this thread in favour of validity for the ten Writers' Comics, while leaving the door open for a distinct thread to discuss the matter of the fan-submitted comics-of-the-week. (I think I'm too involved with this discussion to close it myself, though.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:31, 1 February 2024 (UTC)