Talk:Lethbridge-Stewart (series)

A note of confusion

If the Lethbridge-Stewart books did not actually have the license to use the Brigadier, why precisely are they considered valid on the Wiki? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:43, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

From Tardis:Valid sources:

"Those things which don't have the permission of all relevant copyright holders, or those which were never meant to be continuous with the established DWU, are excluded. Except in the most obvious of cases, community discussion is required to declare a story invalid. In these discussions, sufficient evidence must be provided that that the story either doesn't have permission from all relevant copyright holders, or that there are solid non-narrative reasons to believe the story does not occur in the DWU."

From Lethbridge-Stewart (series):

"They were not licensed by the BBC but by the Haisman Literary Estate, the copyright holders for the character."

Shambala108 ☎ 22:56, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

…? Wait now. I distinctly remember talk of the Lethbridge-Stewart series having very suspicious licensing (not on the Wiki, but elsewhere), which was echoed in some forum posts on Tardis at least. Hence my misreading of the line on this page, for which I thank you for correcting me, but then, where do these rumours come from?

EDIT: I also know from an unfinished discussion on Talk:Great Intelligence that we never did find out if they had proper licensing to use Moffat's Walter Simeon. Was that unfounded gossip, or what? And whatever of it in particular, was it the only licensing boogaloo all along? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:03, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

If you rely on some off wiki rumours, then, perhaps, you should not expect others to explain the source of your hesitations. If you have a specific complaint, you can launch it. If you want to contribute to existing discussion, do it. But rumours should stay what they are and have no place in validity decisions. Amorkuz ☎ 23:08, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't, per se, proposing a validity discussion. Notice that I titled this discussion "A note of confusion". I was making a note of my confusion on the matter, and while there may be something afoot I was mostly just hoping someone had a good rebuttal I had missed.

In point of fact though, the 'rumours', as I said, aren't all off-wiki. I pointed, for example, to Talk:Great Intelligence where the licensing (or lack thereof) of Walter Simeon for The Forgotten Son was questioned, without evidence ever being brought in to confirm it. And (whew, this took some digging) here's a forum post in an unrelated inclusion debate making snide allusions at Candy Jar Books' licensing woes as though they were common knowledge.

Besides which I'm not sure they're really "rumours". It's more that I recall reading about the problem, but this was in a time before I contributed much round the Wiki or ever heard the phrase "inclusion debates" so I'd made no particular note of it. Then during my period of frantically reading up on past inclusion debates to better help in new ones, a few months ago, I saw a few more allusions to it (see above) and concluded, huh, guess those ill-remembered sources from earlier were right.

And then, today, I blunder onto this page by chance, <strikethrough>read</strikethrough>misread that there's indeed a licensing problem, yet observe that it's considered valid.

Hence confusion and question-on-talk-page-asking. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:17, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

To summarise, you asked about supposedly missing licensing for the Brigadier. You were answered within minutes that their use of the Brigadier is fully licensed. Why were you not satisfied with this "good rebuttal", as you put it? I can only repeat what I said:

• if you discovered a new copyright violation by a publisher, you should open a discussion of that new violation;
• if you want to participate in an existing discussion of validity, please do it there;
• opening another discussion that duplicates an existing one goes agains T:POINT and normally causes an admin to merge the new discussion with the already existing one.

Let me be even clearer. When you accuse a whole company of being blatant and repeat copyright offenders, which is a serious accusation with potential legal consequences, and it turns out that your accusation is based on a completely and utterly wrong assumption, this might not be the best time for you to try and find some other dirt on the company trying to prove that your suspicions were correct after all. It might, perhaps, be time to say that you are sorry about being wrong and leave it at that. Amorkuz ☎ 23:55, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

Oh for Omega's sake — I never made any assertions/accusations. Sorry if I came across that way. I was asking a question. I put it right there in the title that the crux of the matter was that I was confused about something.

Let me rephrase that confusion as succinctly and synthetically as I can: "I seem to recall, and indeed some old forum posts right on Tardis confirm, that there was some copyright trouble with the “Lethbridge-Stewart” series; yet here I find this page, not mentioning any such trouble, and treating the series as valid; que pasa?"

Due to hasty misreading of this particular page my query initially took the form of being about the Brigadier specifically, as I mistakenly thought that the half-remembered copyright trouble was the selfsame I had misread into the page. I was kindly and quickly corrected, for which, thank you. But my initial confusion remains. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:59, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

To clear your confusion, I am not aware of any discussion suggesting that the whole series should be invalid due to copyright violations. Thus, the series is valid. I hope this answers your question. Amorkuz ☎ 00:13, February 2, 2019 (UTC)

The Lethbridge-Stewart Short Story Collection

As per the book itself, the page for The Lethbridge-Stewart Short Story Collection mentions that it isn't considered an official part of the LS series itself. However, it has been included in the Anthologies section of the category template, but not on the page for the series itself. I just wanted to be certain which was the accurate way to go about this because I was about to try and get a page sorted for the sequel collection, but didn't want to get anything wrong regarding categories and the series page. Would it be appropriate on the series page to mention these books in the Other Books or Anthologies section, with the footnote that whilst they're intended to fit with the series, they aren't intended to be a part of the series, similar to the style of footnote used on pages like BBV Productions where they mention that Do You Have a Licence to Save this Planet? is allowed on the wiki, but only because of it being a legal parody (but in this case for the reason I mentioned about fitting in the series, but being separate too)?

Thank you if anyone can share some advice on the situation.

ThomasRWade ☎ 22:26, October 25, 2019 (UTC)