Nebulas Inclusive – Official
February 27th, 2008 by Editors
As we reported last week, some SFWA members were unhappy with the presence of the Star Trek: New Voyages story, “World Enough and Time,” on the Best Script shortlist. The substance of the complaints was that the eligibility rule for the category states that entries must be:
a professionally produced audio, radio, television, motion picture, multimedia, or theatrical script
The complainers (of whom DeCandido is apparently only one of many) held that “World Enough and Time” is ineligible because it was produced by “fans”.
SFWA President Michael Capobianco has now issued a public statement on the controversy, making it clear that the script is eligible. He says:
One factor that was considered important was that Marc Zicree and Michael Reaves were paid for their script of “Worlds Enough and Time.”
And perhaps more importantly:
It was noted that the spirit of the Nebulas is one of inclusiveness, and that none of the other Nebula categories include the “professionally produced” criterion.
From the look of the first few comments on Capobianco’s post, a bunch of people are suddenly happy with the SFWA management.
In addition, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, while the Nebulas may use the word “professionally produced,” they don’t define it. As you know, WSFS gave up on defining “professional” a few years ago and have said, “Voters decide whether something is professional or not.” Therefore, a decent case can be made by the Nebula administrators that the members of SFWA, knowing the rules, decided that WE&T is “professionally produced” by the act of nominating it.
By now I hope we all know that award administrators are highly reluctant to disqualify a work on anything but the narrowest of technical grounds, and only when those technical grounds are clearly defined.
In short, SFWA members have nobody to blame but themselves.
I may be missing something, but this seems to open up the Nebulas to any piece of fan-fiction that the trademark holder has not specifically gone after. (Or, perhaps, only that subset of fan-fiction where writers get a slice of advertising revenue, and thus are “paid.”) Being paid by someone who doesn’t own the thing in question is an awfully shaky plank — can George Parker win architecture awards for the Brooklyn Bridge?
The end of that statement, roughly translated, is “well, Paramount hasn’t told us that there’s anything wrong with it,” which could either mean that the SFWA Executive Board has had a change of heart after the Scribd affair…or that they judge each crisis randomly as they come up.
Andrew:
The problem really is “who decides what is professional or not?” It’s generally safer to leave the decision in the hands of the membership as a whole than it would be to have the award administration committee try to decide what is and is not professionally produced, don’t you think?
The final paragraph contains: “It is clear from our investigation that Paramount has permitted WEaT to exist and encouraged its production and that of subsequent productions by the same company” (my emphasis). I think that’s rather stronger than, “well, Paramount hasn’t told us that there’s anything wrong with it”.
It is ironic that the Hugo Awards rules (made by WSFS) pretty much only define “semiprofessional” now.
Mike: Quite so, and of course the definition of semiprozine has always been a bit of a kludge. If we deleted it entirely, it would be up to the voters to decide what’s a fanzine and what’s not.
When it comes to using someone else’s intellectual property, either you have a signed licensing agreement, or you don’t. Anything else is at the whim of lawyers and corporate decision-makers.
I understand that the “New Voyages” project is popular with Trek fandom, and that Paramount doesn’t want to annoy its fans. It’s also clear that the people behind “New Voyages” are keeping their project non-commercial.
But, unless “New Voyages” has some sort of agreement with Paramount that I’m not aware of, all there are is an infringing party that has not yet received a cease-and-desist letter. They may never recieve one, or a Viacom lawyer could be preparing a lawsuit right now.
(And I greatly doubt that Paramount as a corporate entity has “encouraged” New Voyages, though I can easily believe that individuals who are currently employed by Paramount have done so.)
My main point is that its hypocritical for the same SFWA administration to run off half-cocked when they’re protecting their own members’ IP, but blithely shrug off infringements of works owned by other people. It projects the image that SFWA is unprincipled, and just does what seems like a good idea at the moment.
[...] over “World Enough and Time”, and has posted a lengthy comment. There’s also continuing discussion at our earlier [...]
At present I am taking SFWA at their word when they say that they have evidence that Paramount “encouraged” the production of ST:NV. I also note that copyright law is a complex beast, and I’d welcome an opinion from Mr. Petit on the potential difference between Paramount officially encouraging something and members of staff at Paramount encouraging something. I suspect that their having done so may have jeopardized any case that Paramount might bring.
In addition there’s nothing I can see in the Nebula rules that says that a work cannot be eligible if it is the subject of a copyright dispute, or indeed any other form of legal dispute. It would, of course, be rather foolish of SFWA members, to nominate a work that was in breach of someone else’s copyright, but once they have done so I don’t see how SFWA’s management can then bar that work.
In this particular case I think blame, if it is due, should lie mainly with the members who nominated that work. SFWA’s management would only be at fault if its claim to have evidence that Paramount encouraged the series to be made turns out to be false. (Though I do think that any such investigation and ruling should have been made after the Preliminary Ballot was issued so that members had due warning when making their final nominations. I have no idea if the issue was discussed in private SFWA forums between the two ballots.)
In addition to the statement issued publicly by Capobianco, he also posted a statement from Zicree explaining in detail how the episode was professionally produced, essentially building on what had been done previously with the New Voyages productions. From having talked with Marc several times before it was filmed, he certainly did not approach it as a fan production. I’m checking to see if Marc’s statement can be posted publically (I don’t see why it couldn’t, but the last time someone posted something from a SFWA message board without permission there was a bit of shouting and such).
I don’t know what specifics have gone on with Paramount and their lawyers, but they are working towards some sort of official release. With it having been screened at WorldCon last year and gotten a lot of press and attention, I would not be surprised to see it turn up on the Hugo ballot.
As for Neil Gaiman being oblivious to the SFWA issue, he’s not actually a SFWA member, and his post was done AFTER the SFWA decision had been announced and in response to the email that Marc Zicree sent out.
I’ve gotten permission to make available Marc’s statement with information about “World Enough and Time”. It is available at this location on the SFTV Blog:
http://sftvblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/statement-from-marc-scott-zicree.html