Lol, except the trademarks aren't registered in New Zealand, so Hugo Award merchandise is totally legal there. Hell, I could make buttons saying "WSFS SUCKS" and they would be legal. Under U.S. law they would possibly be legal even with the trademarks having been registered, but that's another kettle of fish and I have no idea about NZ trademark law.
It's nice to hear that the WSFS apparently has some people who realize how badly they've mishandled this, but at this point I have to admit I don't really care. I've been part of organizations and I've kept my damn mouth shut as an individual when I've wanted to say things going beyond the organization's official position, because that's the breaks of having a role in organizations like this. These so-called SMOFs are a bunch of assholes stuck in 1982, and to the extent that there are people in the organization who don't agree with that, it's too bad for them that their colleagues have made them look like jerks and they couldn't bestir themselves to make the wankers disavow themselves speaking officially until nearly a week later. There's a lot of goodwill that's been burned through by this whole debacle, and I say this as someone who has been a Worldcon supporting member and attendee since 2009. At this point I'm going to see my AO3 Hugo in DC, and then I'm done.
Finally, reading the original news post doesn't give the strong impression that the alleged pins are the actual meat of their concern because it's so vague. And as I and many other people have said, if these alleged pins were the actual real concern, sending the OTW a passive aggressive note to post on AO3 is a very suspicious way to go about serving C&D letters. I'm sure the pins make a convenient fig leaf, to the extent that they exist, but it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the real concern is all of us claiming the place in science fiction that we demonstrably already have. Too bad for them that they have no mechanism to revoke the Hugo Award which the WSFS membership (including me!) voted us.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-23 07:25 (UTC)It's nice to hear that the WSFS apparently has some people who realize how badly they've mishandled this, but at this point I have to admit I don't really care. I've been part of organizations and I've kept my damn mouth shut as an individual when I've wanted to say things going beyond the organization's official position, because that's the breaks of having a role in organizations like this. These so-called SMOFs are a bunch of assholes stuck in 1982, and to the extent that there are people in the organization who don't agree with that, it's too bad for them that their colleagues have made them look like jerks and they couldn't bestir themselves to make the wankers disavow themselves speaking officially until nearly a week later. There's a lot of goodwill that's been burned through by this whole debacle, and I say this as someone who has been a Worldcon supporting member and attendee since 2009. At this point I'm going to see my AO3 Hugo in DC, and then I'm done.
Finally, reading the original news post doesn't give the strong impression that the alleged pins are the actual meat of their concern because it's so vague. And as I and many other people have said, if these alleged pins were the actual real concern, sending the OTW a passive aggressive note to post on AO3 is a very suspicious way to go about serving C&D letters. I'm sure the pins make a convenient fig leaf, to the extent that they exist, but it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the real concern is all of us claiming the place in science fiction that we demonstrably already have. Too bad for them that they have no mechanism to revoke the Hugo Award which the WSFS membership (including me!) voted us.