Forum:Charity Stories that are TECHNICALLY licensed...

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 . 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)

Licensed Charity Stories discussion
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