Hugo Awards alleged to have excluded authors who criticised China

[Ag3ma]

Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors

Concerns raised about interference or censorship after documents showed writers were barred despite receiving enough nominations

www.theguardian.com

The World Science Fiction Society decided to get all international with the growing popularity of Chinese SF and hold their annual bash, WorldCon in China. Worldcon is where the Hugos are awarded. However, it appears numerous works that normally would have met the nomination criteria were excluded, notably from some writers who had been publicly critical of China.

These writers were declared ineligible... but unusually, with no explanation. (You can d/l the scripts and see other ineligible candidates were excluded with a reason provided, e.g. conflict of interest, publication date issues). Dave McCarty, the Hugos organiser, has thus far declined to give a reason for ineligibility. McCarty has written on Facebook:

“Nobody has ordered me to do anything … There was no communication between the Hugo administration team and the Chinese government in any official manner.”

So, what about the Hugo administration communicating with the Chinese government unofficially? Or did they decide to self-censor otherwise the Chinese government might cancel Worldcon? Or is this all completely innocent, it's just people paranoid because it's China? And if it is innocent, why not reveal the reasons for ineligibility?

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

That quote reads almost like a basic template for "technically, legally true public statement" a lawyer provided them to work off, but they just repeated it verbatim due to complacency or contempt anyway.

 

[BrawlMan]

Once again, an entertainment organization with no back bone is sucking China's dick again. Have you all learned nothing from Hollywood? They'll just ditch your ass like they did Hollywood, so you're wasting everyone's time and only showing your true colors.

 

[Ag3ma]

That quote reads almost like a basic template for "technically, legally true public statement" a lawyer provided them to work off, but they just repeated it verbatim due to complacency or contempt anyway.

Yes. Talking about that (and getting my own thread off-topic almost instantly but I doubt enough people care about this topic so no real loss), I came across some articles about the music business and why production and playing of new music is in rapid decline. Anyway, this got me to an article about Spotify.

Turns out Spotify keep cranking out weird garbage in playlists. Low quality stuff with generic names by generically-named composers, sometimes the same song (with maybe some very minor alterations) by composers with different generic names. As a result, some of these songs have millions and millions of plays, far more than songs by well respected artists. It is suspected these are either being written by AI, or by low rent music producers cranking out some stuff where they agree to accept tiny margins. Apple Music apparently has something similar going on. Spotify can then pad out their playlists with them and make much more money due to the lower cut than they would to a "proper" artist. Spotify put out a reply when questioned about this:

“We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists. Categorically untrue, full stop,” a Spotify spokesperson wrote in an email. “We pay royalties — sound and publishing — for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rightsholders and we pay them — we don’t pay ourselves.”

Note that what they are not denying is that they are filling their playlists with junk. One must assume they are not denying that because they are filling their playlists with junk. And just in case you haven't read about it, see "enshittification".

 

[Thaluikhain]

That quote reads almost like a basic template for "technically, legally true public statement" a lawyer provided them to work off, but they just repeated it verbatim due to complacency or contempt anyway.

Yep. But, why bother doing anything more, the bare minimum is going to be enough.

Once again, and enteraiment with no back bone is sucking China's dick again. Have you all learned nothing from Hollywood? They'll just ditch as your like they did Hollywood, so you're wasting everyone's time and only showing your true colors.

Eh, there could be a legitimate short term benefit, and if the company is someone else's problems for the long term, or nobody actually cares about the controversy so there's no downside even when the benefit is lost, it's only a bad move morally. Did Hollywood actually suffer from its decision to court China?

 

[BrawlMan]

Did Hollywood actually suffer from its decision to court China?

Not exactly, but everyone game them the look when they came crawling right back to chant the "good old USA" and acted like they never tried to appeal to China once. Even hardcore Hollywood defenders weren't buying it. And I forgot, when China dropped Activision's asses too, it was hilarious. China said fuck you, we'll make are own Warcraft. Though apparently it was so shit, that Chinese players rather just pirate Warcraft, then play the shitty version made by their fellow fascist government.

 

[Ag3ma]

Not exactly, but everyone game them the look when they came crawling right back to chant the "good old USA" and acted like they never tried to appeal to China once. Even hardcore Hollywood defenders weren't buying it. And I forgot, when China dropped Activision's asses too, it was hilarious. China said fuck you, we'll make are own Warcraft. Though apparently it was so shit, that Chinese players rather just pirate Warcraft, then play the shitty version made by their fellow fascist government.

So, from what I heard, China put out a law limiting how much children could play games. This caused Activision's Chinese partner to try to renegotiate how much money it got from running Activision's games to take a bigger cut so Activision pulled the plug. Activision may return to China if it finds a new partner. (Maybe it already has?)

Chinese companies have made / are making WoW equivalents, but I think more out of general competition principles rather than a central policy to get rid of WoW. I don't think any of them are at serious risk of being as successful as WoW.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Yes. Talking about that (and getting my own thread off-topic almost instantly but I doubt enough people care about this topic so no real loss), I came across some articles about the music business and why production and playing of new music is in rapid decline. Anyway, this got me to an article about Spotify.

Turns out Spotify keep cranking out weird garbage in playlists. Low quality stuff with generic names by generically-named composers, sometimes the same song (with maybe some very minor alterations) by composers with different generic names. As a result, some of these songs have millions and millions of plays, far more than songs by well respected artists. It is suspected these are either being written by AI, or by low rent music producers cranking out some stuff where they agree to accept tiny margins. Apple Music apparently has something similar going on. Spotify can then pad out their playlists with them and make much more money due to the lower cut than they would to a "proper" artist. Spotify put out a reply when questioned about this:

“We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists. Categorically untrue, full stop,” a Spotify spokesperson wrote in an email. “We pay royalties — sound and publishing — for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rightsholders and we pay them — we don’t pay ourselves.”

Note that what they are not denying is that they are filling their playlists with junk. One must assume they are not denying that because they are filling their playlists with junk. And just in case you haven't read about it, see "enshittification".

Oh Spotify. Wasn't aware of that innovative corporate scam till now, though it makes perfect sense from a pure capitalist "number go up by any means" viewpoint. The music industry has always been, in my poorly articulated opinion, on the forefront of exploitative business tactics parasitically gorging themselves in the arts/medias, so keeping an eye on what they're up to can be a glimpse into the future of what this kind of absurdly cannibalistic late-stage capitalism is trying to incrementally push us all towards. So is very interesting development to learn and be vigilant of. Spotify and co being owned by the same mainstream publishers of a lot of those artists, legally engineered as a way to pay even less royalties/profits to their employees has been a somewhat known thing for a while as well, it's nowt but scams upon scams!

 

[Ag3ma]

Oh Spotify. Wasn't aware of that innovative corporate scam till now, though it makes perfect sense from a pure capitalist "number go up by any means" viewpoint. The music industry has always been, in my poorly articulated opinion, on the forefront of exploitative business tactics parasitically gorging themselves in the arts/medias, so keeping an eye on what they're up to can be a glimpse into the future of what this kind of absurdly cannibalistic late-stage capitalism is trying to incrementally push us all towards. So is very interesting development to learn and be vigilant of. Spotify and co being owned by the same mainstream publishers of a lot of those artists, legally engineered as a way to pay even less royalties/profits to their employees has been a somewhat known thing for a while as well, it's nowt but scams upon scams!

The music industry is, I think, famously crap. By which I mean the whole tech industry arrived, and they were clueless, run by the sort of people who thought computers were just expensive typewriters. Not only were they clueless, they couldn't be arsed hiring someone to explain it all to them, hence the whole Napster debacle. Instead of taking control themselves when they could have fed the money back to themselves and support music, they tried to halt the preverbial tide, lost, ended up at the mercy of Big Tech providers. They could certainly sign vicious contracts that swindled the artists (although interestingly, the worst examples were usually indie labels), but at least they tended to care about music.

A&R has always been tricky. Only ~5% of bands ever made their publisher a profit. You can understand why rather than try to find the next big thing (which appears to have involved a lot of luck) that they turned to manufactured pop, in an attempt to remove this frustration. However, it was still unreliable, so (the articles said) they've instead decided to plump for the safe reliability of back catalogues.

And what happens when they pour billions into buying back catalogues? Answer, they have less money to invest in finding and promoting new music. So new music has been withering. Pitchfork recently got merged into GQ (I can't think of many places less suited), which surely means the de facto end of Pitchfork as a meaningful review site. The suggestion was that this was because there's less new music so less audience / market for reviews. Or maybe it was just the CEO of the parent group couldn't give a monkeys: wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Gordon_4]

Well that’s their reputation tanked forever.