Whose Who?

Punctuation is a matter of courtesy to ones reader. I believe that Sir Ernest Gowers wrote words to that effect in his influential "Plain Words". He was a powerful advocate for brevity and precision in the use of English, particularly in the case of factual writing.

To my astonishment, I was able to find a biography of Sir Ernest Gowers on Wikipedia. I recommend it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Gowers

I was so impressed, I made a small donation to Wikipedia and discovered two wonderful things, to wit: donations to Wikipedia are classed as charitable and are tax-deductible; and if one makes a donation, one no longer sees fund-raising banners when revisiting the site.

That is the first time in my seventy years that I have had a good experience as a result of tracking cookies!

As far as I recall, it was Sir Ernest who said that one does not need the possessive apostophe in ones.

Now to "Whose Who?" which should not be confused with "Who Is Who?" (Or Who's Who?)

Much depends whether one is talking about the science fictional Dr. Who --which I will-- or Dr. Seuss's Whos of Whoville.

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/whos-vs-whos-vs-whose-grammar-rules

And for an interesting bit of grammatical esoterica, if the question could be, "Who is she?" the word would be "Who is who?" If it is "Who is him?" it could be "Who is whom?".

Source: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/192794/whos-who-or-whos-whom

For me, I lost interest when Dr. Who ceased to be a Gandalfian figure, but His Time-Lordliness is of enduring relevance when it comes to copyright.

Legal blogger, IP lawyer and of special counsel Nils Versemann of the lawfirm Macpherson Kelley discusses the legal impediments towards restoring the lost (in space and time) episodes of the Dr. Who episodes to posterity,

https://mk.com.au/copyright-concerns-about-private-doctor-who-collection/

Possibly, I had too much fun with that last sentence for a good student of Sir Ernest!

In short, the BBC failed to preserve certain episodes of the series. Ironically, some of those reasons were copyright-related. Now, the missing episodes are of great value, and it turns out that a few episodes are not altogether lost, but in the hands of private collectors.

The rub is that those private collectors might be barred by copyright laws from sharing what they might have scavenged from BBC dustbins or recorded at home from the TV (legally or otherwise) for private enjoyment.

  "This means that when the Doctor Who episodes were copied from the TV broadcast in the 1960s, they would have infringed copyright in that broadcast and the underlying cinematograph film.

There is an exception under section 111 of the Australian Copyright Act 1968. This includes making a recording of the broadcast for private and domestic use to watch at a more convenient time...[ ] However, that exception is taken to have never applied if a further copy is made..."

For the sake of posterity, and the Dr. Who canon, Nils Versemann suggests a pragmatic solution. 

"... the BBC should consider an amnesty to private collectors who historically made copies for their own personal use. The BBC’s objective is to receive these precious copies, rather than deal with somebody who is pirating them for profit..."

Or in this case, perhaps not "pirating them for profit" but saving them secretly.

Whose Dr. Who episode is it? And, does technical ownership matter. It would be an almost literal pyrrhic victory if the BBC defended its ancient copyright and lost the missing plot.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry