OT: Paramount/CBS Suing Trek fan production

[Robot_Quentin]

I'm posting this only because DS has had so much fan fiction over the years, but I'd never heard of one getting a suit filed against them. This Trek one (Axanar) getting sued is a fan made movie that had a Kickstarter campaign budget of close to a million bucks!  I'm guessing maybe a budget of this size is why they received so much attention with a new Trek film coming out this summer, and a new official series promised for next year.

I know there have been a ton of Trek fan movies/series since the early 2000's with sets built from the original blueprints of the 60's Enterprise no less! Paramount has known of these many productions, and allowed them to flourish as long as they don't turn a profit... Most of the big ones, Star Trek Continues, Phase II and ST: Renegades, all have a totally professional look to them, mostly with their on par special effects. Many actors from the numerous incarnations of Trek are involved in some of these as well, giving some a bit of street cred from fans.  It is similar in effect I guess of all the DS audio dramas from Big Finish, but with an "official" stamp on it.

http://www.avclub.com/article/paramount-lawyers-call-star-trek-fan-films-bluff-n-233718

[Gothick]

Good grief.  I hope those fans can afford to hire a good lawyer.

G.

[KMR]

I am so totally not surprised about the lawsuit.  The defendants were all but asking for it outright, especially by announcing their intention to use this film to build a movie studio.  Sheesh!  The Axanar production is blatant copyright infringement, and is galaxies removed from being fair use.

[Robot_Quentin]

In digging into these guys a bit more, I see that they were getting/paying salaries too! That's just crazy for fandom projects.

It's one thing to payout for gas money or have food catered for the crew, or give away shirts and props... But I think the fact that there were so many other "big" Trek fan camps that just figured they'd be ignored by Paramount like the rest of the fan shows, no matter what they did. Plans for building the "Axanar Studios" for more so-called non-profit endeavors really makes this look even worse.

Maybe they'll dial everything back and get back to doing a real non-profit movie. It has some potential considering the little 15min prelude they did about a year ago... And it was being presented like a History Channel style documentary with battle accounts and strategies, including "war footage" etc. Which is probably easier to pull off from a writing standpoint.

[Robot_Quentin]

Star Trek Lawsuit Now Explores What Vulcans and Vampires Have in Common (Ears!) 

http://time.com/4275972/star-trek-lawsuit-vulcans-vampires/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter

[Robot_Quentin]

JJ Abrams says that the director of the new upcoming Star Trek Beyond movie Justin Lin got the lawsuit against the fan film dropped...  He'd tweeted a while back about how he thought that Trek belonged to "all of us", and didn't understand why thy were suing.

I suspect that the studio did not want a load of bad press to hinder the release of the new movie coming out in July.  Maybe these fans will dial back the blatant copyright infringing, with salaries and studios being built.

http://www.geek.com/news/j-j-abrams-says-justin-lin-got-the-star-trek-fan-film-lawsuit-killed-1655990/

[Robot_Quentin]

Paramount/CBS lays down the law for fan productions they will now allow without fear of lawsuits.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/6/30/12065960/star-trek-fan-films-guidelines-cbs

http://www.startrek.com/fan-films?ecid=PCID-2617611&pa=affcj

The crux of the biscuit being a 15 minute time-limit, and no more than 2 chapters for one storyline...

Also no actors formerly associated with Star Trek are allowed to appear in such fan films.

This has essentially squashed most of the really good fan camps. Apparently with all the crowd-funding being done for props or DVDs of the fan films, they felt that was merely to circumvent any said infringement.

[Robot_Quentin]

Star Trek Axanar fan film does not qualify for 'fair use', US court rules.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/star-trek-axanar-fan-film-not-fair-use-copyright

Judge ruled against this, so now they want a jury-trial.

Strange that Fox sponsors film festivals for Star Wars fan projects, but CBS/Paramount no likey!!

[Gerard]

I just don't get this.  Fan produced stuff keeps franchises alive.  Fans are paying homage to the shows they love.  You'd think the original producers/owners/whatevers would crave this because it brings in free publicity and attention to keep the ball rolling for when they want to make more money.  It's like Jim, um, forget it, who sends out his lawyers whenever anyone puts anything on youtube or whatever.  Someone brings attention to their product, and they start filing and threatening.  Okay, so spend money to promote your product.  Nope, they don't want to do that, but they want to make money.  Someone please explain it to me.

Gerard

[Robot_Quentin]

Apparently both parties did not want to risk an expensive litigation (fans) or bad publicity (CBS), and an agreement has been made to (sort-of) conform this fan film to the requirements laid out by CBS for fan productions. The article points out that even the guidelines are not necessarily legally binding.

http://newatlas.com/star-trek-axanar-copyright-settlement/47505/