CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

Read that in Ricardo Montalbon's voice from STII

 

Honestly, I don't understand why Kickstarter/Indiegogo et al allow people to run campaigns for projects where they clearly are not the IP/license holders. Seems like that would open them up to a huge amount of liability for enabling projects like this to stockpile cash for properties they do not own.

I mean, I once wanted to print up a one-off, just-for-me t-shirt that incorporated the Batman logo, and the t-shirt company went BANANAS about copyrights and trademarks and basically told me I'd have to get a permission letter from WB before they could even consider printing up ONE t-shirt for my own personal use.

 

I have a passing interest in this fan film, the others thus far have not really 'captured' my imagination/attention.. but Axanar did because it looked well made, almost professional.

I have checked out the progress every so often and looked forward to eventually watching it, so I was surprised to see this news today and my knee jerk reaction was 'OMG CBS/Paramount evil evil companies wtf are they doing?!' but the more I have read about Axanar the more I understand CBS' position here in trying to protect their property.

I have no idea whether the other fan productions have cause for concern but I assume they probably should be concerned and of course this could have consequences for fan films in general for all franchises.

CBS, Paramount, Disney, Sony, Fox - whoever - need to come out and tell folks what is and isn't acceptable. Clearly raising a crap ton of money will put you on their radar and simply saying its not for profit will not work. Its easy to hide profits ! Hollywood accounting?

 

A lot of this situation seems to be Alec Peters' own hubris catching up to him, and biting him squarely on the ass.

 

Listen to their podcasts, read their blog posts. That's exactly the mindset Team Axanar has. That's the problem.

 

I can tell you with Fox. They tend to cut down anything just for using the name. A lot of Alien/Predator fan creations including games, and fan films, were all cut to ribbons. There's a reason people say that a mod for a game was "foxed."

As said before, CBS has always been very good to the fans with regards to what they let fans "get away" with. Because it's all technically, by strictest legal definition, no good.

Yeah, and that alone is questionable.

Building your own studio to make your own for-profit productions off the back of fan donations is absolutely crossing the line. Without a doubt.

It's not that simple for CBS. They can't have people make an official Trek production for "free" there are so many things involving contracts and union laws and all of that, which have to be dealt with.

They really shouldn't be allowed to do it at all. That was never really the intention behind crowd funding websites.

Unfortunately true, and unlike say NV which took one slight humorous stab at the JJ stuff when it came out, the Axanar people have stayed hot on the nuVerse movies. Which is fine as far as opinions go, but not so great in the realm of building bridges.

 

Why does this seem more and more like a case of money and fan adulation goign to the heads of the people at the top of Axanar and it coming back to bite them in their collective asses?

 

You're seriously overestimating the coverage this will get and how many fans actually care.

 

Yeup.

Face it, even the ones pissing their diapers right now over not watching the new show and boycotting CBS and boycotting the new movie will be lining up to watch, then bash it online. The ones crying the loudest will be the biggest hypocrites of the bunch.

 

They're offering digital downloads of Axanar on the IndieGoGo site for "donations" to the production ($25 or more). That's...that's going to make things very hard for Axanar to argue that it's not selling the episodes.

 

They should have qualified it as "professional quality" instead of "fully professional." Simply "professional" means people are making money - the big no-no. Stupid thing to say.

Nice catch! I was specifically channeling Khan:

Axanar just better not reply, "Axanar, what's that?"

 

Of course they sued. Because Axanar is looking better than the stuff CBS / Paramount is putting out.

I really hope this case goes all the way and CBS is ruled to have insufficiently defended their copyright and it's declared public domain. Give the franchise to the fans and let them play in the sandbox. Half of the fan productions are better Trek than the Abrams stuff anyway.

 

But...but... We were assured many times that anyone who though CBS/Paramount would go after fan films like Axanar was an idiot!

 

Why would CBS have communications with AXANAR only to shut them down later? This must mean they where on 'good' terms at one stage but at some point those relations turned sour or went silent... ?

Do CBS communicate with the other productions? What are they saying to them?

Perhaps CBS had some red lines that were crossed? I can't see CBS allowing anything unofficially or officially because when it gets to the lawsuit stage they are undermining their own arguments or something... I suggest there has been no communication with CBS at all..

 

Because they were jet-setting around Europe and selling non-stop bullshit to fans while not paying those working on the project?

A bite in the ass? Axanar is going to be crucified to the full extent of the law, and not before time.

 

HahahhahahahhahaHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA.

Yeah, that's going to happen. And monekys might fly out of my butt.

 

Too close to the direction CBS have just approved for the New Series perhaps? The setting between Enterprise and the Original or recent films? In the way parodying a 60's show or continuing on from Voyager, is no threat?

 

Perhaps. I come from a world (software development) where we do things for free (open source) but companies can still make money while anachronistic drags on innovation, motivation and intelligence (unions) were not adopted. So it's true that I'm not the best person to understand men dressed in suits.

You're seriously overestimating my expectations for a single post to a bunch of fans.

 

Considering the clampdown on all forms of media in the online world, from file sharing, music, movies, photos, video hosting through Vimeo, Youtube, DailyMotion etc... it was only a matter of time before the powers that be turned their attention to fan films.

It's a bit of an arse they decided to act at this moment (why hasn't this come up before), and at the moment I'm sure all we can do is speculate as to the why... two possibilities (my two cents) could be that either something has happened on this particular production that has just tipped the scaled ever so slightly in a less favourable light than they were willing to turn a blind eye to, or simply it could be a change in administration at CBS, in other words someone new in the higher ups has decided to act, where a predecessor may have elected to let things slide.

Having tackled a fan production development for a different entity of pop culture and later a pilot development, 'and' not getting the green light despite opening a dialogue to establish costs for acquiring rights... when they say no, you just have to step off. Were we annoyed; yes, we tried to go through proper channels and still stalled, but the saving grace was the development didn't go to waste and an original idea is being brought to fruition instead based on a backup concept in case such an event happened.

You have to feel for those that have committed a lot of hard work and effort into this, it did look like an exciting production but it's hard to see how they can continue; creating alternative text, characterisation, macguffins etc, is one way to avoid infringing the copyright and trademarks but then what would it be, it wouldn't be star trek, merely a space war saga, a lot of work to strip out and redevelop, and more importantly defeating the object of the productions outline.

Without trying to sound negative though this almost certainly doesn't bode well for other fan productions, and again for those there would be a lot of time, money, and commitment that would go down the drain. Other question of course is where will it stop... what about Star Wars fan productions, DC, Marvel, James Bond , Doctor Who, will the right holders look at this and start rubbing their chins... it raises serious questions :-/

Matt

 

There’s as petition. I signed it, but I am not kidding myself in thinking it will make a difference.

https://www.change.org/p/cbs-suppor...utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink