CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

[JoeRalat]

Just to be clear this was stuff outside the gift you get for your donations?

 

[Karzak]

I think they were all available depending on how much you gave, but you could donate more afterward and pick which ones you wanted.

 

[Amaris]

Just to be clear this was stuff outside the gift you get for your donations?

It doesn't matter. Selling any merchandise, or as a "gift" for donating, that uses an IP you don't own is a copyright violation. Every single one of these "gifts" counts as a copyright violation, and that's the first time I saw the IDIC patches, which is the ice cream on the cake.

Also, hey guys, they kicked me off the Axanar Productions page now, too. Must have been that "retreating to the compound" comment I made regarding the Axanar Fan Group which had banned me earlier. Jeez, these guys don't like small criticisms.

 

[JoeRalat]

Trust me I'm not asking because I support Alec Peters. I love the other fanfilms. I just to know, Have all the other fan films stopped giving out items if you donate?

 

[Karzak]

Gifting because of donations isn't as bad as outright selling products. The other fan films have been doing this for a while now -- DVDs and scripts, digital posters, T-shirts, uniforms, etc. It's murky, and probably not the best way to go about things, but CBS up until now has been ok with it.

The problem with Axanar is simply that they didn't just gift these things as perks. They opened up a large scale store full of Axanar crap to sell to their willing fans. There were even plans for a Four Years War anthology book series, written by established Trek novelists from Pocket Books and in both regular and slipcase, special, signed limited editions.

Peters' greed and arrogance far exceeded his talents and understanding of the motion picture industry and more importantly copyright infringement law.

 

[KennyB]

So I was over reading comments at Trekmovie.com and saw this gem.


485. Old - January 3, 2016 Shame on CBS for suing fans. This company is a disgrace and the rights for Star Trek should be ripped out of their hands.
What goes around comes around.


Seriously??? These are the ones that scare me. People who think you can just TAKE someones IP because they don’t like what they are doing with it. Like if you had a neighbor that had a 1966 Mustang GT350 and he wasn’t treating it like you thought he should……you should be able to just TAKE IT from him. That’s not how things work folks…I did not know folks could actually think like this.

 

[JoeRalat]

Gifting because of donations isn't as bad as outright selling products. The other fan films have been doing this for a while now -- DVDs and scripts, digital posters, T-shirts, uniforms, etc. It's murky, and probably not the best way to go about things, but CBS up until now has been ok with it.

The problem with Axanar is simply that they didn't just gift these things as perks. They opened up a large scale store full of Axanar crap to sell to their willing fans. There were even plans for a Four Years War anthology book series, written by established Trek novelists from Pocket Books and in both regular and slipcase, special, signed limited editions.

Peters' greed and arrogance far exceeded his talents and understanding of the motion picture industry and more importantly copyright infringement law.

Ok that's what I was thinking. So the other items outside kick starter. I'm guessing that would be harder to track to see if the funds are being spents on items for the film. Example ..it would be use for a book series and not the production

 

[Amaris]

Trust me I'm not asking because I support Alec Peters. I love the other fanfilms. I just to know, Have all the other fan films stopped giving out items if you donate?

I can do the Big Three:

On Renegades donate page, you can donate to receive:

Digital or physical copies of the episode
A signed script
Various photos of the cast
An offer to promote your business by putting your business name and info where everyone can see it,
A Renegades novel
A Renegades communicator badge.
A model kit of the Icarus

And of course, a quality episode.


On Star Trek Continues donate page, you can donate to receive:

Nothing. There is nothing but a request for donations.
So just quality episodes.


On New Voyages donate page, you can donate to receive:

Nothing. There is nothing but a request for donations.
So just quality episodes here, too.


On another note, I don't have anything against the gifting, just noting that Axanar was awfully free and loose with their donation gifts, and how they presented it. I do imagine Renegades might run through their setup though, just to make sure everything is copacetic. I don't want anything happening to them. Axanar got to where it is because of hubris. I don't think the folks behind Renegades are the same.

 

[Karzak]

Yeah, but in the past the Kickstarter for New Voyages and the "KIRK-Starter" for Continues have both offered perks like scripts, photos, posters, et al as rewards for donating.

Neither however have gone so overboard as Ares Studios has.

 

[Amaris]

Yeah, but in the past the Kickstarter for New Voyages and the "KIRK-Starter" for Continues have both offered perks like scripts, photos, posters, et al as rewards for donating.

Neither however have gone so overboard as Ares Studios has.

Agreed, and while it's all technically copyright violation, at least it was kept to small gifts that were attached to donations. Nothing those three have done is anywhere near the egregious level of wares Axanar has hawked. I say this because I really don't want any of them to get in trouble. Axanar has put them on the line, too, and that is frustrating, because it's Alec being the asshole, not these fan productions who just want to make something for people to enjoy.

 

[Karzak]

Of all the characters in all the films and series in the franchise, he chose Lord Garth.

That right there should have told us everything we needed to know.

I suspect that tomorrow morning, Peters' big announcement is that he's going to have filed for non-profit status. Whether it works or helps his case I don't know, but hopefully the court will make fast work of his shenanigans soon.

 

[JoeRalat]

I'm ok with stuff being given, but if you go outside the kickstarter type sites to sell items, I'm guessing it's hard to know if the funds are going towards the film. It could trek for a book series...or travel hotel...things around the production but directly towards the film.

 

[JoeZhang]

But if it were me, trying to minimize the amount of money spent on support and maximize money spent on the actual product, I'd ask volunteers sitting around a cardboard table meeting who has Quickbooks and a few minutes a day. I wouldn't hire a damn professional and spend $75 to $150 an hour, that's for sure.

When you are dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars and about a zillion laws and regulations, going cheap on the accounting is akin to saying, "Oh, my friend's son took a web design class in college, he can make the website for my enterprise-level business."

Which is to say that it's a very, very, very easy way to get into deep trouble very quickly.

#StayOnTarget
#StopTopicCreep

Don't backseat-mod.

If you can find money for catering you can find money for an accountant.

 

[photon70]

Just to be clear this was stuff outside the gift you get for your donations?

Just to be clear, anything that didn't come from CBS/Paramount which is Star Trek related is bootlegged merchandise.

Just like a fake Ray Ban or a fake Louis Vuitton.

 

[Smoked Salmon]

More from David Gerrold. And it shows how out of touch he is, in particular his pontification of a potential boycott.

However, filing the STAR TREK numbers off Axanar might work. Yet that isn't what people paid for. A catch 22 at this point.

Let me add this.

Seeing as how Axanar, the feature-length fan film has not yet been made, the lawsuit can only be seen as a preemptive strike.

It would not be too difficult for the producers of Axanar to make necessary changes to their costumes and sets and props and even their effects, nor would it be that hard to change the names of all the characters in their script. That is, everything that directly infringes on the Paramount/CBS copyrights could be eliminated -- and Axanar could continue as an independent film, independent of Paramount and CBS.

Therefore the only claim that Paramount/CBS might have would be the short film that was released, PRELUDE TO AXANAR.

Renaming everything is an option to the producers of Axanar. I don't know if it's the best option, but it is one that could be done now--before the feature-length Axanar actually starts shooting.
Mostly, however, I think the whole thing is more of a public relations nightmare for everybody, and I hope that both sides (and their lawyers) can sit down at a conference table and just talk it out to see what best serves everyone -- but most of all, what best respects Star Trek's fans. Because if the outcome here is one that fandom in general dislikes, it will create additional damage to Paramount/CBS' relationship with their audience.

Would there be a boycott and would such a boycott be effective?

Well, back in the days when Star Trek II was in production, one self-inflated fan, who believed he had built up a following among Trek fans, wrote a letter to the studio threatening that if he wasn't given a part in the picture, his fans would boycott the film and the studio would lose millions of dollars. Harve Bennett almost hurt himself badly when he fell out of his chair laughing.
In more recent years, many fans of the original series have expressed their dislike of the Jar Jar Abrams version of Trek. Many of them have chosen not to see his films and many are saying they do not intend to see the third film either. Based on the evidence of the films' gross earnings, it doesn't look like that "boycott" has had much effect on the box office.

And that's my point -- even if Paramount/CBS trigger a fannish firestorm, they likely believe (and justifiably so) that any attempt at a boycott will have insignificant results. They likely believe (and justifiably so) that they can ride out a cycle of bad publicity.
Well, yes and no.

Some fans have wisely pointed out that the best publicity for Star Trek comes from Star Trek fandom. Fans share the trailers, they share the news, they share the excitement, they generate the buzz. If fans become disaffected, then Paramount and CBS lose one of their greatest assets -- and that does hurt the box office grosses. Case in point? The ENDER'S GAME film took a hit because of Orson Scott Card's publicly expressed anti-LGBT sentiments. How big a hit? Hard to say, but the bad buzz was significant enough that the filmmakers had to issue a disclaimer to Card's remarks.

Back in the day, Star Trek's greatest asset was Gene Roddenberry. Fans adored him. Ohell, everybody loved him. (At least until they had a chance to work for him, but that's another story.) Gene attended conventions regularly and he was the great cheerleader. He was the Great Bird.

Since his death, Trek has not had many great cheerleaders. To some extent, Shatner and Nimoy and Patrick Stewart, and a few other cast members -- but nobody represented Trek like Gene Roddenberry. And to the fan base, Gene represented the core of the vision. No one else has ever come close.

Without Gene, without someone who still holds the vision that Gene represented, Trek sometimes feels like a rudderless ship being pushed this way and that by the winds of change -- a tall ship with a star, but no Captain to steer her by that star.

So the situation that needs to be addressed by Paramount and CBS isn't simply resolving the question of Axanar and other fan films -- it's the larger question of rebuilding the audience's trust that Star Trek is in good hands. The producers of various fan films have consistently demonstrated that they have a better grasp of the original vision of the show than some of the people who have been paid to reboot it or reinvent it.

Some people believe that Paramount and CBS don't care about that original vision -- that the reboots are an attempt to capture a newer, younger audience. From a shareholder's view, that makes sense. From the fans' view, it doesn't -- because it's that original vision that created Star Trek fandom in the first place.
I've been to my share of Trek conventions. Nobody blows the roof off the building the same way William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy could. Nobody.

That should tell you something too.

There is a way to proceed that could be a win-win for everybody, but if it isn't a win for the fans, then it isn't a win at all.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/david.gerrold/posts/10207081956819675

This is total bollocks. He's ignoring comments on his own thread. There is more than one person there saying they don't like the JJ Trek movies and yet disagree with the way Axanar has gone about this....and yet he has the nerve to post as if this is between pro-Abrams and anti-Abrams. That's totally disingenuous.

Hell, I myself don't care for JJ Trek, but I can see that the studio has the right to do what it's done.

 

[Karzak]

Hilariously, Tony Todd is still listed on the Axanar IndieGoGo page and their main website as part of the returning cast.

 

[Smoked Salmon]

As far as I can tell, the writing is on the wall. Axanar is dead, it just hasn't laid down yet.

Anybody taking numbers on AP's next project? I'm betting on politics.

One party dictatorship?

 

[Smoked Salmon]

And no one is plowing Axanar funds into a for-profit movie studio. That is bullshit. We have a building we have rented to build sets in and make Axanar, and when we are done with Axanar, I will still be on the hook for the rent and storage of the sets. Would we like to be movie producers? Sure, but we have no plans for that right now.


Alec Peters
Executive Producer
Axanar

This entirely goes against what is said in his own materials. This overt revisionism is going to go against his credibility when he gives evidence in court, and right now that's the last thing he needs.

Surprised he hasn't yet popped up in this thread.

 

[sttngfan1701d]

So wait...don't they need a license for those Minion shirts? That's a Dreamworks trademark. The other stuff I can see as a "grey area" except for the IDIC patches...those should need licensing too

 

[Amaris]

Just to be clear this was stuff outside the gift you get for your donations?

Just to be clear, anything that didn't come from CBS/Paramount which is Star Trek related is bootlegged merchandise.

Just like a fake Ray Ban or a fake Louis Vuitton.

Hey, this is the nicest Rollex I'll ever own.

Hilariously, Tony Todd is still listed on the Axanar IndieGoGo page and their main website as part of the returning cast.

Yeah, I saw that too, and it's listed under "Axanar" being released in 2016, and not referring to "Prelude."