Buhahaha. I've never seen someone from "Southern Minnesota" so triggered by a word. I bow to your keen vocabulary and use of Latin. You are obviously a superior human.
Toots!
CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar
- Thread starter Richard Baker
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Buhahaha. I've never seen someone from "Southern Minnesota" so triggered by a word. I bow to your keen vocabulary and use of Latin. You are obviously a superior human.
Toots!
I don't see how CBS have been petty in this at all. Axanar crossed a lot of lines:
Axanar didn't comply. Axanar, unlike STC or STNV or whoever else you want to mention, ignored a clear warning. They got sued. Even then, they got off lightly. They got the guidelines they demanded. They got a settlement that will allow them to make some kind of Axanar film. CBS gave them the kid gloves treatment. That doesn't strike me as petty.
As for consistent application of the guidelines: listen to the Engage podcast interview with CBS Licencing's John Van Citters, who is both a Star Trek fan and a reasonable person. The guidelines are just that: guidelines. They are not legally binding on CBS in any way. Just as, in copyright law, CBS can choose to ignore certain infringing acts (like the whole history of fan fiction) without losing any of their rights or protections for their intellectual property, so too they can ignore their own guidelines.
As Harlan Ellison said, you're not entitled to an opinion, you're entitled to an informed opinion. If you don't bother to read the court documents and other primary sources, your opinion is uninformed.
- selling Star Trek merchandise like coffee and models
- trying to sell their version of Star Trek to Amazon or Netflix
- raising money using Star Trek to try to create a for-profit studio business
- calling themselves an independent professional production instead of a fan film
- repeatedly referring to themselves as a nonprofit without actually getting legal nonprofit status
- slagging off real Star Trek and claiming to be the true Star Trek the fans want
- ignoring a warning from CBS saying that CBS didn't approve of what they were doing and were investigating legal options
Axanar didn't comply. Axanar, unlike STC or STNV or whoever else you want to mention, ignored a clear warning. They got sued. Even then, they got off lightly. They got the guidelines they demanded. They got a settlement that will allow them to make some kind of Axanar film. CBS gave them the kid gloves treatment. That doesn't strike me as petty.
As for consistent application of the guidelines: listen to the Engage podcast interview with CBS Licencing's John Van Citters, who is both a Star Trek fan and a reasonable person. The guidelines are just that: guidelines. They are not legally binding on CBS in any way. Just as, in copyright law, CBS can choose to ignore certain infringing acts (like the whole history of fan fiction) without losing any of their rights or protections for their intellectual property, so too they can ignore their own guidelines.
As Harlan Ellison said, you're not entitled to an opinion, you're entitled to an informed opinion. If you don't bother to read the court documents and other primary sources, your opinion is uninformed.
The big complaint these days seems to be about John deLancie being cast in STC. Aren't Gary Graham and J.G. Hertzler allowed to be in the post-guidelines Axanar?
People keep claiming you can't have it both ways. You're right. You can't. If you're going to whine about deLancie, whine about Graham and Hertzler too.
People keep claiming you can't have it both ways. You're right. You can't. If you're going to whine about deLancie, whine about Graham and Hertzler too.
Or not at all. I like that story better. 
@Jedman67, your pie chart doesn't show the cause of the CBS guidelines, it shows the possible motives for them. If it showed the cause of the guidelines, CBS would be 100% of the pie chart because they released the guidelines and they're grown-a** adults who are responsible for their own actions. Their motives are only relevant in that they are potential mitigating circumstances.
Now I'd admit that I think the law should be changed to make something like the fan film guidelines a defacto legal license. CBS and Paramount are basically trying to have their cake and eat it by issuing these guidelines instead of a true fan license. They want the community to self-regulate while offering nothing of substance in return.
I'm pretty sure that's not how copyright works. Paramount is free to settle out of court for a given copyright violation, with or without granting a license, and that has no baring on other parties.
Now I'd admit that I think the law should be changed to make something like the fan film guidelines a defacto legal license. CBS and Paramount are basically trying to have their cake and eat it by issuing these guidelines instead of a true fan license. They want the community to self-regulate while offering nothing of substance in return.
IANAL, but what is all this "price" nonsense? Just because they sue you for X amount of money, even if that amount is the same fore everyone you sue, doesn't make that a license fee. Settlements and verdicts do not constitute licenses (unless they grant a license as part of a settlement), and even if they were, it would only apply to those who are part to the settlement. CBS/Paramount are under no legal obligation to enforce their own copyright in any consistent manner whatsoever, but conversely they're free to be as consistent and even-handed as they want without any legal penalty whatsoever.
The only safe zone is a license. Everything short of that has some inherent risk, albeit small in some cases.
The "fairest" thing to do would be to simply go the Anne Rice/Marvel route and ban any sort of fan production whatsoever. No one would be able to complain unequal treatment that way and it would probably be easier for CBS/P.
I can't say "Dude" is my favorite word, but that's mostly a carryover from my college days when a pack of muscle-bound jocks would routinely share an elevator ride with me while greeting each other thus:
"Dude, did you lift today?"
"Oh, Dude, I so did lift today. It was awesome, dude."
"Dude, I worked on my delts. Then I blasted my quads, dude. Oh, dude, you should feel that burn."
"Yeah? Dude, I sooooo felt the burn there last time, dude. Totally awesome, dude. Totally."
"Yeah, dude. Awesome. Are you going to lift tomorrow, dude?"
Well, after 11 floors of that 3 or 4 times a week, suffice it to say, the word didn't leave a favorable impression on me or on those who use it - not that I ever learned their names, but then I'm not convinced they knew each other's names. Nor do I mean to denigrate the intelligence of anyone who uses that word, for in and of itself it doesn't prove anything, though perhaps I should explain to those who do regularly use it, "denigrate" means to put something down.
Kidding aside, I don't claim to be a superior anything, but I do have a low tolerance for people who misquote me, or claim I said this or that when I didn't, or worse, are fully prepared to tell me how I think or how I feel, as if they know better than I do. And I'm more than willing to express my displeasure when it happens. Not that coming from southern MN makes this attitude more or less likely, so I wouldn't want you to hold it against all southern Minnesotans or anything just because I took exception to something you said or the way you said it.
Semantics. "The reasons CBS decided to issue guidelines" is more precise and far more wordier to tell you the exact same thing.
And CBS does not have to "play fair". In general, Axanar was targeted because of A) gross violations of copyright and intellectual property law
and B) ignoring CBS when they said "stop".
For more specifics, read Axamonitor.
To be honest, I'd almost prefer it. If everybody lived in fear of legal crackdown for any fan work they shared, I think a law carving out a reasonable fair use exemption would be passed rather quickly.
First of all, "Motives for the guidelines" isn't that long. Secondly, the reason the title is important is that it implies that CBS isn't responsible for its own guidelines by literally removing it from the causal chain, as if they were an inert medium through which the actions of others flowed. It makes me feel like you'll bend over backwards to avoid saying that CBS has any responsibility for the guidelines whatsoever.
I said basically the same thing in the message you quoted:
And by the way, if you aren't actually quoting a source, you're just putting words in people's mouths.
I've had Axamonitor bookmarked for probably a year now. You aren't telling me anything I don't know. Not that it really matters as much as you think it does. Knowing the degree to which AP is an incompetent douche bag con artist is only useful up to a certain point, after which it's just academic.
I don't think we are far apart at all. I wrote out the distinction about inside/outside because sometimes people drop in who just haven't through it through yet. Sometimes people who come here are very invested in their views and a flame war can be averted by a bit more politeness. Not intending to come off as patronizing, sorry if you felt anything was over the top.
All I meant by nonproductive is it probably won't make any difference to confront CBS/P with displeasure about perceived unfairness in treatment of this or that fan film project, because the point of copyright as I understand it is to allow an IP owner to protect their IP as they see fit according to their business objectives, not anyone else's. I'm not invalidating any view of their actions.
I do believe Axanar is not just another group on the playing field who should be allowed slack of others got it. Axanar went way way over the edge in exploiting the dollar value of Trek IP for personal gain, IMO. I can totally why CBS/P did a special on them.
What I meant by this, and IANAL either, is that if CBS/P were to say 'and we will sue for a penalty of X dollars if you go 15 minutes over the guidelines' (so as to create a level playing field for those who violate the guidelines in some particular ways), then they might be inviting a situation analogous to patent and copyright jumping by international manufacturers.
I understand it is not uncommon for an uninvited firm to make and sell your hot widget/media product because they have calculated that there is only so far you will go in defending your rights before conceding them a license even if you didn't want to.
Can you actually afford to stop them? Will the product fad be over before you stop them? Can you recover any of the profits they have made from not paying you a license, or any damages by shutting out your actual licensed partners?
The calculation is that you will settle for being paid a settlement of X dollars and will grant them a license so at least you can make some money off their sales going forward.
So pragmatically, if you take the position that you have certain penalties you will demand for certain types of IP violation, you might in effect be granting "a license", if only a "guidelines exemption" in this case, from a price menu. This is what i meant.
Surely Axanar's attorneys must have wanted to set some precedent in the fan work category of fair use by taking this case and making the fair use argument.
What I don't see is how there is any possible mechanism other than licensing for controlling profit off of the elements of a copyright work. If absolutely anyone is allowed to take all the major elements of a work, rearrange it a bit, sell it as a "fan exemption" work, how can you make a living creating stories/artwork/etc.?
@muCephi, can you cite any legal or business case where consistently enforcing your own guideline or rule resulted in legally mandated fixed penalties for all offenders? It seems like you're arguing a legal theoretical. Furthermore, why would that amount be so low that you couldn't turn a profit from it? In this hypothetical scenario where a settlement or verdict sets a precedent worldwide, wouldn't CBS/Paramount go after the offenders with the deepest pockets first, thus setting the fixed penalty as high as possible?
That argument would have been difficult for STC, let alone Axanar. They never had a prayer. If it were that easy to win such a fair use case, someone would have set a precedent for them to follow a long time ago.
That's why so many of us here on Trek-BBS, both actual lawyers and simply laymen alike, questioned Ms. Ranahan's approach to the case. Nothing in her legal arguments made any sense in light of black-letter law, and there didn't seem to be any support from court precedents.
Was that fair use "Hail Mary" actually the lawyer's idea, though?
Obviously, some of the 15 (10, but one has 6 parts) guidelines are more important than others, but I'm not convinced making money is their main issue or the "third rail" culprit here, or that they even care enough about many of those guidelines that they would definitely sue if any one of them were ever violated.
Most of those guidelines seem designed to hamstring amateur efforts and force them to make lower quality fan fiction, even if higher quality fan fiction could be made at no profit. They may even be specifically designed to get in the Axanar team's face for punitive reasons. The actual amount of money doesn't really seem to be the issue. I'm not sure some of those guidelines are even legal. Who are they to say a professional actor can't work where or on what they want, unless those actors are under CBS/Paramount contracts prohibiting them from doing so? If they are SAG members, they must be paid, even if it's the minimum, and beyond that, even just reimbursing those professionals, or amateurs for that matter, for travel expenses or feeding them or giving them temporary lodgings all could be construed as a profit or financial gain if you want to get picky. Even Vic selling his "autograph," despite it being written on "free" pictures of him in his captain's uniform holding a Phaser and with the words "Star Trek" written at the top is, according to the court, out of bounds. Take away the words "Star Trek" and the props, and the costume, then he's allowed - otherwise, he's breaking the rules and making money while using somebody else's IP.
But is making money really such a third rail that CBS/Paramount told him to knock it off? Not that I'm aware. Are they going to sue him for that? I doubt it. Shall STC be forced to return whatever portion of $400,000 they gathered that goes beyond the $50,000 per 15-minute episode limit? Pull the other one. Will they even be held to a 15-minute length? Don't make me laugh. What about paying professional actors? Well, it's O.K. if THEY do it, but not Axanar.
But I say, big deal. The amounts of money for these things pale in comparison to what CBS and Paramount are making or pay their actors, so these are rinky-dink productions mostly born of labors of love and not typically financial gain, and I don't think such small amounts of financial gain endanger the IP of CBS/Paramount, but in fact, probably increases the fan base and would ultimately make them more money and their IP more valuable.
So it would be better to specifically send out cease and desist orders for each little thing that bothers them enough to make it worth their while to do so, and if the behavior persisted, then sue for those specific things and not for anything and everything. I'm not sure it went down that way in most cases, but I don't wish to belabor the point since I'm not claiming Peters hasn't stepped out of bounds, even repeatedly. It's just not everything he did was therefore horrible.
Regardless, I'm still under the impression the money isn't what irked them so much as the higher production values of Axanar that were made for relatively small amounts of money compared to a major motion picture, but they couldn't sue for that, so they sued for anything and everything else they legally could to stop them. I feel this way since others are making money on their IP but they don't get sued, and because they don't apply their guidelines uniformly.
Not that I feel the need to defend Peters, for he seems a big enough jerk, or incompetent enough, or sufficiently dishonest, or an all around tool to make that an uphill battle not worth the effort, but I don't buy the arguments he's all bad, or made nothing and therefore he's crap for that, as if that's entirely his fault. If they wouldn't have sued him but simply dissuaded him from certain unacceptable practices on a case-by-case basis, I think Peters would have more quickly come into line and made something by now, or would have been much further along. But you put some project on hold with an injunction and naturally they begin to hemorrhage money. I wouldn't blame him for the draconian guidelines, either. When Peters requested guidelines, I think it's reasonable he should have expected a list that would have contained guidelines that allowed everything STC or other fan fictions were already doing, for example, since all those things were apparently O.K. and not worth suing over. But CBS/Paramount didn't give him, or us, that. When some say CBS/Paramount could have done far worse and offer that as proof they weren't being petty, I'd have to disagree. Yeah, they could have been pettier, and while still being legal, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean they still weren't being petty. And by petty, I mean not allowing Axanar or Peters to do what others were apparently already doing. Yeah, it's legal, but it's petty, and though Peters may have deserved it, I don't think Trek fans did.
BTW, offering CBS Axanar for free didn't suggest to me Peters thought he owned their IP, but that he was willing to donate the work, the story, whatever, which has value. I guess I'm not so ready to interpret everything he did in the basest possible way. This is not to say he has done no wrong, of course, for he has done wrong, but I don't take at face value every negative thing said about him, what he did, or his questionable motives.
I don't think banning all fan fiction would be fair at all - particularly to the fan base. I know one must reserve the right to pick and choose when to sue about IP infrigement, but that doesn't mean one can't choose in a fairer and more even-handed and honest fashion, or at least be perfectly upfront about their true motives and therefore more logically consistent.
But alas, for me this has never been about how far out of legal bounds Peters may have been, or how within their legal rights CBS/Paramount might be, but what's better for the fan base and, in theory, better for the value of the IP. I think CBS/Paramount handled this badly. I think Peters handled it worse. I think both could still handle it better. But I don't think either will. Is it little wonder this all pisses me off? Ironically, if Prelude had not be so good, I probably wouldn't have even cared.
One may read such documents and arrive at different conclusions, of course, but that wouldn't necessarily make their opinion an uninformed one. One may read other documents, too, and become informed in other ways. But assuming one hasn't read them when you have no offer of proof of this, yet claiming their opinion is therefore uninformed, would be an uninformed opinion. You probably have no idea what they may or may not have read, and them offering an opinion different than your own would not be proof they hadn't read what you have read, but may have simply come to a different conclusion, based upon other things they have read as well or other various factors too numerous to list.
Regardless, all opinions are uninformed or ignorant on some level, lest one make claims of omniscience, but even then, I'd more likely find that claim to be more suspect than to assume the opinion was well informed.
Contrary to the well-known author's opinion, everyone is entitled to an opinion, informed or otherwise. If you choose to lend it credence, then in your opinion it has value. Otherwise, in your opinion, it does not. Of course Harlan Ellison is also a well-known tool and jerk of the first water, in many people's opinions, to which they are entitled, in my opinion, and hopefully, in your opinion as well, even if Ellison believes those people are not entitled to hold such an opinion and could only have possibly arrived at such an opinion due to their staggering lack of information. If you feel otherwise, then I think you're making a mistake, both by holding that opinion, and more so by quoting such a sentiment, but you are entitled to do so, in my opinion. But anyone taking the position that others are not entitled to their own opinion is way off base there, in my opinion. Thankfully, one is usually free to choose which opinions they will form, adopt, or adapt, and need not justify themselves to anyone else in order to hold that opinion, but, of course, failing to articulate one's reasons for holding one's opinion can hardly be expected to sway others toward adopting your opinion, and people would probably, in general, do well not to readily adopt such an opinion without some offer of another's reasoning that brought them to hold such an opinion in the first place. In my opinion. But opinions do vary.
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Ok, this has crazy since your first post, we're talking about fan films here, not fan fiction in general. Yes, the fan films are a category of fan fiction, but when it comes to Axanar and the guidelines, we are only talking about fan films, not all fan fiction. As far as I know the guidelines are only for fan films, and don't apply to other forms of fan fiction. I don't think other forms of fan fiction were ever even brought up in relation to Axanar, other than the books and stuff Peters tried to sell.
Time is relative. The more time I spend here, the less time I have to spend with my relatives.
Actually, it's not that much time when one types fast or does it in a piecemeal fashion while multitasking on other tasks throughout the day. It just seems like a lot when it's splashed in front of you all at once.
Fan films, yes, that more precise subset of all fan fiction. Well spotted.
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