So you relly think it would be ok for "fan film" to say bring in all the old voyaer actors, berman and bragga, and so forrth pay them salaries and make new episodes of voyager completely on their own, raise millions in crowdfunding, as long as they label it a "fan film" and now are essentially competing with Discovery and the star trek movies? That isn't how it is supposed to work.
That isn't what I said either. I was simply pointing out to Krandor that in some theoretical world where official Star Trek is so bad no one watches it and there are thousands of hours of good, high quality fan films with all your favorite actors that are produced for pennies on the dollar compared to the "real thing", it's really hard to argue from the franchise owner in that situation. I'm not suggesting there's a model that would actually result in that outcome. I should point out that such a scenario is highly unlikely in a situation where commercial film making is expressly prohibited.
Courts? So your in scenario where your fair use exception is in place and CBS licenses fan films, you still see CBS having to take fan films to court in order to iron out your new law and for people who break the license?
I'm saying that for EXISTING copyright law. There are always going to be edge cases to litigate. No one can promise that every possible edge case can be accounted for in law, so one can never promise zero litigation cost for any exception or exemption in any law.
That is A LOT of money you are asking CBS to spend having to defend their copyright due to your new fair use law.
Oh really? How much?
You have misunderstood what I said. I said that there is "no public interest in changing copyright law." I did not say that there was nobody interested in fan works. Having people interested in a mode of expression is not the same as there being a public interest in legislating protections for it. As defined by Wikipedia [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_interest],
Public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public"
and that is a different thing from the existence of a subset of the general public sharing the same passion.
From the same article: "Under a
thought experiment, by assuming that there is an equal chance for one to be anyone in society and, thus, could benefit or suffer from a change, the public interest is by definition enhanced whenever that change is preferred to the status quo
ex ante. This approach is "
ex ante", in the sense that the change is not evaluated after the fact but assessed before the fact without knowing whether one would actually benefit or suffer from it."
So, in order for it to be in the public interest, it simply has to be a net benefit for the public in general. It does not have to specifically benefit the copyright holder, and it can be a net benefit to society even if the majority neither suffer nor benefit. For instance, an ethnic group may represent a tiny percentage of the population, but it is a public good to protect them even though the majority are unaffected.
You're right that a balance needs to be struck in legislation between creators of works and people who would create imitative works, including fan works. But that balance has been struck already
95 years is your idea of balance? Most people will not live to see a work published after they're born fall into public domain. Star Trek is older then me, and chances are pretty good that I'll actually be dead before it does into public domain. This is entirely the result of decades of international lobbying by publishers and media companies, not some grassroots effort to restore "balance" for copyright holders. Statistically, long tail profits don't justify these kinds of long copyright terms either. It largely just benefits established, highly popular and profitable franchises owned by large media companies. The result is an unprecedented number of Abandoned Works that are still in copyright but remain out of print for decades and can even be lost to time as the result of decay of the medium they're printed on because the people who could restore the materials fear a copyright lawsuit. The idea that this is "balance" is nonsense.
And, thus far, there has been no demonstration that it would benefit the copyright holders to do so.
Well, I've actually offered some examples to the contrary, but for the sake of argument, let's say your right. Let's say that regardless of what the fans ask, the franchise owner won't change their minds and has enough power over fans that they won't abandon the franchise. Doesn't that suggest, to you, a massive power imbalance between the copyright holders and the general public that might need to be remedied in copyright law?
The point of copyright is to protect content creators.
No, the point of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Copyright protections are the means, not the goal.
Fan works garner none of that protection because they are already operating with someone else's creative works. In other words, they are already "profiting" off of someone else's work because they don't have to spend the money to create that content.
Just because their content is derivative does not mean the content requires significantly less time, effort, and in some case, money to produce. As for your use of the word "profiting", it's neither a citation nor a literal use of the word, so I can only assume you're trying to repurpose the word in order to reframe the conversation. I have made it clear that any fan exemption should not include the prospect of profit, and I have asked for suggestions on how this could be most effectively prevented.
There is no subjective judgement of quality here. I don't feel that there is a need for that change for a small number of works that would be impacted.
There are millions of works just on Fanfiction.net. There are hundreds of fan films for Star Trek alone. I don't see how you can conclude that all fan works are a small number.
I don't care what media companies have done in their accounting. I see no reason for them to jeopardize their profits for no benefit, financial, educational, or otherwise,
You're misrepresenting the quote to insert your subjective assessment of fan works as a whole. I was specifically addressing the idea of requiring that a fair use exemption not impact profits for the copyright holder, and I was pointing out that should that be the standard for a fair use exemption, companies have already shown a willingness to play games with their profit numbers in order to hide those profits from the legal system. The implication is that copyright holding corporations may manipulate how they calculate a franchise's profits and/or misattribute loses to fan works in order to improve their legal standing in court.
Which is why studios have no incentive to change fair use.
I figured you'd have stopped making this Freudian Slip by now...
Parody and education cover a lot of factors and now there is one more exception that's being asked, especially when the stories are designed to emulate professional products.
I keep seeing this seesaw/teeter-tater argument where fan works are simultaneously of so low in general quality that they fail to serve a public interest while simultaneously being so high quality and professional that they threaten the very existence of the franchises from which they are derived. Here's the problem with that. If fan works are devoid of value, then they represent no real threat to copyright holders. If they're good enough to challenge their respective franchises, then they're valuable enough to be considered as a public interest.
Let me be clear: I have no problem protecting copyright holders from commercial wolves in non-commercial sheep's clothing. I just don't want to see fan works blocked because they're too "professional", or because the fan who created them happens to be in a particular industry or have at one time had involvement with the franchise they're a fan of.
Just a note.... in the voluminous arguments that have circled the drain... it's interesting to me that the entire exercise has been self-serving.
I could argue that what the copyright holders are doing is entirely self-serving (as they are required, by law, to maximize profits for their shareholders), but instead I'd like to point out that many creators of fan works license their content in such away that others can create derivative works from their content. Fan communities can be an inherently cooperative environment, and suggesting that protecting these communities is entirely self-serving is misleading and a gross mischaracterization of the people who are part of these communities.
A person is free to write fan fiction or make a fan film and if they use good sense, avoid overt commercialism, make it for personal use or for very limited FREE distribution, and follow a few other common sense guidelines, everyone is happy happy happy.
That's naive given the fact that franchises have taken far more draconian positions in the past and there's nothing to stop them from doing so in the future. Several people have made the argument recently that the influence of fans on a franchise is basically nonexistent, so if those same people try to argue that franchises can't change their minds, I'm going to call Shenanigans.
If a fan is seeking some greater protections, you have to honestly ask - what's in it for them? Why do THEY need greater protection? What are THEY trying to gain?
Greater protections than what? They have NO protections. Devoid of fair use, the only real protection is a license.
