Those
"guidelines" are absolutely asinine. CBS and Paramount have the astonishing arrogance to begin by lying about being "big believers in reasonable fan fiction and fan creativity" only to immediately insist that fan productions be no longer than fifteen minutes each and have no more than a single sequel, which obviously precludes any possibility of episode- or movie-length stories and ongoing narratives.
They go on to insist that no professionals appear in front of nor behind the camera, which means no more stories like
"Yorktown: A Time to Heal," "World Enough and Time," Of Gods and Men, and
"The Pilgrim of Eternity;" that fundraising can't exceed $50,000, including fees (whether for one segment or two); and that titles can't include "
Star Trek."
This is a transparent attempt to marginalize fan films about as much as possible while still being able to lie about supporting them.
(Amusingly, they also overbroadly prohibit
"profanity, nudity, obscenity, pornography, depictions of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or any
harmful or
illegal activity, or any material that is
offensive, fraudulent, defamatory, libelous, disparaging, sexually explicit, threatening, hateful, or any other
inappropriate content" despite all such content appearing in official
Star Trek productions.)
Fortunately, these guidelines are—
like EULAs—not legally binding, which is why
numerous fan productions which exceed fifteen or even thirty minutes, some using "
Star Trek" in their titles and featuring professional actors and crew, continue to be made and released without being challenged.
Even
"Axanar" will still be released sometime after its
final shoot next month, albeit as a half-hour short in two fifteen-minute segments rather than a feature film as originally envisioned.
If not for the ludicrously lengthy extensions corporate lawyers and lobbyists hammered through in the late twentieth century,
The Original Series would already be at least partly in the public domain and we wouldn't even need to have these discussions for the original series. Had the original 1790 duration never been increased, the liberation of
The Next Generation would have recently completed while
Deep Space Nine and
Voyager would be beginning theirs, with
Enterprise to follow in the next decade, instead of at the end of the century. Even the new series would all join the public domain before
The Original Series now will. Still, it
will be liberated, and at a time when many current fans will still be alive (possibly including a few centenarians and maybe even a very few supercentenarians who saw the original broadcasts as children).
"Turnabout Intruder" (June 3, 1969) in the Public Domain
Copyright Act of 1790 (28 years): June 3, 1997
Copyright Act of 1831 (42 years): June 3, 2011
Copyright Act of 1909 (56 years): June 3, 2025
Copyright Act of 1976 (75 years): January 1, 2045
Copyright Act of 1998 (95 years): January 1, 2065
I look forward to
The Original Series entering irrevocably into the public domain in the early 2060s (1x01-15 on January 1, 2062, 1x16-2x15 on January 1, 2063, 2x16-3x13 on January 1, 2064, and 3x14-24 on January 1, 2065) according to
the 95-year rule established in 1998 for corporate works (with the expiration date being the first day of the 96th calendar year from first publication year, rather than exactly 95 years from first publication date as it was until 1976).
The technology of the 2060s will enable low-budget amateur productions to exceed the technical quality of the most expensive professional productions of the 2020s, and anyone will also then be legally free to make a commercial series or movie costing tens or even hundreds of millions without needing anyone's approval. I expect CBS and Paramount to try to play games regarding their perpetual trademarks, but they won't be able to stop the seismic shift which the entry of
TOS into the public domain will undoubtedly trigger. Rather than being limited to the official CBS/Paramount ideas of limited supply and scope, those of us still alive then (I'll be in my early seventies if I am) will finally be able to see Kirk's original five-year-mission completed and much, much more as we choose to imagine it—beginning just in time for first contact.
Fascinating.
