CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar 2 - Electric Boogaloo-Fanboys gone WILD-too many hyphens

Probably random enforcement, especially since it used stills from the show itself. Plus, being flagged by copyright ID bots which are less that discriminating. So, it got flagged because it used a copyrighted material (screen shots) and that set the process in motion.

Time and money. They probably would if they could, and with bots that might become more common.

 

They apparently put up a poll asking how much their patrons would be happy paying for a printed copy of the work. The poll has now been removed, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the straw (along with all the copyrighted images) which broke the camel's back.

 

AH! Now THAT would definitely throw a legitimate red flag. It was a line they never should have crossed and the legal reaction makes perfect sense in this context. Thank you for the clarification.

I guess some people never learn from mistakes made by others in the past. What was that line about "Those who ignore history" - something, something... ?

 

Yep.

 

I'm just coming across this Axenar/lawsuit/fan fiction guidelines from 2015 and I'm stunned at how ridiculous they are - no more feature films? Limits of 2 episodes per series?? Is there a summary somewhere on what the reaction has been since then? I would expect a lot of ppl would boycott ST, paramount+, etc, until they revised the fan fiction guidelines. But maybe no one cares?

 

At the time, IIRC, people were pretty pissed about it. Now, it's like a first-world problem. We got bigger fish to fry right now.

This has become nothing more than a sideshow at this point - a source of minimal amusement. We're watching something that was once perceived to have great potential, has fallen hard under the weight of its own hubris, and yet continues to slowly flounder about like an earthworm on the sidewalk after a rainstorm and the water is slowly evaporating under the heat of the sun after the storm has long passed. Eventually it will shrivel up and die, but such things take a while to finally dry up.

 

Another key point is that it's Fan-Films of the Caribbean, these are guidelines, not rules. Following them to the letter is no guarantee of avoiding trouble, but on the other hand, violating the guidelines is no guarantee of incurring it.

And making fan films (and fan fic, and fan art), is a lot of work done by a relative minority of fans. There's not going to a be a huge consumer boycott for our right to spend thousands of dollars and years of our lives to make something that looks promising and then turns out pretty middling.

 

The people who wanted to and had the will did. I was pretty salty about them as I think they went too far but I understand the reasoning given the nefariousness of the person behind Axanar and his actions. I'd have preferred that they limit a fan production to two 30 minute episodes per series so you could get a single full length episode like classic trek when viewed together but I see why they wouldn't want perceived competition from series like NV and STC either. As for feature length films, how many came out? I can only think of a couple over the past 20+ years of fan films (admittedly I only got into watching trek fan films because of Prelude so may have missed some) so I don't see that as a real loss but more of an imagined one.

 

It's an extremely small portion of the fan base that creates these, or puts them out for public viewing. The fan films I've done with friends never made it to online; we just made it for fun.

Two, doing a feature length fan film is a huge undertaking. Everyone my friends and I scripted and planned fell through just due to logistical challenges.

Finally, they have a right to protect their IP.

 

They were presented as a "safe harbour" to the fanfilm community - i.e. stick to these limits and you won't get sued.
You are correct that violating them isn't a guarantee of being sued however.
At the end of the day I think the intent was simply to clamp down on the mini-industry that certain fanfilm groups had become.

 

They were designed to stop people monetising their property like Axanar (and Renegades, to a lesser extent) were doing.

And it failed at that, because Axanar has continued to do so (albeit to a much lesser extent) until the present day.

To the best of my knowledge, they've come down on one fan-published book for using screenshots of episodes (and selling Star Trek books, which S&S have an exclusive license to do) since then and zero fan films.

 

I concur. It really had become an arms race, seeing who could raise the most money. The guidelines certainly put a stop to groups spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and hiring ex-Trek actors, at which point it's probably not really a fan film anymore but an unauthorised production.

 

Remember when Axanar was explicitly NOT a fanfilm but an "independent Star Trek feature"?

 

Yeah, I don’t know how you wouldn’t expect to be slapped down for that.

Even without Axanar and all of it excesses, CBS/Paramount was going to have do something eventually. They should have been more proactive and set up restrictive rules like Lucasfilm did before things got out of hand. The first of those New Voyages productions was delightfully low budget with cartoonishly cheesy computer effects, so they probably thought no action was necessary, but a few short years later the “fan films” had huge budgets and Trek veteran special effects guys.

We’re probably lucky that Peters went so overboard on IP theft that Paramount didn’t have to go after NV, Renegades or Continues, which probably would have made fans more angry.

 

I was also thinking of a few but even a few is a big deal!
And I believe there were 2 more seasons of TOS? So a 2 episode limit ends that.
Not to mention not allowing Trek actors to appear in anything. There were plenty of those.

It's not the ppl making it, it's the appreciation by viewers!

I agree they have a right to do it. They also had the right to file the lawsuit on Christmas, which is malicious. I have the right to cancel my paramount+ subscription and sign the change.org petition I found. It's the fans that saved ST from extinction.

Independent ST feature = fan fiction in my mind. That's what independent means. But I'm not aware of any of the history/terminology/semantics of this.

I looked up Lucasfilm rules and what I found was:
no public crowdfunding
no monetization
no protected footage, images, logos, or music
clearly represented as a fan film and clearly not affiliated with lucasfilm

Not sure if it is accurate, but if it is, compared to Paramount guidelines, it's basically anything goes! There would definitely be more ST fan fiction seasons, episodes, movies, replete with Trek actors, with those guidelines. Whatever bad actors there might have been is not a reason to make onerous guidelines for the industry.

If a $1 million fan fiction production threatens a $200 million official Paramount film, then maybe they are spending too much on their productions. They could work to license promising fan fiction productions if they want. Regardless, I'm sure it's overall net positive for Paramount to have more liberal guidelines. Roddenberry allowed fan fiction films but I'm not sure he ever endorsed or said anything specific about it?

 

Years after the Axanar debacle, people still argue for licensing fan films. Unbelievable.

Well, after taking a look around outside, maybe not so unbelievable. Incredible might be the word.

 

I saw recently about some sort of start-up that was trying to do some kind of mass-licensing thing (kind of, it's mostly buzzwords, so it's hard to tell what, if anything, they're trying to do). Amazon tried to do something similar years ago.

 

Fans do not get to trample upon IP rights. No matter their passion they do not own the franchise.

There is nothing malicious about it. Their property, end of story.

 

These arguments weren't convincing in 2016 either...