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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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Michael Hinman said:
That's way too much work for me to listen to something. :) Sorry, I'll just wait for the archived version like I normally do. I was actually up earlier on a Sunday morning, and was hoping to hear the show live. :)

It's a great show, so if you're not listening, then ...
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Glad I wasn't the only one getting that kids voice every few minutes. I too actually remembered it today and was going to try to listen live. I made it a few minutes but was missing key points due to the intro that kept popping in.
 
Sorry about that. I'll ask Mike about better ways to listen live.

EDIT: Mike says, "they need to try a different player. the one they selected for whatever reason doesn't grab the stream at full strength. When it hits dead air , it fills it with the intro."

So - try another player (possibly VLC). And thank you for trying!

First 20 (?) minutes or so were general stuff plus we talked about Nicholas Meyer.
 
I watched this amazing fan film yesterday that had literally something like 3% of the budget of a certain other (unproduced) fan film project. Without naming names it really makes you wonder how one group can make a pretty excellent film on a shoestring while another takes 3,000% of that budget and produces a single 1-minute scene. Which doesn't really look any more impressive to boot. But I digress. I think.
 
jespah said:
Sorry about that. I'll ask Mike about better ways to listen live.

EDIT: Mike says, "they need to try a different player. the one they selected for whatever reason doesn't grab the stream at full strength. When it hits dead air , it fills it with the intro."
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Yeah, Mike told me that on Facebook, and that is good advice. Except I have no clue how to bring it up on a different player. I tried clicking the logo of Quicktime, for instance, but it just downloaded some "playlist" to my desktop. And when I tried to open it with Quicktime, my computer just laughed at me.
 
Michael Hinman said:
Yeah, Mike told me that on Facebook, and that is good advice. Except I have no clue how to bring it up on a different player. I tried clicking the logo of Quicktime, for instance, but it just downloaded some "playlist" to my desktop. And when I tried to open it with Quicktime, my computer just laughed at me.
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Well, my knowledge in this area is now tapped. Have you tried an exorcism?
 
I do wonder if they wanted to do an end run around CBS/Paramount, why the Axanar folks didn't get a license from the Starfleet Universe folks?
 
As far as I understand the SFU licence, Axanar and Peters couldn't have.

Basically, it states that they (Amarillo Design Bureau) can use the TOS/TAS elements already in the game when they sorted a licence with CBS/Paramount (Star Fleet, Klingons, Romulans, their version of the Kzinti etc), and couldn't add anything else from the shows. New original content (their extrapolation on Klingon culture, new races like Lyrans, Hydrans etc) that they created themselves is allowed, hence the games still being developed today.

And as the Axanar Four Years War concept is from John M. Ford/FASA, ADB couldn't add that to the Star Fleet Universe. Plus, Steve Cole is very protective of their licence.
 
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trynda1701 said:
As far as I understand the SFU licence, Axanar and Peters couldn't have.

Basically, it states that they can use the TOS/TAS elements already in the game when they sorted a licence with CBS/Paramount (Star Fleet, Klingons, Romulans, their version of the Kzinti etc), and couldn't add anything else from the shows. New original content (their extrapolation on Klingon culture, new races like Lyrans, Hydrans etc) that they created themselves is allowed, hence the games still being developed today.

And as the Axanar Four Years War concept is from John M. Ford/FASA, they couldn't add that to the Star Fleet Universe. Plus, Steve Cole is very protective of their licence.
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I was under the understanding that the Star Fleet Universe was its own separate IP from Star Trek? Something wonky with the way the licensing was done back then. Which is why they are able to publish their own fiction.

With a license for Axanar (obviously it would have a different name and some changes) from Star Fleet Universe, Peters would've been able to make his movie without threat of legal action from CBS. Though I'm sure there's a hundred things I'm not aware of...
 
BillJ said:
I was under the understanding that the Star Fleet Universe was its own separate IP from Star Trek? Something wonky with the way the licensing was done back then. Which is why they are able to publish their own fiction.

With a license for Axanar (obviously it would have a different name and some changes) from Star Fleet Universe, Peters would've been able to make his movie without threat of legal action from CBS. Though I'm sure there's a hundred things I'm not aware of...
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Essentially correct, BillJ. As I said, as long as what they add doesn't resemble what is 'canon' Trek, it works as a seperate IP. They also can't add Next Gen etc elements, so no Cardassians, Borg etc. But the SFU has ran so long, with its own history, that you can't reconcile it with 'canon' Trek anyway. It's actually much more internally consistent that screened Trek!

So, because of the exacting conditions of the licence with CBS/Paramount, I don't think they could hand out a seperate licence to Axanar. That's how complex it is.
 
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trynda1701 said:
But the SFU has ran so long, with its own history, that you can't reconcile it with 'canon' Trek.
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I don't think they would've needed to. What they're telling is essentially a trap story. "Come destroy our new super ship before it becomes operational. Whoops! Its already operational and is going to kick your fleet's ass." I'm sure there's somewhere in the SFU that they could have fit such a story? Though I'm not real familiar with that corner of the Trek universe.
 
Oh, you could try and fit it into a narrow timeframe, no problem, except I don't believe Steve Cole would want to, anyway!
 
trynda1701 said:
Oh, you could try and fit it into a narrow timeframe, no problem, except I don't believe Steve Cole would want to, anyway!
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Maybe, maybe not. But it would seem to offer a way to get the Star Fleet Universe to a wider audience and inject some money into the his company.

But it was just a mental exercise on other ways Axanar could've been made.
 
Lord Alex is so obsessed with being Garth that anything else just isn't good enough. Mark my words, if he can't make this movie he'll stamp his little feet and refuse to make any movie (and probably blow up an Orion slave girl). :D
 
trynda1701 said:
So at which point in proceedings as presently envisioned might the Does get named?
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Hard to say. The short answer is, whenever it's most legally advantageous for CBS/Paramount to do so. The longer answer is, sometime during the discovery process as the studios work to build their case. The threat of being named in the suit is a powerful incentive to get people to testify on your side of the case. The AxaMonitor wiki articles, "The Does," and "Other Attorneys," touch on these issues.
 
BillJ said:
I was under the understanding that the Star Fleet Universe was its own separate IP from Star Trek? Something wonky with the way the licensing was done back then. Which is why they are able to publish their own fiction.

With a license for Axanar (obviously it would have a different name and some changes) from Star Fleet Universe, Peters would've been able to make his movie without threat of legal action from CBS. Though I'm sure there's a hundred things I'm not aware of...
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Not sure Starfleet Universe would've been able to grant such a license. First of all, "the original license for Star Fleet Battles does not come from either Desilu Inc., or Paramount Inc., but from Franz Joseph, the creator of the Star Fleet Technical Manual, though they have now a limited license to continue from Paramount. As such, the universe presented within the game is based not on the television show, but on Franz Joseph's work." (from Memory Beta)

Also the license from Joseph, or the underlying license later granted by Paramount, would have to specifically allow the production or sub-licensing of films. I would be highly surprised if either license did. Gaming licenses are very specific, as are publishing licenses. Pocket Books, for example, could not just go off and produce their own video series based on Star Trek: Titan; their license is for publishing only, and under direct supervision of CBS.
 
#1RealTrekFan said:
From the same dude that called Star Trek Axanar "The best Star Trek movie script ever!".

RMBegypt_zpshv32qniq.jpg
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Wow, even I thought Gods of Egypt looked bad when I saw the trailer, and it takes a lot for me to think something is bad.
Captain_Koloth said:
I watched this amazing fan film yesterday that had literally something like 3% of the budget of a certain other (unproduced) fan film project. Without naming names it really makes you wonder how one group can make a pretty excellent film on a shoestring while another takes 3,000% of that budget and produces a single 1-minute scene. Which doesn't really look any more impressive to boot. But I digress. I think.
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That's another issue I've had with Axanar since they started bringing in tons of money. We've seen a lot of fan films that have been able to look just as good as Axanar with a tiny fraction of the budget, so I never really saw why they needed so much money.
 
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