The donations were the choice of the fans. They didn't have to.
Somethimg that wasn't delivered because of CBS. If they hadn't sued, the fans would have gotten their money's worth in a good fan series and it wouldn't have been false promises. But CBS made it a false promise. It wouldn't have been, if not for CBS.
Welcome to an ongoing examination of what emerges from the Axanar project. You will find that there is a lot of useful info that gets figured out here as things go along.
Here's my reaction to your offered thoughts. In my opinion, fans were given an incorrect impression by Axanar during the fundraising. That incorrect impression was that the rights holders (CBS and Parmount, C/P) were ok with fundraising going to salaries and a studio, in addition to a fan film. In all likelihood, the managers of the Axanar project knew this was not true, but their public way of avoiding admitting this to fans was to say 'we keep asking and C/P won't tell us explicitly to stop, so it must be ok'.
This may sound reasonable, but there is yet another layer that definitely was in play. Fan productions all knew that there was a clear legal reason why C/P would not give an exact answer to what could and could not be done, but instead gave a general answer which boiled down to "we will be pretty flexible PROVIDED YOU DONT MAKE MONEY". All the other fan films cooperated, but even so, Axanar went down the money-making path and crucially, failed to report to donors/fans that the C/P condition clearly meant no salaries, no studio.
So in essence, you end up as a donor being given the impression that Axanar was simply left in the dark, and using their best judgment, felt it was ok and didn't represent any risk of lawsuit to dedicate a large portion of donor funds to building a permanent studio company and paying its staff. This impression of CBS/Paramount's position that was given to donors/fans seems by all appearances to have been inaccurate based on what every other fan film already knew, and what the Axanar staff therefore surely must have known. But Axanar did not say this info when asking for money. You can see why: if Axanar had said "there's a high risk of us being sued and having to lose the donations and never deliver this film, because we are trying to build a business on the side for ourselves and pay ourselves", then donors would not have put in the money.
Because the boundaries of CBS/Paramount were not conveyed to donors/fans, fans can't really, in ignorance of the C/P boundaries, correctly blame C/P for stopping Axanar when the boundary was crossed in a big way, and C/P made good on their public warnings. And because donors/fans were given the impression that they had the legal right to fund a company that was violating the copyright privileges (to own the financial benefits arising from their copyrights) of C/P to such an extreme degree, one can't really blame most fans for taking this uninformed position. But fans donating in ignorance of the situation didn't make the situation ok.
You don't have to look any farther to find an explanation. Axanar management and some supporters would love for you to look elsewhere, with suggestions they have made like the studios abdicated their rights to control the Trek property by putting out things fans don't want, the studios are threatened by the quality of Axanar, etc. But it comes down to Axanar building themselves a business out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations by using Trek intellectual property as their 'value', and claiming its ok because 'fans said its ok to use the value this way' (after misinforming the fans), instead of just making a fan film.
The good will around fan films, the wiggle room if you like, was driven through with a profit seeking Mac Truck by Axanar. You got driven over in the process. The possibility of getting this as a great fan film got driven over. There is a bunch of wreckage around now. The truck drivers are still up locked in the cab playing their Star Trek soundtracks as loud as they can and driving over anyone they see who is coming up to them saying 'what are you doing'. Law enforcement has shown up, but the self declared "professional artist entrepreneurs" up in the cab are gesturing that they don't understand the megaphones.
And don't even think about the people who are expecting the delivery. They are still being texted that everything will be fine and don't turn on the TV. That chapter hasn't even begun.
Sorry to paint such a bleak picture, but there you have it.
