I've been thinking, and maybe we're all being a bunch of fact-obsessed killjoys, what with our notions of "reality" and "copyright law".
But not the Axanar fans (or Axanerds, as they call themselves). They get it. And they come from a long line of it-getters.They're not a bunch of joyless factinistas from the dork patrol. What right does the US legal system have to define what is or isn't a copyright violation? The Axanerds know that it's their right as Americans to individually decide what the laws mean. And that goes double for the Axanerds from other countries! You see, this isn't about the law you know with your head. It's about the law you feel with your gut. After he killed Hitler in the Civil War, did Gene Roddenberry write the Constitution with his head? No way! It would've been too hard to hold the pen in his mouth for that long, and his assistant's mouth was too busy doing other things. No, Gene Roddenberry wrote the Constitution with his gut. That's why it's got all that weird squiggly writing and the strange lowercase Fs where the letter S should be.
Most people don't know this because they're not real Star Trek fans. But the Axanerds are. And why are they real Star Trek fans? Because they donated to Axanar. And the more money they donated, the realer of a Star Trek fan they are. That's why they're so good at interpreting the law with their gut. And what does their gut tell them?
It tells them that copyright law is a vast unsettled expanse, one that isn't decided by "lawyers" with their useless "facts" and "legal precedents". It's decided by volume, by which I mean loudness. And there is nothing louder than Axanar's self-reinforcing Internet echo chamber with its tens of dedicated members. That's why Axanar will win. Because its fans believe. And because they stick to Gene Roddenberry's One True Star Trek Vision, which he had when he got really high on acid that one time in the 70s after the studio wouldn't let him put more than two belly buttons on Mariette Hartley.
Their gut also tells them that Alec Peters could use one of the many law firms that's lining up to represent Axanar for free. Or he could raise money for the Axanar legal defense on Kickstarter and get like a billion dollars in five minutes. But he doesn't need to do that, because he's a lawyer. All he needs to do is walk into the courtroom and say "FAIR USE!", then smile in satisfaction as everyone looks at him weird, because he walked into the wrong courtroom and interrupted the testimony of Mrs. Stella Weemble tearfully recounting what happened after she found her husband Elroy in bed with a RealDoll in a Donald Trump mask.
But after he goes into the correct courtroom and shouts "FAIR USE!" the judge will immediately rule in Axanar's favor and sentence the CBS/Paramount lawyers to death. And then Axanar will be made, and the whole world will boycott Star Trek Beyond and it'll make negative zillion dollars at the box office while all creation revels in the glory, nay the dream, that is Axanar.
And then Alec will be crowned Lord Garth and rule the world from Ares Studios. Boomer the Cat will be his Vice President.
Yep, all of that is totally, for real, going to happen. I know because I read it on Facebook.