CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

[muCephi]

The news buried in Alec Peters' latest post is that the judge isn't holding a hearing on the motion to dismiss.

...
• The legal surprise Winston attorney Erin Ranahan appears nearly ready to pull out of her hat. Anyone else care to imagine the possibilities?

Buried? I think it was completely unmentioned.

Possibilities? Perhaps the 'good news' has nothing to do with the pleadings, but only with the asset transfer. Not entirely sure many donors would consider any shifting of their donation value into private hands as 'good news'.

As far as legal twists, W&S does seem to have a bug in their ear about this case for some reason. Maybe they are focusing on some contradiction in copyright law not clarified by the courts, and threatening C/P behind the scenes with being the trial balloon for it, and thereby got a concession. One has to follow the money. There has to be a reason other than Trek why W&S allow their staff time for this project.

 

[RedForman]

Buried? I think it was completely unmentioned.

Possibilities? Perhaps the 'good news' has nothing to do with the pleadings, but only with the asset transfer. Not entirely sure many donors would consider any shifting of their donation value into private hands as 'good news'.

As far as legal twists, W&S does seem to have a bug in their ear about this case for some reason. Maybe they are focusing on some contradiction in copyright law not clarified by the courts, and threatening C/P behind the scenes with being the trial balloon for it, and thereby got a concession. One has to follow the money. There has to be a reason other than Trek why W&S allow their staff time for this project.

Could C/P have gotten complacent about something over the years............something maybe W&S picked up and are homing in on? With their manpower & resources, I can't imagine they would. Seems like a good place to start though.

On the other hand, could Alec have misrepresented himself/the facts of the case to W&S and thus 'pulled a fast one on them', causing them to stumble in and accept the case without knowing the truth about everything?? (equally unlikely)

 

[Ithekro]

Waiting for Aries Digital is fucking bullshit, you don't need that to ship perks out. So your putting you customers on hold because you are trying to develop a system, that's crazy.

Perhaps, but from experience in retail fulfillment, this does happen. An order can sit almost indefinitely if it is waiting for one last piece unless someone pokes the systems. That poke is either the customer, or the company doing inventory. If it is the customer, they company tries to track down the problem and get it to them as best they can. If it is Inventory, the order is cancelled to clear the books, and the customer either loses the item (but gets refunded), or loses their items and their money, depending on who clears the books. If the customer does not follow up, they lose their money because they are not shown to have cared about it at all. Some people forget they even ordered anything. Others pester so much on things they aren't in stock yet you want to toss them out an airlock so they'd let you have time for other people's problems you can fix.

For Axanar, I know of someone that hadn't gotten his perks for months, perhaps even a year. He poked a bit, their was a delay, but he was informed they would send out his patches and CD as soon as they could get it ready. It took another month, but he got his perks. But he had to poke, as sometimes things slip through the cracks. An order you thought you scanned and completed what not scanned and still needs tending. Stuff happens in Fulfillment.

 

[SeerSGB]

The news buried in Alec Peters' latest post is that the judge isn't holding a hearing on the motion to dismiss. He says he'll consider all the pleadings to date and rule from there. Same regarding the Klingon language amicus brief.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the judicial equivalent of "Stopping spamming me with your nerd-fight bullshit and let's get down to business?"

 

[Tom]

Perhaps, but from experience in retail fulfillment, this does happen. An order can sit almost indefinitely if it is waiting for one last piece unless someone pokes the systems. That poke is either the customer, or the company doing inventory. If it is the customer, they company tries to track down the problem and get it to them as best they can. If it is Inventory, the order is cancelled to clear the books, and the customer either loses the item (but gets refunded), or loses their items and their money, depending on who clears the books. If the customer does not follow up, they lose their money because they are not shown to have cared about it at all. Some people forget they even ordered anything. Others pester so much on things they aren't in stock yet you want to toss them out an airlock so they'd let you have time for other people's problems you can fix.

For Axanar, I know of someone that hadn't gotten his perks for months, perhaps even a year. He poked a bit, their was a delay, but he was informed they would send out his patches and CD as soon as they could get it ready. It took another month, but he got his perks. But he had to poke, as sometimes things slip through the cracks. An order you thought you scanned and completed what not scanned and still needs tending. Stuff happens in Fulfillment.

This is not an established retail company though. They now how many patches that need to ship and have the addresses. They just send them, and check them off of a list (like in Excel for instance), it is not rocket science. If they have a full time fulfillment employee on the payroll, that the hell is this person doing everyday. How do you justify that position when nothing is getting done. (what the hell are any of them doing right now to justify there pay for that matter)

Yes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease but no donor should have to keep bugging them to get the perk, it should just be done. They should have made a decision to ship the patch's out separate of anything else that may come with it, due to how long people have waited.

If we were to assume that Axanar wins its case and shoots the film (believe me, it won't). it would not be until late 2017 or early 2018. That's about a 3-4 year wait for some donors. That is the best case scenario. It you want to retain your donors you need to ship them what you can as soon as you can, in this case the patches.

 

[Jody Wheeler]

For those of you keeping up, Axanar just let drop they've rented their warehouse / studio to a third party. I do wonder if CBS will have anything to say about Axanar now having a revenue generating asset derived from their IP.

 

[Tom]

For those of you keeping up, Axanar just let drop they've rented their warehouse / studio to a third party. I do wonder if CBS will have anything to say about Axanar now having a revenue generating asset derived from their IP.

Yeah that's a bad move on Alec part. It now proves he used Star Trek IP to start and run his business. Wait.. I thought it was a warehouse?? so now its studio again? With all the flip-flopping he does he should be in politics. Goes to prove when you give someone enough rope....

 

[RedForman]

 

[BillJ]

Renting out the studio presupposes anyone is going to want anything to do with Alec Peters. Isn't there a ton of studio space in LA already?

 

[SeerSGB]

For those of you keeping up, Axanar just let drop they've rented their warehouse / studio to a third party. I do wonder if CBS will have anything to say about Axanar now having a revenue generating asset derived from their IP.

That is the sound of a million face-palms and heads meeting desks all at once. This basically dropping their pants and moon CBS/Paramount. It's as if they want to lose.

 

[SeerSGB]

Renting out the studio presupposes anyone is going to want anything to do with Alec Peters. Isn't there a ton of studio space in LA already?

For that matter aren't the smart productions heading north where it's cheaper to film?

 

[Tom]

Renting out the studio presupposes anyone is going to want anything to do with Alec Peters. Isn't there a ton of studio space in LA already?

Depends on competitive he is with rent prices. There will be productions that don't know or care about the lawsuit.

 

[Ithekro]

The question does become, how many order are unfulfilled that are just patches? How many are waiting for the Prelude DVD or CD? How many have digital perks they haven't pick up yet (posters I think)? How many of them are people waiting for uniforms or movie DVD that aren't made yet? How many for copies of the script? How many are international? What got lost by the USPS or other carriers? How many are trolling (that was popular at one point)? These aren't thing I can quantify, nor do I want to investigate.

All cases that I know personally have gotten their perks, with them being delayed first by waiting for the soundtrack CD and the later for the DVD of Prelude to be finished. Patches from the Kickstarter campaigns went out more or less on time, unless it was international and/or the person ordered something that wasn't finished prior to a later campaign (such as uniforms). If they donated again, their earlier order was included into their later order, and by the time of the end of the Indigogo campaign, Ares Digital was made to deal with the mix of three campaigns and the Digital Store added to the donation potenals.

Donations to the store come fast as it has direct contact with the donor. Campaign perks have old data that probably needs updating, and depending on the person in charge, might wait for the donor to update to be sure the perk goes to the correct place. But that varies depending on the fulfillment policy and numbers of orders.

From my own experience in fulfillment in retail, an order can take two to ten minutes each to fulfill, depending on how long it takes to gather the items together to package and how long it takes your computer to process the order via USPS or UPS or the like. That is with knowing exactly where the stuff you are shipping out is sitting. Assume an eight hour work day, that's upwards of 240 orders one can package and process a day with one person, assuming all things work as expected.

 

[BillJ]

I'm going to show my complete ignorance of both real estate and law here...

Is there any way that some production renting out Ares Warehouse/Studio/Homeless Shelter can get pulled into this lawsuit? And does Peters have to tell any prospective renters that they are under threat of a lawsuit?

 

[SeerSGB]

Here's one: How do we know for sure the space is being rented out to an unrelated production/business?

 

[STEPhon IT]

Depends on competitive he is with rent prices. There will be productions that don't know or care about the lawsuit.

People do need places to shoot projects, and if the prices are right then its a done deal.

 

[muCephi]

Wrt/ the mailing list and shipments... they say each person can login and look in their donor store to see what they are due. If that is at all true, then extracting a list meeting whatever limits you want to apply should be possible at any moment.

I noted upstream something to the effect that "if we shipped twice the donor would have to pay shipping twice". So here's a clue, maybe. They didn't say, "if we shipped twice Axanar Productions would have to pay the shipping the first time as a courtesy for the delay". Artificial dilemma.

 

[SeerSGB]

It'd be charitable to say that not having a fulfillment strategy before they started the 1st crowdfunding campaign, much less the second, was foolish at best, negligent at worse.

The more I read about this clusterfuck, the more it seems they were making it up as they went along and crossing their fingers and toes that it wouldn't catch up to them.

 

[Jody Wheeler]

There are probably more studio spaces in Los Angeles than there are Starbucks. That gives you some idea of the sheer amount of space available -- and why it was so silly to build-your-own-sound-stage at the outset.

That said, occupancy rises and falls depending on the time of year, the economy, and whatever tax incentives are going on around the country. Yes, lots of productions are leaving Los Angeles. But there are still quite a few studio films and series that are produced here. There are lots of smaller features and shorts and advertising projects that are shot around town, too.

Somehow relevant to this, Axanar's studio is at the edge of the 30-mile zone, the range of locations that are considered "local" for above the line talent. This makes the space feasible for a production to use, without incurring travel costs for their talent.

At the same time, Axanar studio is quite literally around the corner from two larger, more established studios, one of which is a ginormous multi-stage affair. There's a lot of competition in that area. From the plans I've seen, Alec's studio is one giant space. 10k or more square feet. Many studio soundstages have multiple sizes available, along with office space for the productions. Having one studio of one size locks Axanar into a certain kind of client, one who needs that much space. That a more limited market than having several different sized spaces to use.

I'm not an expert on the sound-stage market, though. I have production coordinators who know the nitty-gritties. I'll still hazard a guess that it's going to be "harder" to find clients that need the kind of space he's offering and be willing to go out as far as he is. I could be wrong though. There could be more of a demand than I know

 

[Noname Given]

This was likely CBS/P's plan all along when they named the Does in the suit. Scare people into thinking that they might be implicated; some of those people then jump ship to testify against Peters. It's genius!

No - it's the way Civil lawsuits of this kind usually work. That particular tactic has been used for Centuries; it's nothing new.