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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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RCAM said:
Genuine question, Sverre (not being a smartass or waiting to make a barb): what are some of Alec's valid explanations to you?
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I don't have specific messages copied and ready to post in his defense. And I am not blind supporter of his. I think he has done terrible damage to Axanar and other fan films due to his ego. I understand he gets attacked from all sides, and has to be under terrible stress, but he just can't keep his mouth shut, like all his advisors suggest.

I think some of the things said about him are ridiculous, and it seems like there is the same small group of people who seem to only live to bash him. Many of these people have valid issues with him, and I love following the drama on here and various facebook groups, but I have seen people say he's similar to Hitler or murders, and personally threaten him and others involved with Axanar. I honestly feel sorry for him and some of his "haters:lol:". So much drama and hate, for a Fan film that has yet to be made. He deserves some of the hate he's getting, but it all is just so over the top.

Peter's brashness is what has lead to him building up Axanar, and a kinda turned the trek world upside down. But everytime he makes a valid or good point, he says something stupid, and keeps hurting himself and Axanar worse then if he kept his mouth shut. It's sad because even at this point if he's allowed to make Axanar, there people who are going to hate it just for existing.

So I and support some views from CBS/paramount side, and some things from Axanars side. I think alot of other people do aswell(well maybe not in this thread, but I do enjoy reading and participating in it):beer:
 
T'Bonz said:
It really irks me how he's trying to play the King of the Fan Films now. I wouldn't have anything to do with him if I was associated with one of them. How many did he throw under the bus?

The ego is just rather astonishing. First he gets the money, now he seems to be seeking Star Trek legitimacy (or allies or both).
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Yeah, but if he's the king, the kingdom is revolting. The Man has pissed off soooooooooooo much of th community.
 
OtherGene said:
Say what you like about Mr Peters and the way he conducts his business practices, looking around the internet and social media platforms, it does look like he's been successful in rallying some of the fanfilms together. Sadly, they appear to be rallying together against Axanar.

Pyrrhic victory much?
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It was really fun watching them pull away...........and Alec complaining about the leaked convos and text messages, when the screen caps were from HIS phone. Wile E. Coyote #genius
 
I generally try to abide by Wheaton's Law; don't be a dick. While some may disapprove, that includes Alec, who has never been anythjng but decent to me.

I can't, and won't, speak to anyone else's experiences.
 
Instead, he chose to make a for-profit soundstage out of donor money. Most people I know would call that putting the cart before the horse. Prove yourself with a full feature (not a 20 minute trailer/"mockumentary") THEN build that soundstage. There are no viable reasons why he couldn't have filmed on the NV stages like he originally had planned. Instead of making the movie, we get news of offices and carpet and phone systems.
 
The lovely Shanna and I have blogged about guidelines, and not just those proposed by the Axa camp.
http://www.gandtshow.com/star-trek-fan-film-guidelines-speculation-perspective/

Shanna is a PhD student at Bowling Green University IIRC, and her degree will be in Communications (Fan Studies). She wrote probably 85% of the article, and we will post a sequel if there is news and also as both of our scholastic schedules permit.

Thank you, as always, for your kind support.
 
Wait a second, Fan Studies? I have a Communications degree, and my choices for a major were PR, Jounalism, or Production.

Evidently I need to write down some suggestions for my old university. They shall be on behalf of all students, will have no regards to what harm their enactment may cause the university itself, and I'm sure my former peers will have no problem with me nominating myself to speak for them....
 
Campe98 said:
Instead, he chose to make a for-profit soundstage out of donor money. Most people I know would call that putting the cart before the horse. Prove yourself with a full feature (not a 20 minute trailer/"mockumentary") THEN build that soundstage. There are no viable reasons why he couldn't have filmed on the NV stages like he originally had planned. Instead of making the movie, we get news of offices and carpet and phone systems.
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He also could have done much of it the way Tommy did Horizons. After all, the Vulcan scene is nothing but a virtual set.
 
Hela said:
Wait a second, Fan Studies? I have a Communications degree, and my choices for a major were PR, Jounalism, or Production.

Evidently I need to write down some suggestions for my old university. They shall be on behalf of all students, will have no regards to what harm their enactment may cause the university itself, and I'm sure my former peers will have no problem with me nominating myself to speak for them....
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Hell, my MS is in Communications (Interactive Media) - it's a social media degree. I'll go call your school!
 
Sverre said:
He moves quick and gets stuff done
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No argument from me. It is a pity, however, that what he gets done appears to be for the benefit of himself rather than for those people who gave him their money. All they wanted was a big ole slice of Star Trek. What they actually got could barely be classified as a sliver. What he told them he wanted was also a big ole slice of Star Trek. What he got was a well feathered nest.
 
Dennis said:
So, an exchange between Alec and a fan film producer which has been posted on Facebook:

View attachment 1488
View attachment 1489
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Funny how Alec peters says: "what we want..." (referring to Star Trek 'fan films.) I mean I thought (by all his comments over the past year and a half "Axanar" was "the first independent Star Trek film" - not some little fan film trying to just recapture the aesthetic of a late 1960ies TV show.

Gotta love a guy who after going over the line in MAJOR fashion and getting taken to task by C/P for it - now says "hey I'm just another Star Trek fan doing a little fan film and trying to save Star Trek fan films..."

Can you get any more disingenuous then that? I really hope that if Paramount settles because of JJ Abrams worry about a lesser box office result for ST:B - CBS decides to continue and take this snake oil salesman for all they can get in terms of a punitive judgement (although realistically I know that probably won't happen.) No one deserves it more than professed Star Trek "Superfan" Alec Peters (although I have to say, if you're a fan of 'legitimate' Star Trek shouldn't you at least respect the rights holders control and f you can't get a license deal go do something else? I think Mr. Peters confuse the term 'fan' with the term 'leech'.)
 
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I found out about the latest developments late last night. As a fan producer, I think literally all the blood vessels in my forehead exploded simultaneously. These guidelines put us in a position where we have to break our long, deliberate silence or risk being seen as silently approving. After I consulted with the rest of the executive team, Star Trek Excelsior issued the following statement on Facebook this morning:

For the past few months, there's been a drama playing out across the whole community of Star Trek fan productions. We at Excelsior have stayed out of it, but we are no longer able to do so. This is a long post, and it has absolutely nothing to do with what this page is actually about -- making new episodes of Excelsior for you to enjoy -- so, if you want to skip it, get out now.

Last December, CBS/Paramount filed suit against another fan production, Star Trek "Axanar." CBS/Paramount had plenty of reasons for filing suit; Axanar had grossly abused the trust CBS/Paramount places in fan films to stay within certain informal guidelines. Axanar, a for-profit corporation in California, used money raised from fans for Star Trek Axanar to construct a studio, then announced their intent to rent this studio out to for-profit film projects. They branded themselves, not as a fan film, but as an "independent Star Trek film." They sold coffee, branded with Star Trek intellectual property, through a for-profit third-party retailer that then "donated" some of the proceeds from their coffee sales back to Axanar. They paid their Executive Producer, Alec Peters, a $38,000/yr salary, which flies in the face of the most important traditions of Star Trek fan filmmaking. Mr. Peters was warned by some, including some involved with Excelsior, that he was playing with fire, putting all fan productions at risk. There is reason to believe that he was warned by some at CBS as well. Heedless, Peters continued his activities. The lawsuit finally came just days after Axanar's financial report confirmed that Peter's was, indeed, paying himself a salary from fan donations.

Ever since Axanar was served papers, Mr. Peters has done all in his power to either (a) rally other fan productions to his cause or (b) throw them under the CBS/Paramount bus. None, to my knowledge, has rallied to Axanar, and so Axanar has done an awful lot of bus-throwing instead. For example, Peters and Axanar have consistently argued that what Axanar did is not significantly different from what other major fan productions do. These claims deliberately tried to use other, innocent productions as "human shields" against CBS/Paramount. Even if the claims were true, this would constitute a serious breach of the trust and respect between fan producers. And they were not true; it is categorically false that other major productions pay their principal producers a salary or set up coffee-licensing deals.

Fortunately, CBS, which has always been profoundly generous to fan productions, held its fire, refusing to kill off the other shows Mr. Peters offered as bait. There was one major casualty -- the people behind the brilliant Star Trek: Horizon were asked to cancel a planned fundraiser for a sequel -- but CBS's easiest path in December would have been to send cease-and-desist orders to ALL fan projects in one fell swoop. That they did not is a profound testament to CBS/Paramount's steadfast support of the Star Trek fan community... even when it makes things awkward for them, even when they do not get much credit for it in the media, and, yes, even when the fans themselves do not recognize how good we have it. (For goodness' sake, CBS has tolerated *Kickstarters* for the past several years! That alone shows how much CBS trusts and respects Star Trek fans, especially compared to other studios.)

Star Trek Excelsior made the decision in December to avoid public comment on the Axanar lawsuit. While we support CBS/Paramount's efforts to defend their intellectual property in a court of law against any and all for-profit, unfair use, we did not see how our "taking a stand" on Axanar would help CBS/Paramount in any way. It would only generate more drama for journalists to report on. We didn't think CBS/Paramount would want that. We certainly don't: the sooner this case ends and the less attention it gets, the less damage Mr. Peters and Axanar will be able to do to the worldwide fan-film community, which Mr. Peters and Axanar gravely imperiled. And so we at Excelsior remained silent, even as the lawsuit (to our chagrin) dragged on and on.

However, yesterday, news broke (story below) that Mr. Peters is trying to organize Star Trek fan productions to support a set of proposed "fan film guidelines" that he has created, apparently in the hope that he will be able to represent his proposal to CBS/Paramount as having widespread support among fan producers as a sort of "compromise" between CBS and Axanar. This apparent attempt by Axanar to speak on our behalf forces us to break our silence and publicly clarify our position.

Neither Mr. Peters nor anyone at Axanar Productions has contacted Excelsior Productions or any of its principals about any proposed guidelines. However, even if we had been contacted, we would have refused to participate in discussion of Axanar's proposal, and we hereby publicly repudiate any proposal Axanar Productions purports to make on our behalf. CBS/Paramount has not, to date, asked for any fan input into any potential fan film guidelines, and we do not presume to offer any to them without their express invitation. Even if CBS/Paramount *were* to invite fan input, we would not consider Mr. Peters a trustworthy, reliable, or community-minded representative. We encourage other fan producers to join us in this firm repudiation, so that Mr. Peters' presumption that he speaks for the fan film community is rightly discredited in the eyes of the public, the media, the court, and CBS/Paramount.

Star Trek: Excelsior looks forward, with CBS/Paramount, to the swift and final resolution of this unfortunate chapter in the history of Star Trek fan productions.

All comments on this post will be deleted. If you have feedback, please send it to starshipexcelsior@gmail.com. Thank you.

http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=axanar_guidelines
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If you'll excuse me now, I need to pop several more aspirin.
 
HIjol said:
Interesting...he is the one who's face is showing, but the hands are out of the frame, so you cannot see his "salute"...or what the hands are actually doing...

#sleightofhand

...wonder what the finger configuration would be for an Infringement Salute?

As I have caught up on the last 20 pages or so, I keep thinking of the line the Borg Queen delivered in First Contact, about someone being the product of some kind of mind...what was the word?..."disrespectful"?, no...that wasn't it..."doubtful"?, "doltish"?, "demanding"?, "defiant"?...darn, none of those!...why can't I remember!?...um, "decent"!...oh, nononono that is certainly not it!..."defective"? hmmmm...close!...
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Waldo's hand is actually up in the air with his phone, blocking the view of Charles Baxter.
 
Wowbagger said:
I found out about the latest developments late last night. As a fan producer, I think literally all the blood vessels in my forehead exploded simultaneously. These guidelines put us in a position where we have to break our long, deliberate silence or risk being seen as silently approving. After I consulted with the rest of the executive team, Star Trek Excelsior issued the following statement on Facebook this morning:



If you'll excuse me now, I need to pop several more aspirin.
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What is that acrid smell in the air? It is the smell of bridges burning.
 
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