Should there be a free star trek.
- Thread starter Rigelkent
- Start date
The fandom is free, here you can create whatever you want and, thanks to the CBS lawyers, you can't make a penny from it.
More like small shows that people can make a little money from it would be fantastic if they freed one little part.Star trek is huge now so it would not cost them anything to release a part of it and tell the stories that they want to without having to worry about lawyers.
That's true. Any reasonable copyright law would've placed TOS into the public domain decades ago.
I'm trying to understand what you're referring to so I can make sure you're in the right place.
It sounds like you're talking about fan made episodes/films/whatever. At first it seemed like you were talking about having Trek back on a non-pay service.
Anyhoo...moving to Fan Productions, where they'll fill you in on the details.
If you want to make a fantasy/scifi show about a future spaceship, it's crew, and their adventures, you're perfectly "free" to make such. Just have it be different enough from Star Trek to be a independent intellectual creation. Star Trek was hardly the first in this area.
If you wish to expand on a established universe, Commander Cody might be in public domain.
If you wish to expand on a established universe, Commander Cody might be in public domain.
I assumed it was a discussion on copyright.
Eh, just do what Seth MacFarlane did and make a blatant bootleg.
This. People are too consumed with existing properties instead of building their own.
Now, would it be nice that part of Star Trek ended up in public domain? Maybe. But, I doubt it would been boon that people think it would be.
And if so, I feel the fan-creators should make any presentation they want and raise the funds how they can, and make it as long as they wish to. Cosplay is quite lucrative for the greedy people at Viacom when eager customers spend a lot of their hard earn money to purchase Star Trek related stuff. If the fan creators can't make a profit then they can do what they want, there's no rule where a filmmaker can't make a SF story which happens to be Star Trek.
What is a "vampire show"? Like "Day of the Dove" except the entity sucked emotions and not blood. A more literal approach might be fascinating... an entity steals blood for their species survival and Dr McCoy stumbles on whatever or whatnot...
Fan productions and cosplay have existed for decades. Weren't there some restrictions put in place recently? But did those have any significant effect to what you're alluding to? (Not really; 15 minute one-offs don't seem too terrible. A lot of TV shows 40 minutes long use 3-plot tiers (A-, B-, and C-) with each getting < 15 minutes... sometimes with enough material for <10 each so they paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad it ooooooooooooooooooooout for ageeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees........................
Do you mean new official episodes that don't require an overt paywall? (Commercials are paid for by sponsors, who more often than not factor those costs into each unit of their products we buy (but will sometimes pull support if boycotts occur)... in other words, there has never been official free Trek. Even the bin of books and comics and VHS tapes had each item costing 50 cents, never mind the cost of their original manufacture and sale... )
But all that's all guessing. Can you provide more detail as to what you mean by
free"?
Aren't there fan-productions? Those "the Voyage Continues" (or w/e it's called) videos still exist or were they C/Dsted?I remember watching their Klingon episode (with the child emperor character) not too long ago.And their version of "The Child" was in some ways better than the TNG one :-P
And well, the less said about Axanar, the better, imho.
I think with the "vampire shows" the OP means that everybody can make a show or a movie about vampires, because they aren't copyrighted, while Star Trek is.
Though a show about space travel isn't a copy righted concept, and the various vampire media have little in common with each other, so the comparison is flawed, at best.
And well, the less said about Axanar, the better, imho.
I think with the "vampire shows" the OP means that everybody can make a show or a movie about vampires, because they aren't copyrighted, while Star Trek is.
Though a show about space travel isn't a copy righted concept, and the various vampire media have little in common with each other, so the comparison is flawed, at best.
Asylum's Space Frontier.
Okay, first of all, this is about the idea of the rights owners releasing their Copyrights on some part of Star Trek so that other people can make Star Trek of one stripe or another, much as the concept of vampires are in the public domain so lots of people make vampire stories.
But it's a poor analogy because while the idea of starships and space navies and exploring strange new worlds is, like vampires, a broad enough idea that the IDEA is the public domain, Star Trek is as specific an expression of such an idea as an Anne Rice story is about vampires. So should Rice release some of her Copyrights so people can make products based on her characters without paying her a license fee? Vampires≠Anne Rice vampire stories is the same as Space Opera≠Star Trek.
That aside, this is a non-starter for a lot of reasons.
In short, this isn't about fan productions, it's about some pipe dream where any company can make Star Trek products w/o permission.
But it's a poor analogy because while the idea of starships and space navies and exploring strange new worlds is, like vampires, a broad enough idea that the IDEA is the public domain, Star Trek is as specific an expression of such an idea as an Anne Rice story is about vampires. So should Rice release some of her Copyrights so people can make products based on her characters without paying her a license fee? Vampires≠Anne Rice vampire stories is the same as Space Opera≠Star Trek.
That aside, this is a non-starter for a lot of reasons.
- Why would the right holders give up control of any aspect of the property so that other people could make money on it? What's their incentive? And by incentive I mean what do they stand to gain?
- Said rights holders also have everything to lose by such an action, because then 3rd parties can do things which damage the brand.
- Since copyrights are not ideas per se but the expression of them in a work, how do you make parts of it PD and parts of it not w/o risking losing control of much of it?
In short, this isn't about fan productions, it's about some pipe dream where any company can make Star Trek products w/o permission.
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