Where are fanfilms headed?
- Thread starter Danlav05
- Start date
Funny thing... I was on the phone today with a friend.
He called me to talk because he was stunned to walk through a home he had rented to another person. That person had utterly trashed my friend's home. That person was in the home and mistreated my friend's home while being on government assistance for the rent. Yet, he looked up and saw a satellite dish antenna. This person who was on AFDC and Section 8 housing assistance was also subscribing to Dish.
There's something really wrong when food and care for the child at that home was obviously secondary to a satellite subscription.
Broadcast terrestrial television should not be ignored by CBS. Putting all Star Trek on subscription services is a problem.
First, thank you for offering a place where people can discuss the issues related to CBS defense of IP without having to deal with the "chicken little thread".
The CBS action is completely consistent with trademark and copyright protection action. Intellectual property law requires the owner to defend their trademarks and copyrights. In the case of Viacom, CBS, and licensees, the copyrights and trademarks require defense to maintain legitimacy.
The creation of crowdfunding mechanisms to fund start-up projects is quite an innovation. These new mechanisms for funding really have a limited scope of benefit to the company. The legalities involved with Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and any of a range of other social media / crowdfunding platforms is an evolving picture. Therefore, people getting involved with these platforms and projects should take care (buyer / investor beware).
Since these projects have all featured leadership who were not paying themselves, I do not believe that there is any relationship or impact on those projects by CBS. If CBS had wanted to restrict use of copyrighted elements, they would have already done so. In the case of New Voyages/Phase II, they began using CBS/Viacom IP more than ten years ago. In fact, the 3 year statute of limitations has already expired for much of the original content created by NV/P2. In the case of STC, the three year statute of limitations has already expired on the Turnabout Intruder Vignette. Had CBS/Viacom wanted to enforce action against STC at the start, their time to complain is long past (by six months).
Regarding CBS/Viacom asking these fan projects to "calm down", there is no public relations benefit nor is there a corporate benefit to do so. The cost of complaining and litigating would be ridiculous to fund in light of the absence of monetary damages which could be collected.
Close shop? Why?
If the shop is already being funded by volunteer hours, volunteer space, and volunteer project management, then there is no reason to close shop. The shop is not expending money in general.
If the project organizers are honest and the resources are truly donated, then there is no on-going cost to maintain.
And, for me, this is where the real direction of CBS/Viacom needs to think.
These resources in the fan base could be leveraged to the benefit of the company and the stockholders. I would like to publicly highly encourage CBS/Viacom to please consider this direction in order to tidy up loose ends.
