Anyone Looking Forward to Star Trek: Axanar?

Except this isn't CBS going after everyone, it's CBS going after a production that used their intellectual property, made $1.5 million from it, built their own production studio for their own for-profit ventures, and then asked for more money, explaining that they'll make REAL Star Trek and not what is coming out of the studio (as in, the people who own the IP they're using) as they repeatedly stated that CBS said this was all okay. If I were CBS, I'd have kicked the *shit* out of them for that. They deserve this, and that's only *if* they haven't been doing something that caused the civil lawsuit rather than a simple Cease & Desist. A C&D is when a lawyer tells his paralegal to fire off a letter to a production for using intellectual property without permission. Happens all the time. A civil lawsuit is when a team of lawyers get together and say "these people are damaging us, action must be taken immediately."

In short, people like Captain X (and he's not the only one) need to realize CBS owes them nothing beyond what they already deliver. Being a fan does not entitle you to break the law, or make money off the backs of people who think you're going to revive Star Trek and wrest it from the people who own it, and make no mistake this is the message that Axanar was pushing.

You keep touching on what the problem is, and then when I point out how it can affect, well, everyone, you try to move the goalposts.

So I'm going to keep encouraging a boycott, and for fans to make noise about this, not for Axanar specifically, but for all fan sites in general.

CBS could affect everyone, but they won't. Fan sites maintain the fan communities that help keep the franchise, a CBS property, alive and well. That ups the value of CBS's asset, and periodically CBS capitalizes on it with something new. It's the kind of free grassroots support that most franchises would kill for.

But was Axanar's leadership was apparently doing wasn't to maintain the fanbase, they were looking to steal the fanbase. Star Wars fans can make all kinds of great productions, but what they can't do is crank out their own Episode IX to try and rake in a billion dollars without paying a fuck ton of money to Disney, who paid a fuck ton of money to Lucas for the rights to make more episodes. It the difference between hobby and commercial efforts, or as some government agencies phrase it, "pecuniary interests."

What goalposts? When you break trademark and copyright law, the IP rights holder can tell you to Cease & Desist, and you have to do it, by law. Nothing stops them from coming after you if you fall outside of the acceptable usage (parody, documentary, and so on). So why doesn't CBS really do it all that often? Because there's no profit in it, and most fan productions are harmless. On the other hand, CBS is hitting Axanar with a civil lawsuit, not a Cease & Desist. This is a big boy problem that Axanar now has, and they should be very concerned, because if CBS legal is actively pursuing this, then someone at Axanar done fucked up, and we're going to find out soon enough what happened.

CBS didn't likely just up and say "hey, let's sue that Star Trek fan film we don't give a shit about!" something had to be brought to their attention. It had to get high enough on their radar to be more than a minor annoyance that a form letter could dispatch quickly. That is why this is different, and why it's important that we find out what happened, because CBS is pissed, and Alec Peters isn't being contrite, he's shouting for the fans to save him. Pay close attention to this, because it never ends well for the production.

If you want to boycott, go ahead. Get everyone on the Axanar fan page to boycott the film (68,000 people). Assuming that a general admission theater ticket (2D) is $10, that's $680,000. Star Trek Into Darkness made $467,000,000 globally.

You do not matter to CBS. To them you're a crank who likely won't see the film anyway since you're throwing money at a fan production that claims it's better and is the real Star Trek (against the IP holder), that it is a professional production, and that it is an independent film. Watch CBS legal scour the fucking floor with your heroes up top, and rightfully so, because they willfully broke copyright law knowing what would happen, and directly challenged the IP rights holder as a legitimate competitor, and using their own IP as the method.

So, yeah, you know, boycott.

This. Bingo.

Don't worry. You're the geek in the basement with the VHS camcorder. CBS ain't coming after you.

Yeah, CaptainX and the other small fish are fine so long as they remain small and never swim in to a larger pond. But they are still breaking the law.

I don't quite get what that is supposed to mean. Even a small-scale harmless fan film is breaking the law. I don't see what kind of line a court could draw; it could only confirm in each case that yes, fan productions that use controlled IP break the law. Drawing the line between law-breakers they want to suspend and law-breakers they want to tolerate seems to be completely the right-holders' prerogative, no?

No.

A fan film set in the Star Trek universe that uses wholly original characters and settings could arguably not meet the copyright infringement test in the same way that a fan film based on James T. Kirk and the U.S.S. Enterprise would. There are nuances and I agree with @El Chup that this may be a play by the studio to have the court set some precedent.

If anything, if they didn't go after Axanar at this point, it sounds like it would set a very bad precedent against enforcing their Star Trek IP.

I am reminded of the guy who wanted to create a Harry Potter encyclopedia. J.K. Rowling said sure, go ahead, just don't make any money off of it. He created it and then said, hey, I'll sell this and make money off of it!

Pretty sure it did not end well for him either. Of course, nowadays there's a wikia for basically every creative work that more than ten people know exists.

My comment was more about defining what is a fan production and what isn't for the purposes of fair use. There's no question a copyrighted IP is being used, but then you could make that argument about a compilation video of Star Trek clips on YouTube.

I'm willing to bet that 99% of those people who are willing to offer up money for Axanar will also be there for opening night when JJtrek 3 comes out. Any fan that takes Trek that seriously that they're willing to pay for Trek to be made in this manner isn't going to miss the movie, even if they moan about it afterwards.

As for the rest of your post, I find it astonishing that so many fans can't grasp the concept of intellectual property rights. They call for a boycott, but don't realise that in doing so they essentially condone theft.

Well, immaterial property rights are a thorny subject. It is possible to know what the law is and yet disagree with it strongly. One thing that surprises me in those who would defend the current law with glee is that they constantly accept the right-holders as stand-ins for creators, which they very much aren't; they're corporations that have made at least as much trouble for practically all the original creators of great Star Trek stuff as they are now making for fan producers.

So yes, the law is definitely on CBS' side; but it's s second question whether their actions make sense economically, and a third whether they are moral and whether the law should support it as it currently does.

You could, and right-holders do. While dilettantism and non-profit-status avoid one of several tests for infringement, they do not negate infringement; 'fan production' is not a fair use category.

@Packard (regarding post 2 above this one):

I completely agree, but don't you think the Axanar folks knew what they were doing in terms of legality? This is why I said up thread that it was a con job. They weren't doing this for the sake of art, but for enrichment. And they were banking on the naivete of the fan base to make it work. If Paramount tries to take down CaptainX, then I think we'll have need for a debate about IP, creator vs. owner, etc. But this isn't that.

I really don't know. A civil suit, as has been pointed out, is more than just a suspension of this movie; so I am not sure I can believe that the creators assumed this would be the outcome. I could kind of believe that a true con man job, a 100% deliberate scam, could collect money for a movie they knew they could never make. But a movie that would have them liable in a civil suit? Speculatively, assuming that they thought 'fan production' and the right-holders' previous leniency would protect them rhetorically, albeit not legally, seems more plausible to me. That would make them stupid, of course. Either way, I am very interested to find out what really happened here, if we ever can.

Well, fair use is not explicitly defined so I wouldn't declare your last remark as fact. That's the whole point. That said, for the reasons I have already indicated I do not think this is fair use. My reference to setting a precedent is more about clearly establishing that films of this nature need not be tolerated by studios. The ability to say to fan productions unequivocally, "we've beaten you once, we'll do it again - get permission or fuck off". As things stand today, many fans and productions will still try to argue fair use, and that's just more hassle for the studio.

The civil suit is necessary because filming was about to start and the suit seeks injunctive relief. Whether or not there was correspondence beforehand is unknown, however the studio has known about this for a long time and I find it hard to believe that Peter & Co weren't warned in advance. Peters claims to be a lawyer (in reality he's just a law graduate) and is in no short supply of hubris. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought he was smarter and told the studio to stuff it.

Ok, that certainly makes sense. I'd say that 'fan production' can't be a category of fair use precisely because it is itself not explicitly defined; JJ is very much a Star Wars fan, but TFA is not what we mean when we say 'fan production'. It would make sense that studios want precedents on how to deal with such fan productions in the first place.

I'm curious as to what happens with Star Trek "fan films" when computer technology continues to advance? Right now, a fan with a computer can make special effects, ship shots and all that which are the equal or sometimes superior to the original series. Some fan films have long since experimented with virtual sets though they do not look "right" yet.

So what happens in a couple of decades when technology allows you to take footage of William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock, program them to say original lines of dialogue and interact seamlessly on virtual sets, with special effects equal to the original on a 50 minute "episode" . A guy on his website posts a free trailer and says, send me 10 dollars and you can see the whole episode.

10,000 people send in their $10, the maker of the stuff then sends out the episodes, takes the money, shuts down his or her website, sets up another one and starts up again.

And then the FBI and Homeland Security bash down his front door, shoot his dog and arrest him for copyright infringement.

I'm only halfway joking.

Yeah. Assuming it doesn't settle out of court, if there's a trial and the studio wins, which they almost certainly would, then it just makes the whole thing easier the next time someone tries this sort of shit as they'd just have to cite the previously obtained judgment as evidence of the likelihood of being successful. I think this is a way of making it explicitly clear that fan films will be tolerated but only in the terms set by Paramount/CBS and warding off future versions of Peters, who think they're smarter than the studio.

As has already been discussed up thread, I think it speaks volumes that other fan films, including Renegades and the TOS continuations, which borrow heavily from the IP, are so far untouched. I think this is about the studio saying "look, you take it too far and start competing with us while finding ways to enrich yourself and we'll take a massive shit on you from high above". Lucasfilm and Paramount/CBS have been very flexible with fan productions to date, but I think this is the studio's way of reminding people who is in charge as the likes of Peters clearly take it for granted that the IP can be used. That's really what I'm getting at when I talk of setting a precedent. It's more about the studio demonstrating where their line is through the use of the courts, more than it is the courts deciding a point of law and where the legal line is. I'd say it's pretty certain they already know they can win hands down and are using Axanar to set an example.

Again what if they go to trial and a jury rules against CBS, or rules in their favor like the lawsuit by the USFL against the NFL in the 1980s and awards the USFL a ONE DOLLAR judgement? Because in the words of a court observer "The jury basically just said 'we don't give a damn'"

I'd be very surprised if they did. Where I practice these sorts of cases aren't heard before a jury so I wouldn't want to speculate on the scope of discretion the jury has, but if this case were heard before a judge in the English court they wouldn't be likely to succeed as the court would effectively be setting a precedent for fair use of IP for the purposes of rival ventures, and that would be perverse.

As I already told you up thread, if the case failed then obviously the project would be free to continue. The studio would likely have to pay the costs of the litigation and possibly even face a claim for additional losses caused by the injunction (assuming it's granted at this stage).

I get the impression you wanted to see this come to fruition and are disappointed, but I think you need to accept that there is little hope of a happy ending for the Axanar people now.

btw, are Axanar deleting negative remarks from their Facebook? All I see there is praise and support.

Here's the full complaint:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2660454-Startreklawsuit.html

"You can't use someone else's IP, their logos and such without expecting to get sued." --> "It's all because their producer thumbed their nose at CBS/Paramount."

Apparently you aren't old enough to remember when someone at Paramount got it in their head to go after every fan site on the web back in the web 1.0 days, because they thought these sites somehow took away from the official website. The backlash from that cause them to change their tune, and they realized that all they were doing was hurting themselves, and thus that gentleman's agreement came about.

Except that it wouldn't be just supporters of this specific fan film, because for all intents and purposes, it looks like they're going after this fan production out of spite. That can really hit home amongst Star Trek fans in general - the fans that have been counted on and taken for granted. Like me. You seem to be under the impression I supported Axanar when I really have had very little interest in it since it started. The only reason it's on my radar now is because of this suit. And for someone who thinks a boycott wouldn't matter, you seem to be pushing awful hard against it.

Nope.

By the way, anyone up for some Axanar coffee? http://www.axanarcoffee.com/
I hear the Izarian Gold is delicious.

Hmmmm...

Well there you have it. The Trek brand name directly being used to sell unauthorised products. I think it's now pretty clear why they have been targeted.