Star Trek Axanar Fan Film Lawsuit Continues

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Well this sucks. It looks as though, not only is this lawsuit moving forward, J.J. Abrams and Justin Lin might be getting dragged into this whole thing as well. :( For those of you not familiar with the Star Trek Axanar fan film.

The defendants not only want Abrams and Lin communications to help support its arguments on this topic, but they aim to compel the studios to hand over everything from financial documents related to Star Trek to internal discussions about fan films and fan film guidelines. They surely hope that CBS and Paramount's long acquiescence to fan films is further supportive of their position. In response, the studios argue that some of the information is protected by attorney-client privilege or constitutes confidential information and trade secrets.
 
You know what we need Steve? To take the robots that want to kills humans and sic them on the suits of these studios. Now that would be one helluva headliner.
 
CBS and Paramount ... stop harassing your own fans! You want us to pay for your damn streaming service next May, then stop acting like a bunch of jerks.
 
By forcing paramount and CBS to show documents supporting their claim that these studio have allowed fan films in the past, they are only hurting future projects. If there strategy works, then the studios will simply take a stance of NO films without proper licenses. I don't think they are looking at the bigger picture here (no pun intended)
 
This isn't surprising. Axanar kind of ruined it for everyone. They took in a lot of cash and then paid themselves out of that money. Effectively making money of CBS/Paramount's license. Paramount was more or less okay with this, but CBS couldn't handle it, and honestly any project that takes in over $2 Million dollars for a 'fan' film shouldn't be surprised that they are being shut down.
 
This isn't surprising. Axanar kind of ruined it for everyone. They took in a lot of cash and then paid themselves out of that money. Effectively making money of CBS/Paramount's license. Paramount was more or less okay with this, but CBS couldn't handle it, and honestly any project that takes in over $2 Million dollars for a 'fan' film shouldn't be surprised that they are being shut down.

This.

They made money on someone else's ideas, plain and simple. If you are going to do that, you should be in very close contact with the owners legal department to make sure you do things correctly.

Or give it away and don't profit from it.
 
By forcing paramount and CBS to show documents supporting their claim that these studio have allowed fan films in the past, they are only hurting future projects. If there strategy works, then the studios will simply take a stance of NO films without proper licenses. I don't think they are looking at the bigger picture here (no pun intended)

But that in itself is the very meat of trademark law. IF they have been permitting dilution of the trademark, their ability to defend the trademark is reduced. If they want their trademark to be valuable they need to police it like disney and McDonalds do.

Those dudes showed up to shut down a local place called alladin's deli with a picture of disney characters on the sign, and a truckstop nearby that called itself McGas.

But back to the star trek thing, copyright only goes so far, and some things they need to have trademarked/service marked/etc to have a strong defense. From the soudns of it, production made a large effort to avoid trademarks for the most part, and you wind up in this gray area that is going to head into the minutiae of copyright law unless the fan film was sloppy.
 
Paramount could simply create a new studio that covers all the 'Fan made' non cannon stuff as long as it comes up to standard. Then folks wont be confused thinking anything from that it 'Full Trek'
 
I hadn't heard of this before.

I always thought of fan films as the domain of super geeky poor production garbage, but this Prelude to Axanar is actually pretty damned good. Makes me wonder what they can do if they put together the whole thing.
 
Also, I wonder if the fact that Star Trek Discovery, the new CBS all access series also being a prequel to the original series has anything to do with their unusual amount of butt-hurt on this subject.
 
So, are there any other good fan productions I should watch?

Star Trek Continues is the benchmark of fan film productions. Their episodes are more than VFX tech demos- and they've nailed getting the look of TOS right down to the lighting, sets and hairstyles. Their actors are better than most fan prod too. (Grant Imahara from Mythbusters is a convincing Mr Sulu)

Everyone always sides with Axanar the instant they learn about it. Everyone always sees this as a David v Goliath fight. And everyone assumes CBS/Paramount as the bad guy. And it annoys the bejeezus outta me. CBS/P left well enough alone for nearly 50 years until Axanar. We have crappy fan film guidelines and crowdfunding limits now because of Axanar. I'm betting Star TRek Discovery being pushed to May 2017 is because of Axanar. (the actual trial is slated to begin in January)

Alec Peters has done some pretty dastardly shit. The actual director and crew and one of the principal actors that made "Prelude to Axanar" said fuck that noise, and will not get in the boat again. Axanar feature film is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN, and Peters knows it. But he's already spent the money on a leasing a nice studio, and is making money on that. And no ones going to get the crowdfunding money refunded back.

Yes, I'm obviously biased against Axanar. But I've been following this for three years too. Check out Axamonitor.com if you want a fact-checked full skinny about the whole sordid affair.
 
The "Axanar" people knew what they were doing was infringement and they just kept going. CBS/Paramount have been more than nice and for every inch they're taken a yard. If they don't defend the property they'll lose it so there isn't much choice here.
 
Sadly CBS/Paramount dont seem to be producing anything this good.

Sour Grapes.

Perhaps if the corporate ass-holes can pull their heads out a way can be found to make everyone happy?
 
This.

They made money on someone else's ideas, plain and simple. If you are going to do that, you should be in very close contact with the owners legal department to make sure you do things correctly.

Or give it away and don't profit from it.

yup, they dug their own hole and climbed inside of it, now they are pissed that dirt is falling on them.
 
This isn't surprising. Axanar kind of ruined it for everyone. They took in a lot of cash and then paid themselves out of that money. Effectively making money of CBS/Paramount's license. Paramount was more or less okay with this, but CBS couldn't handle it, and honestly any project that takes in over $2 Million dollars for a 'fan' film shouldn't be surprised that they are being shut down.
I'd agree, if they hadn't produced anything. But they did seem to be on their way to create the fan film with the best production value to date. And honestly I think the problem for CBS was that they saw their trailer and realised that it looked better than their own project. That's why discovery was delayed, and that's why they want to shut down anaxar.
I don't think the crew of anaxar did anything differently than countless fan film producers before them.
 
I'd agree, if they hadn't produced anything. But they did seem to be on their way to create the fan film with the best production value to date. And honestly I think the problem for CBS was that they saw their trailer and realised that it looked better than their own project. That's why discovery was delayed, and that's why they want to shut down anaxar.
I don't think the crew of anaxar did anything differently than countless fan film producers before them.

You don't think running not one, but two crowd-funding campaigns (Kickstarter and Indiegogo) and raising over $2 Million and then paying yourself out of that money, not to mention selling unlicensed Star Trek merchandise, is different than any other fan films? Sounds a lot different to me. It sounds a lot like making a profit off of other people's IP and then crying that they will not let you do it.
 
You don't think running not one, but two crowd-funding campaigns (Kickstarter and Indiegogo) and raising over $2 Million and then paying yourself out of that money, not to mention selling unlicensed Star Trek merchandise, is different than any other fan films? Sounds a lot different to me. It sounds a lot like making a profit off of other people's IP and then crying that they will not let you do it.
Running two campaigns is not new practice it's not that special I've seen that a few times especially for smaller projects who needed the money desperately. You act is if it was ok to raise 200.000, but not 2 million. Is there a line somewhere I don't know about? What does it mean to pay themselves? I assume they got to pay bills and eat while doing the movie. So paying the people occupied with the project is kind of the point of the fundraiser I'd think. And that includes the producers too. I don't know what do you mean by pay themselves apart from that, do you have any references to that? Cause I can't find anything specific. AFAIK the production is set up as a non-profit organization. Where are they selling merchandise? Or are you referring to backer rewards? I don't think that counts as selling merchandise.
 
This.

They made money on someone else's ideas, plain and simple. If you are going to do that, you should be in very close contact with the owners legal department to make sure you do things correctly.

Or give it away and don't profit from it.

Yeah, except that someone that had the ideas has long been dead. The current owners likely spend more time watching box office results more so than any Star Trek related material, much less adding any new ideas other than rubber-stamping another reboot with the same old characters (genius!)
 
Running two campaigns is not new practice it's not that special I've seen that a few times especially for smaller projects who needed the money desperately. You act is if it was ok to raise 200.000, but not 2 million. Is there a line somewhere I don't know about? What does it mean to pay themselves? I assume they got to pay bills and eat while doing the movie. So paying the people occupied with the project is kind of the point of the fundraiser I'd think. And that includes the producers too. I don't know what do you mean by pay themselves apart from that, do you have any references to that? Cause I can't find anything specific. AFAIK the production is set up as a non-profit organization. Where are they selling merchandise? Or are you referring to backer rewards? I don't think that counts as selling merchandise.

The NFL is a non profit also. You are stupid if you think non profits don't actually make money for the people running them. That is the new scam. Fuck look at some of the charities out there that run as non profit.

Bono's ONE foundation under fire for giving tiny percentage of funds to charity

here is but such one example, Bono setup a non profit and only 1.2% of the money actually went to its expected area.

In the end not a single thing you said matters. These people don't own the rights. I don't care if you don't like the current look of the mustang. You can't go make a new one and start selling a Ford Mustang that you think is better than the current model. I don't care if you sell them at cost, you still can't do that. You can't open a store called Walmart and start selling items at cost. It also doesn't matter if they have to pay bills and eat. That is still making money off the project. It doesn't take that smart of a person to realize if are able to pay for a single thing you have made money. And it doesn't matter what reason you can try to think up, it doesn't matter how fucking sour you might be to current stories in that universe. CBS and Paramount own the rights, they have to protect them and don't have to prove anything to anyone. They can simply say our material, you can't use it. Just like Apple doesn't have to give any reason why you can't start selling a iPhone 7 with a headphone jack.
 
The NFL is a non profit also. You are stupid if you think non profits don't actually make money for the people running them. That is the new scam. Fuck look at some of the charities out there that run as non profit.

Bono's ONE foundation under fire for giving tiny percentage of funds to charity

here is but such one example, Bono setup a non profit and only 1.2% of the money actually went to its expected area.

In the end not a single thing you said matters. These people don't own the rights. I don't care if you don't like the current look of the mustang. You can't go make a new one and start selling a Ford Mustang that you think is better than the current model. I don't care if you sell them at cost, you still can't do that. You can't open a store called Walmart and start selling items at cost. It also doesn't matter if they have to pay bills and eat. That is still making money off the project. It doesn't take that smart of a person to realize if are able to pay for a single thing you have made money. And it doesn't matter what reason you can try to think up, it doesn't matter how fucking sour you might be to current stories in that universe. CBS and Paramount own the rights, they have to protect them and don't have to prove anything to anyone. They can simply say our material, you can't use it. Just like Apple doesn't have to give any reason why you can't start selling a iPhone 7 with a headphone jack.

Noone questions if CBS is within their rights to go after fan fiction or not. They can absolutely do that. On the other side we don't have to applaud them for doing so. Their reason for going after it is what bothers most people. That they set up a double standard. They turned a blind eye for everything. But one they they woke up and saw hey someone is actually making something good we can't have that! That is like showing the biggest possible middle finger to fans around the world. And I suspect it might backfire on them. The people that funded axanar will be most likely boycotting Discovery for this.
From what we know about it so far (granted it's too soon to judge) but it doesn't seem to be that much of a loss to skip it. Since I'm not in the US, and most likely I'll be geolocked out of watching it either way I don't really care either way. But this behaviour hurts fans too. Maybe they should've shut down the project in it's infancy, and not after they collected 2 million from ST fans.

And sure there are crooked non profits, but there were no signs that this was one. I'm still waiting for you to provide proof of that.
 
Also regarding other fan projects and films, do you think people don't get paid? All of the actors and crew, etc?

They were not going to sel l this fan movie, it was going to be released FOR FREE to everyone.
 
Noone questions if CBS is within their rights to go after fan fiction or not. They can absolutely do that. On the other side we don't have to applaud them for doing so. Their reason for going after it is what bothers most people. That they set up a double standard. They turned a blind eye for everything. But one they they woke up and saw hey someone is actually making something good we can't have that! That is like showing the biggest possible middle finger to fans around the world. And I suspect it might backfire on them. The people that funded axanar will be most likely boycotting Discovery for this.
From what we know about it so far (granted it's too soon to judge) but it doesn't seem to be that much of a loss to skip it. Since I'm not in the US, and most likely I'll be geolocked out of watching it either way I don't really care either way. But this behaviour hurts fans too. Maybe they should've shut down the project in it's infancy, and not after they collected 2 million from ST fans.

And sure there are crooked non profits, but there were no signs that this was one. I'm still waiting for you to provide proof of that.

No, people are very clearly bitching that CBS and Paramount are stopping a fan made movie which means that you are bitching that they are in fact questioning their rights. And nobody is applauding them, they are saying that they understand why it was shut down. Otherwise this would be a none issue. As for many other your other commends jump to below the quote to the bottom of my post here. It also will cover the point you brought up about not stopping it early on but waiting till it gathered $2 million. Again that is the problem, fan projects are allowed as long as they followed the rules in the link posted below. One of those happen to be not making money, they made money which is one of the major issues.

Also regarding other fan projects and films, do you think people don't get paid? All of the actors and crew, etc?

They were not going to sel l this fan movie, it was going to be released FOR FREE to everyone.

Star Trek Fan Films

If they are following these rules to not get CBS after them then yes, that is what happen. That is part of the FAN FILM side of it. A fan project is done for free, not at a cost. As soon as you start hiring people and doing it by any means than out of pocket you are making money. Since it is easy to try to twist words around to make something seem different lets use hard numbers. Lets at that in my bank account right now I have $2000. And lets say that a fan made project that I have in my head cost $2000. For me to make no money and truly be doing this all for free I should have $0 at the very end. Now, I could sell the copies for $1 a copy and sell $5000 worth. So that means that at the end I have $5000 in my band account now. Or I could take donations in advance and end up with $5000 in donations. Meaning I have $5000 in my band account. From a pure number perspective I have made $3000 either way. The method by which I tried to get the money doesn't matter. In the end I have put an extra $3000 into my bank account that I didn't have before. That is a profit, that is not allowed as I did not pay for the rights. It doesn't matter how I get the money, $3000 is still $3000 that I never had before I started the project and the only reason I have that money is because of the project.
 
So, are there any other good fan productions I should watch?

Star Trek Renegades -

Takes place in the post-Nemesis timeline and features a female lead as commander, which is exactly what CBS is doing with Discovery. Acting is good. Makeup is good. Story is good. FX not as good as Axanar but pretty close. Some of the sets look more like stage productions rather than what we typically see from professional filmed shots. They used crowd funding and offered DVDs/BDs as donation perks just like Axanar.

Star Trek Horizon -

Takes place in the Enterprise timeline. Acting is OK. Makeup is OK. Story is excellent. FX is on par with Axanar but they rely on the blurred background technique for masking CGI sets a little too much.

As far as Alec Peters / Axanar. I really don't think paying himself was a really big deal. It was something like $38,000, which isn't really a whole lot in Hollywood Land. His biggest mistake was selling unlicensed ST merchandise. I also saw nothing wrong with using the crowdfunding monies to build a studio, which was a cost-saving measure over renting a studio. He did plan on renting it out to other small productions, including ST fan films. I think this was also OK as long as the rates were below-market and helped other fan films have a place to create their works. Alec should have went to CBS and got all the necessary licenses before starting the project. I'm only guessing CBS wanted too much and the restrictions ( as seen with the new fan film guidelines ) were too restricted.

I still think CBS needs to work with the fan films rather than taking them to court. After all, CBS is trying to get folks to pay $7 a month for Star Trek. Let these fan films create their work on the condition that they get first run on All Access.
 
Most fan productions clearly break the first rule already. Just saying.

I see now that Axanar was not transparent. And they should be reprimanded for doing things shadily.

But as a fan I want to see high production value fan fiction. And CBS needs to accommodate for that somehow in the future. There are a lot of talented people out there and a lot of enthusiasm. And currently CBS is quenching that enthusiasm.
 
Star Trek Fan Films

If they are following these rules to not get CBS after them then yes, that is what happen. That is part of the FAN FILM side of it. A fan project is done for free, not at a cost. As soon as you start hiring people and doing it by any means than out of pocket you are making money. Since it is easy to try to twist words around to make something seem different lets use hard numbers. Lets at that in my bank account right now I have $2000. And lets say that a fan made project that I have in my head cost $2000. For me to make no money and truly be doing this all for free I should have $0 at the very end. Now, I could sell the copies for $1 a copy and sell $5000 worth. So that means that at the end I have $5000 in my band account now. Or I could take donations in advance and end up with $5000 in donations. Meaning I have $5000 in my band account. From a pure number perspective I have made $3000 either way. The method by which I tried to get the money doesn't matter. In the end I have put an extra $3000 into my bank account that I didn't have before. That is a profit, that is not allowed as I did not pay for the rights. It doesn't matter how I get the money, $3000 is still $3000 that I never had before I started the project and the only reason I have that money is because of the project.


You do realize that they made up these "rules" AFTER the Axanar lawsuit was brought forward right? There are many fan-made Star Trek films that include PROFESSIONAL actors in them (some that have acted on legit Star Trek shows/movies) and cost money to produce.

Any actor (and writer and other people) part of SAG and similar groups must get paid a minimum pay rate. Not a lot of people, especially in Hollywood, work for free.
 
This.

They made money on someone else's ideas, plain and simple. If you are going to do that, you should be in very close contact with the owners legal department to make sure you do things correctly.

Or give it away and don't profit from it.

Star Trek wasn't CBS or Paramount's idea.
 
Back
Top