CBS Uses Copyright To Scuttle Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II Episode

McGruber writes "The NY Times ('Cookies Set to Cleared, Captain!') is reporting that CBS is blocking fan-generated internet series 'Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II' from making an episode using an unproduced script from the original series. In a statement, CBS said, 'We fully appreciate and respect the passion and creativity of the "Star Trek" fan and creative communities. This is simply a case of protecting our copyrighted material and the situation has been amicably resolved.'" The original writer of the episode, sci-fi author Norman Spinrad, was enthusiastic about the production, and planned to direct it himself.

Comments

It's a perfectly valid

[geekoid]

concern. CBS owns the copyright. This isn't about a clip, or anything remotely considered fair use.

Unless CBS has plans for the script, this certainly wasn't the smartest way to resolve it fro their company. That's a different matter.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Hatta]

Copyright exists to promote the creation of art. If CBS is using it to suppress the creation of art, that's not valid at all.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, I don't love the idea of them using it to stop fun little projects, but I can see why they'd want to protect ownership of a valuable property.

It's not like Star Trek is as worthless as it was before the most recent flick.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[ColdWetDog]

Star Trek New Voyages is art?

Only for distressingly small values of the term.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[cpghost]

Copyright exists to promote the creation of art.

If it ever was the case (and it's doubtful), it was a long, long time ago... when Copyright didn't last more then 2 decades from the time some work of art was created. The perversion of Copyright we have today (life + 70/95 years, or perpetual in case of corporations-owned copyrights) has long outlived its usefulness as promoting art-creation.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to get away from the idea that you can just sit on something (anything, really) and take it out of usefulness to society for a worthless end result (nothing ends up being done with it, the item doesn't get better, and it doesn't gain value).

Just because you can doesn't make it moral.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[MightyMartian]

It's been sitting on a shelf for over 40 years. It wasn't even resuscitated for any of the "official" series. It would have been a nice nod to the fans.

Well, they can eat it, I suppose.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Rakishi]

So if you publish a best selling book and Warner Brothers makes a movie of it without paying you any royalties you'd be fine with that?

After all, you don't want to suppress the creation of art do you?

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[gstoddart]

Star Trek New Voyages is art?

Only for distressingly small values of the term.

Dude, if a can of shit is art, why not Star Trek New Voyages?

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Did it occur to you that CBS might think the script sucks? And since they're the copyright owner they get to decide if they publish it or not. Do you really want a world where it's OK to publish someone else's work against their objections? Like say you write an erotic fanfic, but don't want to puiblish it. Should I really have the right to then make a feature length film based on your erotic fanfic without your approval?

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Oligonicella]

Because making it easier to proclaim that something someone has should be taken from them because you can't access it easily enough would be sooo much more moral?

Planning that spring release for your book is just too annoying for someone who wants it *now* (and most likely, free), so your copyright is yanked.

Very moral.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Oligonicella]

The original writer was working for someone and being paid when he wrote those things *for* that someone else.

Did you miss, or ignore, that part?

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Oligonicella]

"It's the copyright holder that's blocking it."

That would be the company he worked for when he did the writing. You know, got paid for working for someone else and all? Hence the copyright not being his.

Writer != owner. Your apple, your orange.

Once paid, the writer has no claim on the product if so contracted and I'll bet you real money he signed a contract to that effect.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[JATMON]

As long as CBS paid him for the work, then he should not be able to retain the right to the work. If he wanted to maintain the full rights to the work, he should have not taken the money from CBS or he should have put it in his contract that he retains the rights to all the works that he wrote.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[jordanjay29]

One sapient's trash is another sapient's treasure. Who is anyone to claim that something holds no artistic value, or deem that it 'sucks' and thus should not be available for consumption?

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Fned]

Do you really want a world where it's OK to publish someone else's work against their objections?

"Published?" They weren't selling copies of the script, they were making a Phase II episode out of it. That's a "derivative work", not "publishing."

Now, if you're asking if some of us want to live in a world where it's OK to make new works derivative of 40-year-old prior art, then the answer is OF COURSE WE FUCKING DO.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[jandrese]

Why should I as the author expect anything from that? I didn't make the movie, why should I expect to get a piece of it just because they used my book as source material? Copyright should protect me from having Random House take my book, slap a different cover on it, and resell it as their own work. It shouldn't prevent people from making derivative works.

It's pretty much impossible to write a completely original novel or movie. Something somewhere in your work is going to be construed as a reference to something before. That's a good thing, it lets people leverage the combined knowledge of society in order to advance the state of the art. The current copyright (and patent) system is undermining this, by letting artists block off their work for effectively indefinite periods and add the specter of lawsuit to any successful work. The copyright realm is not as bad as the patent realm on the lawsuit front (because as I mentioned before, even those people copied existing ideas), but I fully expect the situation to get worse over time unless something is done to nip it in the bud.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Dahamma]

The creator (or owner if the creator sold it) of that work, that's who.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[jordanjay29]

Don't worry, when it looks like Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and the other '60's era classics are coming into public domain, the copyright will be extended again to 'protect' these classic works.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Caerdwyn]

Did it occur to any of you that perhaps, just perhaps, CBS isn't hoarding? That the ownership of the script produced and submitted within the Hollywood structure (particularly the one that existed back in the 60's) includes a clause that forbids reassignment? That there may exist terms with the Screen Writers' Guild that forbids subcontracting SWG scripts for production by non SWG-signatory producers (like, y'know, fans)? Crap like that goes on all the time in Hollywood.

Screeching "GIMME GIMME GIMME MINE MINE MINE" like a two-year-old in the toy aisle of a supermarket isn't going to make CBS (or other owners of popular franchises) more likely to cooperate. In fact, it makes them more likely to start cruising through YouTube on a takedown spree. If the fringe fans become more trouble than they're worth, they're going to get shut down.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[1u3hr]

That would be the company he worked for when he did the writing. You know, got paid for working for someone else and all? Hence the copyright not being his.

Well duh. The issue isn't the legal rights, those aren't under dispute, but that CBS are being dicks in enforcing those rights when to allow the script, for a series off the air for 45 years could do them no conceivable harm.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Fned]

Setting aside the awfully cute assumption you've made that Warner Brothers actually pays royalties to book authors without getting sued first, it would depend a lot on how long ago I wrote the best-selling book. I, for one, don't expect to be paid forever for something I did a long time ago. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice, and I wouldn't turn the money down, but I also wouldn't go around thinking I was entitled to it. What have I done lately?

In fact, now that I think about it, if I was working on a new book and thought I could get it polished and shipped by the time the movie came out, I'd be totally cool with it. Because I could put "by Fned, author of [BEST SELLING BOOK], now a major motion picture" on the paperback cover and shelf-end standie and get a lot of extra promo for the book.

Even if the movie sucked, people would be interested in the book, and if they liked it they'd be interested in my new stuff. They might even contribute to my Kickstarter to publish my next thing.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Obfuscant]

"Published?" They weren't selling copies of the script, they were making a Phase II episode out of it. That's a "derivative work", not "publishing."

Since TV scripts are the means of creating a TV episode, the episode filmed from that script is hardly a derivative work.

If you take the characters from that script and use them in a different way, THAT'S a derivative work.

Now, if you're asking if some of us want to live in a world where it's OK to make new works derivative of 40-year-old prior art, then the answer is OF COURSE WE FUCKING DO.

And if you're asking if some of us want you to take material that wasn't considered suitable for production away from the owner and produce it anyway, then the answer is OF COURSE WE DON'T.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[IntlHarvester]

Most hollywood scripts have multiple authors, so Spinrad probably isn't the only person with 'moral rights' to the story. CBS probably doesn't even know the actual legal status of the script, and would have to rack up the lawyer hours to find out. There always could be some Harlan Ellison-type character waiting around to sue them. File this under CYA.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Stormwatch]

It's not like Star Trek is as worthless as the most recent flick.

Fixed that for you. Damn, that movie was one of the dumbest pieces of shit to ever bear the Star Trek name.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[networkBoy]

it is derivative, just fails the substantially different test.
Maybe CBS could have licensed it to them for $1.00 (or whatever the actual cost of providing a license is)?
This way CBS is preserving their (C) but allowing the fan base to continue.
-nB

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[sjames]

The correct analogy would be you submit a book to a publisher and they lock it in a vault and refuse to publish it, then they refuse to let you turn it into a movie with another group of people. The actual author of this episode was actually part of the production.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[thomst]

Access the NY Times article without having to register with this link.

The article is, as is typical of the Times, full of detail about the story in question. Some salient points:

1. Norman Spinrad - who wrote the original script in question - requested Gene Roddenberry not to make the episode, after the comedy he wrote was re-written into what he called "a very unfunny comedy" by Gene L. Coon (TOS producer), and Roddenberry complied with his wishes.
2. Spinrad himself comments on this sequence of events on his blog
3. ST Phase II has already produced an episode based on an unused script from the ST:TNG era called "Blood and Fire" by David "The Trouble with Tribbles" Gerrold (which Gerrold himself directed) without any dissent from CBS.
4. The Star Trek script is called "He Walked Among Us". It should not be confused, however, with Spinrad's non-ST science fiction novel of the same name, which is available in RTF format as shareware.

Spinrad, who's 71 now, was an enfant terrible of SF back in the 1960's. His novels "Bug Jack Barron" and "The Men in the Jungle" broke what at the time was new ground (the former for its use of vulgarity, the latter for its subject matter). He's been one of the most consistently interesting SF writers ever since, and I can't recommend his work highly enough.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[fermat1313]

but I can see why they'd want to protect ownership of a valuable property.

Me too, but what the fuck does ownership of property have to do with copyright?

(SPOILER ALERT: "Nothing.")

Not sure if there's any legal basis for that. How can the concept of ownership not apply to copyright? If I create a work, I own the copyright for that work. It is a tangible and potentially marketable asset and I can transfer that asset to someone else. With that copyright, I have the legal right to control (subject to some limits, such as fair use) how that asset is used.

I know this isn't a popular idea here, but copyright is, in principle, a good thing. The length of time we're giving it is ridiculous, and the way the *AAs are handling it is problematic, but to listen to many people here, they think that "information wants to be free" so there should be no basis for copyright. Using this logic, should it be illegal to create a work and not publish it at all? Would that even be within my rights? Of course it would. If I have the right to publish or not, clearly I should have some types of rights to control how it is disseminated after I publish.

I fully reject the idea that once I create a work of art that I'm morally or in any other way required to give it to the world to use as they see fit. The creator of a work does own the copyright for that work, and can do with it as he sees fit.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Have Brain Will Rent]

This is exactly why copyright should have been left at the previous very generous 20 years. Now some fans can't use an unpublished script written almost 55 years ago? A bit ridiculous. We need to get rid of the "corporations are people" concept and replace it with something more workable.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[liquidsin]

the creator was on board and excited about the project. i understand that cbs "owns" the script, but do you really believe that the author originally sold his work because he wanted a corporation to bury it forever? i totally get that cbs has to defend their properties, but they could have resolved this in a manner other than taking their ball and going home. shit, i didn't even know that cbs owned the rights to star trek; "CBS greenlights fan-made Star Trek project" would be a way better headline for cbs, but i guess they just don't give a fuck about anything but today's dollar.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[jedidiah]

The actual creator of the work was the one that wanted to direct.

Yeah. That's right. The desires of the actual TALENT are being ignored here. That's OK. I am sure you will come up with some pro-corporate excuse why the desires of CBS should override the guy who wrote it in the first place.

If they haven't been willing to publish the work after all this time, their rights should be null and void anyways.

Spinrad should get it back.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[aevan]

Rephrasing: You can sell to someone and give away what exists within your mind. Turning profit from daydreams.

Sounds like a goldmine to me. When the State holds a gun to your head and forces you to give up your daydreams, then I'll consider it dystopian.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Grishnakh]

No, he sold it because he thought they'd make a nice TV episode with it. The author doesn't have the ability to hire actors, make sets, buy cameras, and film his own TV shows, and then get TV networks to broadcast them. So he sells his work to someone who does have all that, so that they'll use his script and turn it into a live-action TV episode. If they're not going to uphold their end of the bargain after all these years, then someone else should be allowed to use it.

Besides, this episode is probably decades old. If Congress hadn't stupidly passed unconstitutional copyright-extension laws, this thing would be in the public domain by now.

Of course, I'm not really sure how old this episode is, since I can't read TFA as it's behind a paywall, but since Phase II is a continuation of ST:TOS, I assume it was an episode written for the 60s show, and never made it to production because the show was canceled so early.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Dahamma]

He sold it and took their money. If he wants he can try to buy it back, or if he doesn't want to give back the money he can write a different script (a monkey could write the crap they have been passing off as Star Trek TV episodes in the last decade).

If you want to argue the abstract validity of copyrights, fine, but the fact that a guy who wrote the work sold it for profit and now needs permission to use it not relevant to that argument.

Re:It's a perfectly valid

[Caerdwyn]

Their response hardly qualifies as a tantrum. What we're seeing here on Slashdot... does.

My sympathies lie entirely with CBS. The law is on their side, the basic fairness of "they paid for it, they should be able to control what they paid for" applies, and the behavior of people saying "we will take anything we want anytime we want" is infantile.

Time to write CBS a letter praising them for defending their rights, and in the process defending the rights of copyright owners everywhere.

not hurting anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

CBS's heart must not be *truly* Klingon.

lawsuits

[k6mfw]

It seems entertainment industry spends more time on lawsuits, copyright issues, piracy, etc. rather than producing new entertainment material.

Definition: Amicably

[Lumbre]

Amicably (am i ka blee): An adverb meaning money exchanged hands to simulate a friendly conflict resolution.

Seems valid...

[N0Man74]

That sounds disappointing, but it seems valid. It is obviously a fact that works from that time period are still protected by copyright.

Whether it is sane, or whether it promotes the progress of science and useful arts is another matter completely...

This is a lame story.

[Shotgun]

Why is this news? Someone wants to directly copy material from a large corporation's profitable franchise, and the franchise says no. I think a big "Duh?" is in order.

If orignal author of the episode most likely wrote it under contract with CBS, his enthusiasm is immaterial, as the piece was not his to be enthusiastic about once he accepted money for it. If he did not do it under contract, his enthusiasm is immaterial, as the franchise was not his to be enthusiastic about. CBS is the entity that has the rights and trademarks for Star Trek, and if we are to have a productive society, the rights of ownership must be respected.

Re:This is a lame story.

[vux984]

Why is this news?

Do you think an original unproduced script writer for star trek tries to direct his script on his own every day? Do you think star trek fans would find that interesting if one did?

Isn't that the definition of news? Something somewhat out of the ordinary happens involving something that people are interested in... sounds like the definition of new.

What I can't figure out is why so many people on slashdot can't figure out why things are considered news.

CBS is the entity that has the rights and trademarks for Star Trek, and if we are to have a productive society, the rights of ownership must be respected.

That's a completely unproven assertion.

Re:This is a lame story.

[Bucky24]

What I can't figure out is why so many people on slashdot can't figure out why things are considered news.

A lot of people here follow the "if it's not important to me why would it be important to anyone else?" line of thinking.

Why not just license it?

[FrankieBaby1986]

Why can't CBS just license it for a dollar? Copyright is enforced, license is legit, fans get something that CBS must know they're never going to do anything with. How many unproduced scripts can they have? Would they really ever re-make the series using the old scripts and use this one? Greed, pure and simple. "If we can't use it, nobody can"

We seriously need copyright reform. Copyright terms should be 14 years again. I think as a society, the we (the US) should just ignore copyrights after that time.

Re:Why not just license it?

[jamstar7]

Yeah, that would seriously fuck the mouse, now, wouldn't it? Disney wouldn't be able to keep all their old stuff in the vault for decades to keep prices sky high for when they do rerelease stuff.

So when was the last time anybody saw 'Steamboat Willie'?

Re:Why not just license it?

[0123456]

What, pray tell, is your problem with honoring contracts?

Copyright is effectively a contract with the public: 'we let you have exclusive rights for a limited time so that we get more material in the public domain'. When big copyright holders breach their side of the contract by pushing ever-longer contract terms, the public don't see much reason to respect them.

Why copyright should be 20 years (1 generation)

[cpu6502]

With possibility of renewal if the original human is still alive.

This script is just sitting around, unused. If it were in the public domain, CBS could use it, or New Voyages could use it, or anybody could use it. Public domain PROMOTES artistic endeavors while the copy monopoly stifles it.

IMHO

Re:Why copyright should be 20 years (1 generation)

[cpu6502]

>>> Your idea of promoting artistic endeavors means giving artists shortcuts by "borrowing" public domain work

Yes.
Exactly.
And this copyright blocked the New Voyagers people, and even the original author, from converting a script to video form. It very, very clearly STIFLED creativity. The whole point is that Art is meant to be shared with EVERYONE, not locked up for 150 fucking years like YOU want it Anon. Coward

What's even worse is when the copy monopoly is used to deprive artists of their fair pay, as is typical in music contracts. Or when the record companies stole nearly 1 billion dollars from Canadian artists by taking their songs, putting them on greatest hits compilation CDs, and never paid the artists. All legally.

20 years should be enough time for the original author to make money. Then let it fall into the public domain (unless the author renews the copymonopoly).

Re:Why copyright should be 20 years (1 generation)

[jamstar7]

Copyrights may annoy copycats, but the existence of copyrights in their current form do not stop anyone from creating new ideas.

Yes, they do. With a reasonably high priced team of lawyers, you can 'prove' that just about anything is derived from anything else, and derivatives belong to the original copyright holder. If I write a science fiction story and mention Vulcan as a planet, I have 'derived' the story from Star Trek. If I reference Vulcan as an industrial orbital platform, I've 'derived' the story from Cole & Bunch's 'Sten' series. The problem with the information age is two-fold. First, there's tons of media and information out there that can be accessed easily. It's almost impossible to prove you weren't influenced by any particular work. Second, everything is squirrelled away behind copyright and not going back into the public domain. Thus, the 'original artists', or the studios who aquired the copyrights of said works, can stomp on anyone they want.

Your idea of promoting artistic endeavors means giving artists shortcuts by "borrowing" public domain work. If the path of least resistance is simply taking someone else's IP and making some changes and reselling it, you don't think media corporations would almost exclusively be doing that now instead of trying to create new original ideas?

In a word, Disney. About the only 'original' work to come out of the Disney studio that I can think of offhand was 'The Black Hole', and everybody wants to forget that one. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, The Lion King? All Disney captures of public domain works. John Carter? Yet another Disney capture of the public domain Edgar Rice Burroughs books. Who's 'taking shortcuts' now?

IP yeah u know me

[jollyreaper]

Thankfully the era of media conglomerates owning pop culture will soon be over. With fan efforts like Kickstarter, new IP can be made with a Creative Commons or Copyleft scheme that will preserve it from being captured and abused by corporations while allowing fans free creative reign.

Can you imagine what western culture would be like if Homer's descendants were the Greek Disneys?

public: Hey, he didn't even make up the original myths, he just retold them!

Greek lawyers: Doesn't matter. Copyright extents to the author's death plus 3,000 years.

public: But what about culture?

Greek lawyer: These temples don't pay for themselves, bitch. Now we've gotta take it up with the Hebrews on this Samson character. Clearly they're infringing on our Herakles IP.

Hebrew lawyers: Get in line. We're already filing a lawsuit against those Messianics for unauthorized derivative material. They lifted our entire Torah and just added new material at the end.

St. Paul Diddy: It's called sampling. This book wasn't nothing before I got here.

troll lawyers: Cease and desist all of you. We bought the IP rights to the Sumerian tablets. All of you are in violation.

Re:IP yeah u know me

[cpghost]

Greek lawyer: These temples don't pay for themselves, bitch.

As a matter of fact, Eurozone countries are already paying back the Greek for the privilege. They just do it under a false pretext.

AC is wise

[Picass0]

Yes, clearly a new Charlie Sheen sitcom is more artistically valid than a fan effort to bring an unseen script to the web.

After all, all stories older than 45 years are void of legitimate artistic merit. How about all those poor saps continually regurgitating authors like Dickens, Hugo, Homer, Shakespeare... so sad. What did they contribute to the 2012 pilot season?

Is there any possibility...

[roc97007]

...that mindshare of the older star trek properties, designs and interfaces will fade, since CBS isn't doing much with them and they're absolutely forbidding anyone else to keep old Trek in the public eye? It seems like CBS's interests would be better served to provide license at reasonable cost, and keep the properties in the public eye.

The Doomsday Machine

[steveha]

[Norman Spinrad has] been one of the most consistently interesting SF writers ever since, and I can't recommend his work highly enough.

He is also the author of my all-time favorite episode of Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine. That is an outstanding story, and really works as hard science fiction.

Fun trivia facts:

At the time Star Trek was made, model-building was a popular hobby, and you could buy inexpensive Enterprise models at your local hobby shop. The special effects guys went and bought an Enterprise model, and then damaged it, to be the damaged USS Constellation.

According to Norman Spinrad, the doomsday machine itself was actually a wind sock dipped in cement.

Star Trek had limited budget, and they had a policy of trying to alternate between "planet episodes" and "ship episodes". A "planet episode" would involve going to some interesting place (a planet or space station or whatever) and might involve location shots or new sets; a "ship episode" would be shot mostly or entirely on the existing Enterprise ship sets. "The Doomsday Machine" was conceived as a ship episode, and it was one of the most effective ones: they redressed one of the Enterprise sets to be the "auxiliary control room" of the Constellation, and didn't need any additional sets or location shots.

steveha