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Paramount and CBS File Lawsuit Against Crowdfunded, Indie Star Trek Movie (hollywoodreporter.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Back in August, an Indiegogo campaign raised $566,023 to produce Axanar, a Star Trek movie in development by an independent group of fans, who also happen to be film professionals. Now, unfortunately but predictably, Paramount and CBS have filed a lawsuit in California federal court claiming their intellectual property is being infringed upon. They are "demanding an injunction as well as damages for direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement." The guy running the crowdfunded film is a lawyer, and he said, "We've certainly been prepared for this and we certainly will defend this lawsuit. There are a lot of issues surrounding a fan film. These fan films have been around for 30 years, and others have raised a lot of money." He said CBS/Paramount weren't willing to provide guidelines on what types of fan productions would be tolerated (unlike Lucasfilm with Star Wars), because they worry about setting precedent.
If materials science advanced to the point where a starship could get close to the speed of light without the crew becoming a sticky goo on the side of the corridors, remain in geostationary orbit, remain pressurized at one atmosphere even when orbiting a large star, I'd be rather worried if it couldn't handle the pressure increase going deep into the ocean.
Take your average 300 foot tall starship. The water pressure difference form top to bottom is 10 atmospheres. That becomes a rather serious issue in diving.
Well, that's how copyright works. You don't have to justify why you treat derivative project A differently from derivative project B; unlike trademarks you aren't required to defend copyrights to maintain your monopoly on the material.
In fact I can think of one big advantage to not having a publicly announced policy as to why you are allowing project A: I'm thinking that a publicly announced policy might be construed as a kind of general license. You don't have to write that policy in away that anticipates all the ways that someone could harm your economic interests; if you think project B harms your bottom line in a way that project A does not, you can simply demand they stop and drop the legal hammer on them if they don't. Granted this leaves fan filmmakers in an uncertain situation, but that isn't Paramount's problem. Is that really more dickish than just going after everyone regardless of whether they hurt your interests?
In this case I think it's the combination of the people involved and the amount of money raised that has Paramount spooked. As long as a fan film is no better than amazingly good for an amateur production on a shoestring, that film is a net benefit to them; it amounts to free advertising for the franchise. But film pros with even a modest budget could potentially put out a product good enough to contest Paramount's control of what fans consider "canon".
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There is that magical structural integrity field. If the Enterprise in Generations can crash into a planet and have people walk away with nary a scratch, I figure what's a few atmospheres. Just sayin...
Greed is the root of all evil.
Under the original copyright terms the founders instituted in 1790, TOS would have been out of copyright since 1996 (20 years ago). Under the 1831 extension, it would have been out of copyright since 2010 (6 years ago). It wasn't until the 20th Century that the term got extended so far past the founder's intent that a 47 year old work is still under copyright. And even then, it would have been out of copyright only 8 years from now. It wasn't until 1976 (within my memory) that the current march toward virtual perpetuity really started.
Next question: Would a world where people can make and sell Trek TOS fanfic (both crappy and masterful) really be that bad? Are we, the public, better off this way? We only get new material once a decade or so, and it is almost completely immune to the natural market forces that rule media in general.