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CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

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BillJ said:
What keeps him from keeping his own copy?
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Not much. Electronic copies make it very, very hard to police this.

@ThankYouGeneR Mailing lists are very big biz. Depends on how detailed it is, but CRM is a huge business all by itself (customer relations management). Imagine you are a seller of green body paint-style makeup. Having a list of Trekkies with correct email addresses, and possibly also correct snail mail addresses and/or other data such as gender, age, how much they donated, etc. means I, the green body paint makeup seller, have a built-in list of people who are more than a little interested in my product. I don't have to do market research! It's all been done for me.

Companies pay big dollars for complete, detailed mailing lists.
 
I've asked before and have yet to see an answer: Given that Axanar said they are leasing the warehouse-studio, is there any way to find out who holds the title deed to the building itself??
 
Condolences to his family and friends.

I've known about his schematics work for years, via Star Fleet Battles and Brad Torgersens FASA STSTCS board. Really sad news indeed.:(:(:(
 
I have watched the ups and downs of Star Trek since it's network TV days. (My father use to watch it with me on our B&W TV in 68). After Enterprise got canned I use to get my fix with the many many fan series that were out there, the better of them being Intrepid, NV, and Continues. Enough with my Trek Cred.

I was a supporter of Axanar...I say was..because I stopped being one about a year or so ago. I remember watching Prelude and thinking that it was damn impressive for a fan film. I think I donated all of 30 or 40 bucks to them. Once I did I got in on their facebook forums and that's were things started to bother me about the production. I also walked up on an Axanar conversation between who I am sure was at least one of the producers talking about the latest kickstarter during San Diego's comicon last year (launched during last year's comicon) and remember walking away from that feeling like I needed a shower. These guys were all Hollywood and while I won't go intend what was said it was becoming apparent to me that Axanar was anything but a fan production. For me the final blow was their "donor" store. When they started selling models and the like that was a huge red flag. It should have been to them. In fact, I think I even questioned it on the forums, but was assured it was all on the up and up. I regret my donation, small as it was and if I could get it back, would. It's was pretty clear to me last year that Axanar was a profit making enterprise and sooner or later the IP owners were going to put the kibosh on them. Frankly, I surprised it took so long.

I remember a lot of the conversations about the Hidden Frontier forums were how they were trying to keep as low of a profile as possible. To not annoy Paramount/CBS and make webisodes for fun. That is the direct opposite of what Axanar did here.

Frankly, while the rules laid out are very restrictive, but I tend to doubt that they would go after a production like Intrepid or even continues if they violate one or two of them, because neither fan film group is profiting of the IP...which is rather the point of all of this.

The shitty thing for me and a lot of fans is the loss of all the great home grown Trek Series. Because they are gone. But for anyone to think that CBS/Paramount is at fault here ...(which most of the posters realize they are not)...I just wanted to give another perspective from a long time fan of the various fan films. There is 1 person to blame for the new rules and we all know who he is.

The one good thing to come out of this is I found this forum and hope to spend a good deal more time here. Can't figure out how I wasn't aware of it before.
 
asurob said:
I have watched the ups and downs of Star Trek since it's network TV days. (My father use to watch it with me on our B&W TV in 68). After Enterprise got canned I use to get my fix with the many many fan series that were out there, the better of them being Intrepid, NV, and Continues. Enough with my Trek Cred.
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May I offer my humble welcome to the group.
 
But for anyone to think that CBS/Paramount is at fault here ...(which most of the posters realize they are not)...I just wanted to give another perspective from a long time fan of the various fan films. There is 1 person to blame for the new rules and we all know who he is.
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I have a slightly different view. CBS and Paramount were derelict in allowing matters to progress as far as they did. They should have intervened before the first crowdfunding campaign was complete. Once a third party publicly attempts to raise capital using your IP, you have a duty to your shareholders--as well as your licensees and official business partners--to put an immediate stop to it. The guidelines (and indeed the lawsuit) is a case of cleaning up a spill that should have been prevented in the first place.
 
oswriter said:
I have a slightly different view. CBS and Paramount were derelict in allowing matters to progress as far as they did. They should have intervened before the first crowdfunding campaign was complete. Once a third party publicly attempts to raise capital using your IP, you have a duty to your shareholders--as well as your licensees and official business partners--to put an immediate stop to it. The guidelines (and indeed the lawsuit) is a case of cleaning up a spill that should have been prevented in the first place.
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Agreed. Who knows, maybe Lord Alec would've shut up by now had the hammer come down that much sooner?
 
RedForman said:
Agreed. Who knows, maybe Lord Alec would've shut up by now had the hammer come down that much sooner?
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Oh, that was a ticking timebomb no matter when the rules were to have come down. Whether or not he'd continue to mire himself in a lawsuit, that's another story.
 
Firebird said:
Oh, that was a ticking timebomb no matter when the rules were to have come down. Whether or not he'd continue to mire himself in a lawsuit, that's another story.
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The issue as I see it is stopping people from donating to a project that could never be legally completed as promised. The publicity from stopping an infringing third-party production before it gets off the ground is minimal. But once donors become invested in the project, they are more likely to view the studios as the enemy for trying to stop it later. It's an unnecessary destruction of consumer goodwill, which again speaks to the studios' duty to their shareholders and business partners.
 
oswriter said:
The issue as I see it is stopping people from donating to a project that could never be legally completed as promised. The publicity from stopping an infringing third-party production before it gets off the ground is minimal. But once donors become invested in the project, they are more likely to view the studios as the enemy for trying to stop it later. It's an unnecessary destruction of consumer goodwill, which again speaks to the studios' duty to their shareholders and business partners.
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Which is a lot of the reason you see the mind set among the axanar fans on their forums. They have become financially invested (at whatever dollar level)...it's hard to realize that you just wasted X amount of dollars on something that isn't happening. Hell, I'm annoyed I never received my patches that were promised in 2014 prior to Axanar's legal problems. And that's the exact mindset (to varying extremes) you are running into when you attempt to engage them regarding the big evil studio versus the small independent production. Continues and Intrepid were smart with their posting in the last day or so about all of this. The showrunners of those fan series recognize that they were fortunate to get to do what they did and while we all benefited from it, they acknowledge it and that was wise.
 
oswriter said:
I have a slightly different view. CBS and Paramount were derelict in allowing matters to progress as far as they did. They should have intervened before the first crowdfunding campaign was complete. Once a third party publicly attempts to raise capital using your IP, you have a duty to your shareholders.
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this is ture of course, however at any point its just bad PR for them, so its easy to see why kept putting off doing it, until Axnar came along, and before this web series, I suspect they though that benefits of the fan films out weighed the risks of the bad PR.
 
wamdue said:
this is ture of course, however at any point its just bad PR for them, so its easy to see why kept putting off doing it, until Axnar came along, and before this web series, I suspect they though that benefits of the fan films out weighed the risks of the bad PR.
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I'm sure they did. For fans like myself it certainly stoked my desire for more Star Trek with all the various fan productions (and I have seen them all). I think they other major thing the fan productions like NV and Continues did and did well is it made Paramount realize that the fans would accept someone else in the roles of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Hell, I believe the reason we got Star Trek 2009 and it's two sequels is thanks to James Cawley because he showed people would watch TOS with someone else in the lead role.
 
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