Wil is correct. This is a for-profit commercial production. It’s a shame, because the production is actually quite good and it’s sad to see Axanar Productions shoot themselves in the foot, but this is not fair use of the intellectual property. I want to see more, and I, as a fairly ardent Start trek fan, urge Axanar Productions and Paramount to find a diplomatic solution that allows this non-canon offshoot to flourish. Perhaps we need Picard to mediate the disagreement.
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This isn’t a fan-film by any reasonable definition.
Yes, copyright is broken, and it’s pretty likely that this will break it further. Bad cases make bad law, and what is and isn’t fair use often comes down to how fair the court thinks the allegedly-infringing party is being.
Odds are pretty good that not only will they lose, but that the decision won’t get down to the nitty-gritty of ruling in their favor on particular details where it is fair use; rather, we’ll probably get a short decision that just dumps everything up into a ‘You lose’ bucket, even points that a more sympathetic defendant could have won.
Fuck these guys. They gave Paramount a perfect test case, killing off honest fan-films forevermore.
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“Fan film” is a subjective term. There’s no reason why “fan film” and “commercial venture” have to be mutually exclusive. A fan film is a film made by fans, not by an originating creator or the studio that bought/owns the rights to it. Whether it makes any money is besides the point of the term and is only an issue because the studios are only out to make a profit, not to create works.
This already happens.
You’ll notice that I said a licensing fee from the gross, not the net profits.
All you’ve said is just more proof that copyright is broken. A large studio can take from smaller artists and from the public domain and because they have a bigger war chest of lawyers and lobbyists and politicians in their pockets, they can generally do whatever they want.
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Copyright law exists to protect the commercial interests of content creators. So legally yes, it does make a pretty big difference.
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Paramount is overreaching by stretching to list and grab “language” as part of a litany of 6 other, more conventional narrative components like costumes and specific characters.
Language is part of dialogue, which represents one aspect of the Star Trek Copyrighted Works and may be considered (at a later point) in a substantial similarity analysis. Funky Films, Inc., 462 F.3d at 1077. Defendants argue that the Klingon language is not copyrightable because it is a useful system. Motion at 9.
… this argument is absurd, since a language is only useful if it can be used to communicate with people, and there are no Klingons with whom to communicate.
The Klingon language is wholly fictitious, original, and copyrightable, and Defendants’ incorporation of that language in their works will be part of the Court’s eventual substantial similarity analysis.
Defendants’ use of the Klingon language in their works is simply further evidence of their infringement of Plaintiffs’ characters, since speaking this fictitious language is an aspect of their characters.
Plaintiffs’* Opposition to Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss or Strike in Part Plaitniffs’ First Amended Complaint [Bold type added]
*Plaintiff=Paramount
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Well, copyright law exists “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Its current perverted incarnation is to protect the commercial interests of large corporations and protecting the commercial interest of actual content creators is incidental. Hence, copyright is broken.
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Constitutionally, copyright law is supposed to exist to promote progress and arts, not commercial interests per se. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:
But, I agree that it has been warped beyond its clear and explicit constitutional mandate to mean “protect commercial interests”.
Edit:
@CarlMud Doh. Jinks!
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There’s all kinds of things messed up about current copyright law.
But the theory behind it, which is NOT totally bonkers, is to create incentive for making original work by granting certain rights (especially commercial rights) to the content creators. That’s why it makes a big difference if the group making “fan films” based on your work is actually a commercial interest rather than some random dude making home movies for fun.
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Is this the one that was crowdfunded but they aren’t selling it? I dunno… I mean what is wrong with that? If you were rich and made a movie but just gave it out free, is that ok? What if you gathered a group of investors, made the movie, and gave it away for free? If that is ok, then how is crowdfunding anything more than just a group of investors?
I am not a copyright lawyer, but it seems to me art is art, and if you aren’t selling it, you can’t really just claim that you own all art with certain characters or trademarked names and things. (At least not in a moral sense, legally I am probably wrong.)
Paramount and other entities rarely have a problem with other fan based movies, shorts, animations etc. But then there is like the guy who did the X-Men animation got bapped on the nose.
I think it is simple - if your fan art is amateurish and sorta sucky, they don’t care because it isn’t as good and thus not competing with your professional stuff (even if it is sorta sucky). But if you have an amateur who can put together something truly brilliant, something that looks like it could be “real”, then the lawyers come out. Which is a damn shame.
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I think the lawyers mostly come out when they smell money.
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Fair enough. But based on who has the money for lobbying and on the precedent of writers getting paid based on net, you can be damned certain that the when the law gets passed, the licensing fee will be based on net profits.
Possibly. But their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.
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Except these fan makers don’t have money. That poor X-Men guy sunk all his time and money and didn’t even get to share it all. My heart goes out to him.
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And if we had a reasonable copyright length, Star Trek TOS would already be in the public domain.
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So if a random film that otherwise had nothing to do with Star Trek had been done in Klingon, Paramount would assert that they could block that?
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And if you think human lawyers are a pain…
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Klingon lawyer.
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KlingEr
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Why does the article in blog view have a picture of a radiator? This isn’t the first time for photo screwups, either. I think the content management and the blog view are somehow out of sorts
