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CBS Shuts Down Stage 9, a Fan-Made Recreation of the USS Enterprise

242 points by okket 8y ago

iamben 8y ago
Honestly, I don't understand the logic of some people. They're so desperate to keep a tight grab on what they have, they lose sight of what could be. It's like the music industry ~20 years ago. Rather than suing people that were downloading - FANS that were downloading - they could have gone "how can we monetise this?" Or even, "we have a ton of cash, let's buy the small companies that are doing MP3 stuff and see what happens." But they fight it to the extreme (looking at you, Metallica) and everyone loses. Until now, when a large portion (what was it last week, 75%?) of the revenue is now precisely what they fought against, but they've lost a large portion of the control. Same thing here. I haven't watched Star Trek for ages. But fans and fans talking are what makes something successful. Based on the article alone, this looks far more like a passion project than a revenue driver. Surely a more sensible approach would be "We love that you've done this. We'd like you to advertise our new/old show/merch/whatever" and we'll send you some goodies to say thanks. Everyone wins. Sigh.
- ashleyn 8y ago
  Short term profits > long term profits in the minds of many managers.
  - HenryBemis 8y ago
    This year's profits & bonuses are more important than "what may happen to humanity if we open up to...". Plus they want to set a precedent and show to anyone else that may want to make an Star Trek spin-off/infringe their IP that no mercy means no mercy.
  - paulcole 8y ago
    In other words, you're not going to get fired for what might happen 15 years from now. But you could get fired if you fuck something up this quarter.
  - ken 8y ago
    How does shutting down Stage 9 help their short-term profits, either?
    - bb88 8y ago
      I don't think it does help the short term profits. But if you want to have complete control the brand, you need to lock stuff like this out. It's not personal. It's business. Though that may not be what the fans feel.
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  It's a legal thing. Everyone is worried that their intellectual properties might turn public domain.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > It's a legal thing. Everyone is worried that their intellectual properties might turn public domain. If that's the case, couldn't CBS have just licensed its IP to these people in a good-natured way?
    - modzu 8y ago
      cbs seems to be a machine of human automatons not actually thinking or doing anything.. just following an algorithm, copying the shapes and colors from gene roddenberrys works and sticking on a price tag every business cycle
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        Companies are still composed of people, and you’re denying their agency and culpability. If you work for Company X and are deciding or helping to implement something bad or wrong, you are personally doing that wrong thing and are culpable. They shouldn’t be able to hide behind the company. Actual people are doing things. Throwing our hands up and saying “well, it’s the company that’s wrong, nobody in particular!” Just helps to enable bad people to behave badly in bad companies. This is true for silly things like Star Trek to serious things like working with dictators, NSA spying, etc.
        modzu 8y ago
        i agree with you 100%! i think you misunderstand -- thats exactly what im saying
  - bodas 8y ago
    Copyright doesn't turn public domain if you don't exercise your rights. A work only becomes public domain if the copyright period lapses or (in some countries) if they make an explicit declaration to that effect.
- modzu 8y ago
  yup. cbs should be handing the team a wad of cash and saying, "run with it!!!"
- technofiend 8y ago
  >It's like the music industry ~20 years ago. You should go read some of the movie industry quotes from when Valenti ran the MPAA. He likened Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs) to a serial killer; 'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' [1] Yet his industry was dragged kicking and screaming to progressively more profitable media. VCRs made the movie industry billions. DVDs did it again. Bluray? Yet again more oceans of cash. And still the MPAA fought every innovation and did their best to limit the utility of each iteration. [1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/05/31/1622232/valentis-boston-strangler-testimony https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/05/31/1622232/valentis-bo...
- prepend 8y ago
  In this case the music industry was rational (although wrong) as 100% of $14 in 1999 is better than 75% of $4B in 2016. [0] Now there’s a more diverse revenue stream for musicians and there’s inflation to consider, but in this case the music industry was acting in their best interest. One or two companies (Apple) came out ok, but the industry would have been stupid to internally decide to give up $11B in revenue. It’s possible that they could have figured out a new model, but unlikely as we aren’t anywhere near record revenue much less higher. Society is better off, but the industry sucks. That’s why it is up to external forces to disrupt. It’s not rational for an industry to destroy itself. Only certain companies can survive when you have a big shift in revenue. [0] https://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/3340/ https://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/3340/
  - hakfoo 8y ago
    One interesting aspect is that the market was going to peak and crash regardless of P2P, CD-R burning, or whatever. CDs were the first mass-market audio format that weren't going to wear out through normal use. In a related matter, this made them very viable for used sales-- buying secondhand LPs or tape is a crapshoot by comparison. So you'd end up with a very clear curve on the valuable back-catalog sales-- ramping up as CD players became affordable, then omnipresent, and then trailing off once the market was primarily composed of replacements for damaged discs and a small amount of new consumer discovery. The industry's alternatives were limited: * Try to get people to re-buy their collection again with SACD, DVD-audio, etc. * Ever broader catalogs hoping people will keep buying. Neither was sustainable. Even if people went all-in on SACD, it would have just kicked the can 10 years down the road. And trying to constantly groom new acts is expensive, risky, and eventually consumers say "I've got more recorded music than I know what to do with" and stop buying.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
I'd have gone more of The Orville approach and made a game loosely inspired by Star Trek or something to that extent and made a ship that looks somewhat like the USS Enterprise which I've seen done in at least one commercial game, I can't recall the name of it though. Oh, what sad times are these when IP/copyright ruffians can 'cease and desist' at will to old fans. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design video games are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
- MPSimmons 8y ago
  Bridge Crew is basically just a really pretty, licensed version of Artemis (https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_Bridge_Simulator/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_...)
- modzu 8y ago
  they're sort of mail-blasted out to anything even remotely infringing; you put the onus on the recipient to prove otherwise. for fans and small shops without the resources to make their case (which may well be legitimate), its bullying :(
- SpaceManiac 8y ago
  The "survey ship" in the Galactic Civilizations series looks pretty much exactly like the USS Enterprise.
captainmuon 8y ago
I don't understand why CBS won't just let them do their thing. It's not like they are loosing profit from it. I further don't understand why the maker's didn't just release this anonymously to begin with. Anyway, I believe (hope) one day copyright and ownership of stories will be seen as a major injustice. Why can't everybody have their own Star Trek? There is no need to control it, or for copyright to be exclusive. There still can be an "official" CBS Star Trek if we legalize fan works.
- wanderingjew 8y ago
  Because Patrick Stewart signed on for another Star Trek reboot. This would obviously feature the bridge of the Enterprise D. A few years ago, CBS shut down the fan film Axanar, because it told the story of the Star trek universe about 10 years before Kirk, during the Klingon war. Last year, Discovery aired, which tells the story of the Klingon war. Take this as a sign of what the new Picard series will include.
  - MPSimmons 8y ago
    >This would obviously feature the bridge of the Enterprise D. I'm not sure that's obvious or even likely, but they clearly are being aggressive about the IP, whether it's justified or not.
  - madengr 8y ago
    Yeah, but Discovery sucks. As a lifelong ST fan (grew up watching TOS reruns), I couldn’t make it through 20 minutes before turning it off. What an abomination. Traditional OTA TV companies can’t produce quality content anymore.
  - Zardoz84 8y ago
    Don't forget that they go form very relaxed police with fanfilms to a stupid police (for example, they enforce to use ORIGINAL merchandising from Star Trek for props on fan films)
  - mrlala 8y ago
    >This would obviously feature the bridge of the Enterprise D. The enterprise D was destroyed.. what kind of trekkie are you?
grizzles 8y ago
The Constitution guarantees the right to free expression. CBS's strategy is based on threats, not law. A common misconception: Stage 9 looks the same as the USS Enterprise and that matters; nope. Legally, if Stage 9 is an original work, there isn't much CBS can do to stop it other than to try to look scary w/endless litigation. With the ACLU's help Stage 9 should easily prevail.
- DontGiveTwoFlux 8y ago
  From the video linked in the article, it looks like they are using the music, and characters from the show. The content of the screens also appear to be copies from the show. I am not a lawyer, but those do look like infringing elements. Still, maybe with these elements removed they could have a case.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  Do you have something you can cite regarding this? If I write my own novel that happens to look exactly like Stephen King's "It", I can't just start publishing it.
  - grizzles 8y ago
    If yours was an original work, how would you know it's the same? It's absurdly unlikely that you could write "It" but I'm sure people co-invent blocks of text every day. I wonder what the longest block of text is on the internet that two people independently wrote.
    - kwhitefoot 8y ago
      > I wonder what the longest block of text is on the internet that two people independently wrote. Not more than a couple of dozen words I would think. The number of possible combinations is astonishingly high. You might find this interesting: http://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/187848_0ec906d62df443b58a67061303299d63.html http://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/187848_0ec906d62...
    - apetresc 8y ago
DocTomoe 8y ago
"Oh god, we have a fanatical fanbase which wants to drown us in cubic miles of their disposable income, what should we ever do?" "Find out something they like, then sue the hell out of it."
- sonar_un 8y ago
  That’s what you get when you have lawyers on retainer with nothing to do. They look for someone to sue to make money. Every time the lawyers write a letter they also write a bill for services.
  - Folcon 8y ago
    This is what I don't understand, who hires a lawyer to represent them and then gives them an open remit to go after anyone and everything? At some point I would have thought, heads of creative or marketing would be going, "so what's our customer base saying about us lately? Oh, everyone's angry because of something our lawyers did, maybe I should look into that before we lose more valued fans." Is there some enshrined rule somewhere that says, "Lawyers get to burn the house down, if they're doing it there's probably some complicated legal reason. Ho hum." Are people like John Van Citters the apparent "CBS Vice President for Product Development" holding vanity positions that have no real power in the company so the organisation doesn't feel the need to back any statements they make? Or is it just that fans need to learn the lesson, "feel free to enjoy what we give you, just not enough to make anything too much like it, or we'll hit you with a lawyer"?
- maxsilver 8y ago
  I think it's trickier than that. "Oh god, we have a fanatical fanbase which isn't interested in buying our (expensive new product) but which still loves this (discontinued product), and are making more of it without paying for our licensing" "Find the unlicensed (discontinued product) and sue the hell out of it" I suspect this has little to do with wanting to piss off TNG fans, but about trying to coerce them into the newer products (like Discovery, or the unnamed Patrick Stewart reboot), or at least protecting the licensing fees they still get around TNG. (See how they are suing Stage 9, but are totally ok with Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Star Trek: Online -- which have TNG stuff in them). I don't agree with this method of enforcement. But I could imagine how/why an executive might think this way. They could have easily used these same lawyers time to help Stage 9 move into proper paid licensing instead (making them even more money, and simultaneously being nicer to the fans and creators). But I'm not a highly paid executive, so what do I know?
torgian 8y ago
That's terrible, seriously. If it were up to me, I would move to east Asia and continue this project in Hong Kong or China or some place where this sort of thing happens all the time.
petepete 8y ago
They shut down the (fantastic, at the time) Tricorder app[0] for Android about ten years ago. I have no idea how that (or this) could possibly do anything other than piss off fans of their shows. That being said, Star Trek is pretty much dead to me now. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxvqrwxu-84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxvqrwxu-84
- smhenderson 8y ago
  I agree, and I really put the fanatic in fan when it comes to Star Trek. I decided I couldn't be bothered anymore when they made Discovery available only on their streaming service. I could think of nothing else it would be good for and did not want yet another monthly payment just to watch one show.
  - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    I can't remember the last time I watched anything on CBS, and I wouldn't have paid even if I wanted to see the new show. I watched the first episode and it was dreck, one of the stupidest things I'd ever seen. However, Netflix has the other Star Trek shows, and those are still good (well, mostly), so I will continue to enjoy them.
- modzu 8y ago
  thanks for this! developer here; im going to recreate this app for the sole pleasure of telling cbs to 'suck it' when they send the inevitable cease and desist. and when it goes to court, ill be back pleading for help! :)
  - jimktrains2 8y ago
    https://fxedel.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/packages/org.hermit.tricorder/ https://fxedel.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/packages/org.hermit.... https://gitorious.org/f-droid-mirrors/tricorder https://gitorious.org/f-droid-mirrors/tricorder
  - _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
    +1 to you, it's always amazing who hangs out on HN.
teekert 8y ago
Its because lawyers (of which there are already too many) need to have something to do to justify their salaries. They don't care if they hurt the franchise they are "protecting". At this point I'd love for someone like Patrick Steward or LeVar Burton (very interesting guy with nice projects like LeVar Burton reads btw...) to drop some comments on Twitter about this nonsense. These lawyers do nothing but hurt people that love Star Trek a lot and probably are among the franchise's best customers.
- bb611 8y ago
  A cease and desist letter is one billable hour. Writing a licensing agreement could easily be dozens of hours, and would still protect the company's IP equally well. This is a management decision, as it is for most media companies. The lawyers might even disagree with his strategy, that they wrote a C&D is no more indicative of their minds than an engineer's code. Professional execution doesn't imply agreement, just recognition of authority.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  "At this point I'd love for someone like Patrick Steward or LeVar Burton ... to drop some comments on Twitter about this nonsense." I have heard rumours over the years that a lot of Star Trek actors are creeped out by the fan community. Some might hide those feelings so that they can get some nice income from the convention circuit, but could you really expect them to rush to support obsessive fans in a case like this?
  - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    Who hasn't met a Star Trek fan that creeped them out? That doesn't mean that the majority of fans are weird or bad people.
pjc50 8y ago
I don't know why people attempt huge efforts like this when they must know that they will get shut down as soon as it becomes sufficiently visible. Same goes for "fan remake" games and the like.
- uratool 8y ago
  Because common sense tends to prevail.... eventually.... so long as you persist. And for many the years of being slammed for doing it will just make the eventual freedom all the sweeter.
- modzu 8y ago
  swat teams don't raid COMICON and carry away everyone dressed up in star trek outfits in paddy wagons right? fan art is a legitimate and protected form of artistic expression
- mrlala 8y ago
  To be fair, it's been just as visible 2 years ago and it is now. Anyone who follows VR has known about this for that long. Also, to the creators it's really a private project that they shared publicly for people to enjoy. I guarantee you they are still fully working on it internally to enjoy by themselves. Additionally, they consider this "fan art". It's not a game by any means, it's a VR experience (which they later released non-VR standalone versions as well). All you do is walk around the Enterprise-D and do some basic interactions with objects for some sense of it not being a completely static world. I think it's a very fair case- how is a 3d rendered environment any different than a picture someone draws and releases?
dommer 8y ago
Sounds a like a real shame, lots of faithful energy put to good quality work. Perhaps this is more about projected issues than this specific work. Law is based off the precedence of previous cases. If this project is allowed to continue other future projects may get legal precedence to continue, and those future projects may damage the brand or the profitability of the IP.
- ascagnel_ 8y ago
  If it's about setting precedent, CBS could still offer licenses free-of-charge. Lawyers would still get their rights, and PR doesn't have to deal with the fallout of a C&D against a fan project.
StavrosK 8y ago
Alright, so, where should these projects go when they're threatened out of existence? IPFS? Secret organization on Keybase? Maybe I should start a company in Somalia or somewhere which will head/protect maintainers/release worthwhile OSS projects that have been threatened with legal action.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bitL 8y ago
Lesson to learn: when you are working so hard on something like this, make your own story and design every single time, don't copy somebody's ideas even if it is for free. Team up with similar people if you lack in some part of required imagination.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- apetresc 8y ago
  But the whole point of this project was to carry nostalgia for TNG. There's millions of 3d models for generic spaceships. The only reason this one existed was to be Star Trek down to its smallest details.
  - bitL 8y ago
    Yes, you are right. However lawyers gave us all an answer we didn't want to hear, hence it's futile to be a creative fan of copyrighted works, unless one wants to restrict their creations to dark web only and risk consequences way out of proportions.
transfire 8y ago
Funny how the lessons of the shows seem completely lost on CBS. I'm done with them. Will always love ST, but the latest movies and TV show miss the mark. Time to move on.
BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
When this project hit HN a month ago I said > It does look cool. And it also looks like a huge labor of love. Luckily CBS and Paramount Pictures already have guidelines in place for allowing noncommercial fan-made productions. One hopes that they will continue to recognize how important hardcore fandom like this is to the success of the franchise. And now I'm saddened.
tony-allan 8y ago
Way to build and maintain a fan base CBS. I'm assume you were legally within your rights to do this but you guys suck!
yosefzeev 8y ago
Creating a vision of a moneyless future of a federation of planets to be ruled over in the actual world by a fracturing money-hungry conglomerate is my vision of all that is wrong in the world.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Worst part is this wouldn't have cost them a dime. Is there a word that holds the same meaning as "irony", but with stronger implication?
- krapp 8y ago
  >Creating a vision of a moneyless future of a federation of planets to be ruled over in the actual world by a fracturing money-hungry conglomerate is my vision of all that is wrong in the world. It's a television show made to sell advertising, not an anti-capitalist manifesto. Do you really expect Paramount to treat this multi-million dollar franchise differently than any other intellectual property because its fictional universe doesn't use money?
unethical_ban 8y ago
Ignore CBS' unwillingness to cooperate. Remove copyrighted elements like anything you didn't create by hand, remove references to 1701-D and Enterprise and any character. Take it to court. I'll help with the GoFundMe.
- imglorp 8y ago
  It won't stop them from suing on the grounds that a "typical person" would recognize the material, ie close enough. eg: https://99designs.com/blog/tips/5-famous-copyright-infringement-cases/ https://99designs.com/blog/tips/5-famous-copyright-infringem... So they'll sue and it's not at all clear you'd win. Win or not, that's going to be a huge defense pot to match the CBS lawyer armada. Just my opinion, but if you're going to throw a bunch of money into the wind with low certainty and low reward, there are many worthy charities in great need.
jedberg 8y ago
Back in the day, early on in Reddit's life, people started making fan art of the Reddit alien, and some cases they started making products with their creations and then giving them away. We pretty much just let that go. Then someone started selling their products with their fan art, just to make their costs back. At that point we had a decision to make. Do we shut down all the fan art, or do we do something about it? The decision we came to was that our fans are what make us, so we asked our lawyers to write up a licensing agreement for us that we could use with all the fans. It included provisions for profit sharing so that people could even make a profit off their fan art, as long as they cut us in for a small percentage and got our permission first. And that's how we ended up things like a complete reddit bike kit. [0][1] After that, it was easier for us to license stuff than it was to try and shut it down, not to mention the right thing to do. I'm sad that CBS couldn't come to the same conclusion. [0] http://i.imgur.com/AEPJh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/AEPJh.jpg [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/2je6z2/2015_reddit_kit_start_your_design_engines/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/2je6z2/2015_redd...
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  Politically controversial yet completely legal things, like weapons parts, were not only banned on manufacturing, but as a logo on the subreddit[1]. Meanwhile, a federally illegal, in different ways controversial activity such as marijuana consumption is permitted[2]. It's the right of the company, but there is certainly bias in the use of the logo, and not all fans of reddit are welcome. 1. https://imgur.com/a/bAOhi#tY6JS4l https://imgur.com/a/bAOhi#tY6JS4l 2. https://old.reddit.com/r/trees/ https://old.reddit.com/r/trees/
  - jedberg 8y ago
    I kinda knew this would come up. The gun thing was my call. I'm the one who approved the use of the logo on a lower receiver. I consider it one of the worst decisions I ever made. Yes, it was legal, but it caused a huge controversy and made the controversy even worse when we had to pull it back. The balancing act with allowing fan art is that one group of fans hates the work of another group of fans, you have to make a moral decision as to which group is "right", and it's always the wrong decision to some people. In that case we should have predicted the controversy and said no from the beginning.
deckar01 8y ago
I was recently exposed to this interpretation of copyright law. I was trying to get an ad for 3D printing services approved and I was informed that although I personally designed and built a vase that looks like a prop from the film "The Fifth Element", I did not own the rights to reproduce it in any way, including using photos of my object. When I read into it it appeared that every visual element in a film is covered by an implicit copyright, and any derivative work based on those elements is controlled by the copyright holder. There is no practical way to acquire a license or determine if one is even necessary. I don't understand how people who blatantly derive their work from people who can't defend it feel justified in taking control of derivatives of their work from their fans.
- pssflops 8y ago
  Whatever happened to "fair use"?
  - deckar01 8y ago
    It is narrowly defined as transformative comments, criticism, and parodies. Being inspired by a small visual element of a much larger work apparently requires licensing.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - jerf 8y ago
    The thing the Greater Internet calls "fair use" doesn't actually exist. There is a legal concept that does exist and can be used, but it is much smaller than the Greater Internet supposes.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  That seems wrong. You didn't copy the object. You reproduced its design. The distinction isn't much in the language, but it is important legally. You couldn't scan the object and print an exact copy, or use still frames from the movie, but you can certainly create your own object and slicer files from scratch to make a novel object visibly indistinguishable from it, or even make a new instance from the original construction recipe (if one exists). You could also take the original prop and make a new photo of it yourself. All that activity is instead governed by patents, specifically design patents. It is very unlikely that a film production company would seek out design patents for random prop elements that were seen in the final cut of a movie, unless they are to be used for merchandising purposes. Lucas could certainly create a design patent on Obi-Wan's and Darth Vader's lightsaber props, so the licensee could have a protected monopoly on selling the reproductions as toys. In that case, you couldn't 3D-print your own Vader lightsaber. You could still make your own lightsaber design, and print that, but the design patent prevents you from making one that looks specifically like the one in the patent. With no design patent, you can reproduce from scratch anything you see. Copyright is about rote copying of an embodied artwork. Derivative works must include some piece of the original. That isn't what you did. Alternately, an image or object can be trademarked, wherein certain visual elements can be claimed as symbolic of your work within a specific domain. That's stronger, but narrower protection. If a lightsaber is a trademark image for something like a computer game production company, you couldn't use similar objects or images to promote your own business relating to computers, software, or scientific equipment. But you could probably use it on a beer label with no problems whatsoever, because that's a different domain. You don't need to register your trademark in order to defend it; you just have to use it in commerce. The major characters, unique props, and distinctive sets are all potential trademarks, particularly if they appear in multiple works within the same domain. Whomever it was that denied you on copyright grounds should not have done so. There is no way to acquire a license because none is necessary. In any case, copyright violation is a civil matter, and only the owner of a copyright has standing to defend it. There is no requirement for anyone else to do it on their behalf. (I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.) As for Stage 9, it seems like that C&D would have been based on a claim that the bridge set of ST:tNG is a trademarked element of the franchise, in the domains of entertainment and computer software. Copyright is not the issue. The set design was integral to the show and the games based on it; it appeared in almost every episode. That's one of the ways you knew you were watching Star Trek, in addition to the uniforms and logos. If someone were to use a perfectly replicated model of the bridge to produce a video, there could be legitimate brand confusion by a viewer, who might think that their video was officially sanctioned by the Star Trek trademark owner. Something like Robot Chicken, which uses licensed toys to make videos that include the elements trademarked in the same domain, walks a fine line, that is likely saved only by the crudeness of the reproduction. It is clear that the sets and actors are toys, and not pretending to be the things they represent.
Aeolun 8y ago
Ah fuck, this is the first I even heard of this, but it sounds really cool. Guess I’ll never get to experience it now. I just don’t get why companies feel the need to be a dick to everything that moves.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
As a dyed-in-the-wool trekkie, this makes absolute sense. Fans understand Trek in ways that CBS execs do not and never will. Therefore, CBS are scared shitless whenever some fan work comes up that they think may remind the fans how shitty the official output is and how far from what many consider the true spirit of Trek. ... yeah, I'm talking about the Abrams stuff. And -more controversially, I guess- Star Trek Discovery [1]. _____________ [1] No, not because there is a black woman in the lead. Christ, already. It's just ... nice SciFi but not Trek.
- DiabloD3 8y ago
  Babylon 5 is one of the best Star Treks out there. It ain't like CBS isn't already known for their long list of unprofitable behavior ;)
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  "Star Trek Continues" was better than anything commercial that bears the "Star Trek" name going back quite a few years. It is as if they realize they can't compete with people who actually love the show, so they have to shut them down, even though they are not losing money.
- krapp 8y ago
  >It's just ... nice SciFi but not Trek. I don't know, I'm kind of getting tired of the Trek template. It can be nice to take a risk now and then. They did that with Deep Space Nine and that turned out to be one of the best series IMO. Voyager, on the other hand, stuck to it so much that they ruined their own premise, as did Enterprise.
mattlondon 8y ago
I did not hear about this project until I saw the story yesterday. The wayback machine has an archive of the download page's link to the torrent, which is heavily seeded. The Streisand Effect strikes again...
- jorisw 8y ago
  magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ce1cf2847d8303a8e7e708cb378d9e7ab1534628&dn=Stage9-Mac-v009.zip magnet:?xt=urn:btih:f2b84daf5a60ad9a452c933523de7ec786bbb0bd&dn=Stage9-Windows-v10.exe
  - coldacid 8y ago
    Thank you!
  - Sargos 8y ago
    More importantly... is there a torrent of the last VR release?
    - jorisw 8y ago
      magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2fa616b75593e7e3561e1b80552a70a1b1a14ff5&dn=Stage9%20-%20Windows%20%2b%20Linux%20%2b%20VR&tr=udp%3a%2f%http://2fmgtracker.org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%http://2ftracker.mg64.net%3a6969%2fannounce http://2fmgtracker.org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%http:/...
ravenstine 8y ago
- "Oh yeah, we own that old series? How come we aren't making more money off it?" - "Let's bring that show back and hire showrunners who have stated that they hate the original show." - "The existing fans of the show are geeks and nerds. Let's alienate them so we can appeal to a more general audience. And let's also be sure to punish them for expressing their adoration of the show." - "Add more special effects! Lens flare! Insert gratuitous eroticism and obvious political propaganda! Enraged viewers are profitable viewers." (Rule of Acquisition #287) - "Why aren't millennials watching cable TV anymore? Nitflix? We're a multi-billion dollar company, so why can't we have our own streaming service? That'll be hip with the kids, right?" That's basically why I don't watch Star Trek anymore or TV in general. Why would I pay money to people who don't appreciate what I did for them all those years starting from age 6?
- nickysielicki 8y ago
  > obvious political propaganda Can someone please recommend an article/documentary/book/etc. that goes into detail about how this works in practice? It's so obvious when you watch shows like Jack Ryan or Madam Secretary or Zero Dark Thirty that there are some backroom dealings going on that insert a particular political association onto the viewer, but the scale and scope of such a targeted insertion is so ridiculous that you start to wonder if you're just being paranoid. The amount of people that would have to be involved with it, and for everyone to go along with it... Someone must have blown the whistle on this at some point, right? I'm not out of my mind, am I?
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    I'd be interested in that too, if it exists, although my assumption would be that it arises naturally because, if you want your work to be successful, you've got to conform to the group that you're in and drink the kool-aid. Hollywood and the entertainment industry are like that more than ever because the press, which makes a lot of money off making people enraged, are watching what they're doing 24/7 and waiting for even semi-notable figures to do something politically incorrect. There's a lot of pressure in entertainment to avoid anything that might be politically incorrect because that can mean a loss of profit in short order. If an actor in a movie or show says something on their own time that can be construed as offensive, that can mean millions in losses. So I don't think there's someone from up top telling writers what to write, but the nature of the industry encourages people to write a certain way and believe certain things(publicly).
kerng 8y ago
Extremley defensive reaction by CBS. CBS should have done the opposite, sponsor the project or financially support it, so it becomes theirs or at least have some influence on it. Prosperity for all would follow.
vertline3 8y ago
Star Trek was always a vehicle for communism, kind of funny that CBS protects it with capitalist vigour.
TheRealPomax 8y ago
Usually something _this_ aggressive is because the license owner already has another party lined up to make a product that would be in direct competition with the fan made product, either in name only, or in content. So I guess expect a star trek game that lets you walk around the USS Enterprise coming out in the forseeable future, and expect it to be not as good as Stage 9 because it needs to make money, not let people just "walk around".
- deckar01 8y ago
  https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/star-trek-bridge-crew-ps4/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/star-trek-bridge-cre...
chooseaname 8y ago
> The member of the CBS legal team that issued the order went on holiday for a week immediately after sending the letter through, which slowed things down considerably.” So, only one person on the legal team is allowed to work on this case? This is just hugely unprofessional. I think I would contact the ABA.
neuromantik8086 8y ago
Maybe it's time to reboot Babylon 5.
sailfast 8y ago
Rename it Star Trick, change the badges on the uniform slightly - maybe have the NPCs say random insulting things, and then call it satire. I'd imagine it's at least one way to cover your bases?
logfromblammo 8y ago
This is what we lose when the public domain becomes outlawed by endless copyright extensions. When that genre-based concept gets locked up for decades under the same corporate masters, we get Star Trek: Discovery, behind a paywall on a shard of the fragmented video streaming market. The fans inspired by the earlier series while they were younger simply do a better job-with fan-art like this and Galaxy Quest and The Orville--than the officially-sanctioned studio can crank out. It's almost as though we need some "copyleft" seeds for various genres able to support large fandoms, such that anyone can add to them, and submit pull requests to the community-elected maintainers to become canon. Licensing is free (gratis, not libre) and automatic. Rather than going all in on Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Starcraft, or Stargate, or Star Control, or Babylon 5, or Dune, or Asimov-verse, or whatever, all that open-culture fan-fiction can be actually publishable for profit and adding to the common fandom. Like public domain used to be, before they choked it out. I think it would take an alliance of authors/playwrights who don't individually have great chances at becoming rich and famous to essentially enter into a suicide pact lite, to sacrifice the possibility of more rich to improve the likelihood of more famous. They agree upon the rules for the fiction universe, and divvy it up such that each writes a piece of the canon. Then they publish on a fixed initial release schedule and hope it catches on. Once the fan-fic starts coming in, they actually read it, and declare the best work to also be canon, re-publishing it and paying the authors their cut. If it catches on, do a pilot teleplay with the best community theater actors available. Publish digital models of the signature props for at-home 3D printing. It could eat the lunch of the closed-culture franchises. But it could also fall flat, or fall victim to infighting. It seems like this idea is not new, and it isn't. Creative Commons has laid the groundwork. The problem is that it only provides the vision and the legal framework, and hasn't tackled the aspect of creating an intentional community to seed a specific fertile plot in the field. There's nothing there yet to tie disparate creators together as being part of the same overall thing. Space Opera and Sci-Fi Adventure-Drama are proven genres. The conventions don't lie; people go and spend.
carapace 8y ago
"The Orville" has season 2 coming out. I gotta hand it to MacFarlane, he's carrying the torch forward better than anybody else, IMHO.
ryanhuff 8y ago
My son plays minecraft off and on. Recently he showed me a fan created online world that would surely be shut down if the Corp entity that controls the brand was to discover it. Its not very well know as far as I can tell. It sounds like these Star Trek fans were a victim of their own success and large community.
sehugg 8y ago
"The answer ... is no. We are therefore going anyway." -- Kirk, Star Trek III
nullsmack 8y ago
Here's a prime example of why existing Copyright law is extremely harmful and should be shredded asap.
JohnClark1337 8y ago
And CBS continues on their crusade to eliminate the prime universe.

242 points by okket 8y ago

Honestly, I don't understand the logic of some people. They're so desperate to keep a tight grab on what they have, they lose sight of what could be. It's like the music industry ~20 years ago. Rather than suing people that were downloading - FANS that were downloading - they could have gone "how can we monetise this?" Or even, "we have a ton of cash, let's buy the small companies that are doing MP3 stuff and see what happens." But they fight it to the extreme (looking at you, Metallica) and everyone loses. Until now, when a large portion (what was it last week, 75%?) of the revenue is now precisely what they fought against, but they've lost a large portion of the control. Same thing here. I haven't watched Star Trek for ages. But fans and fans talking are what makes something successful. Based on the article alone, this looks far more like a passion project than a revenue driver. Surely a more sensible approach would be "We love that you've done this. We'd like you to advertise our new/old show/merch/whatever" and we'll send you some goodies to say thanks. Everyone wins. Sigh.

ashleyn 8y ago
Short term profits > long term profits in the minds of many managers.
- HenryBemis 8y ago
  This year's profits & bonuses are more important than "what may happen to humanity if we open up to...". Plus they want to set a precedent and show to anyone else that may want to make an Star Trek spin-off/infringe their IP that no mercy means no mercy.
- paulcole 8y ago
  In other words, you're not going to get fired for what might happen 15 years from now. But you could get fired if you fuck something up this quarter.
- ken 8y ago
  How does shutting down Stage 9 help their short-term profits, either?
  - bb88 8y ago
    I don't think it does help the short term profits. But if you want to have complete control the brand, you need to lock stuff like this out. It's not personal. It's business. Though that may not be what the fans feel.
Raphmedia 8y ago
It's a legal thing. Everyone is worried that their intellectual properties might turn public domain.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > It's a legal thing. Everyone is worried that their intellectual properties might turn public domain. If that's the case, couldn't CBS have just licensed its IP to these people in a good-natured way?
  - modzu 8y ago
    cbs seems to be a machine of human automatons not actually thinking or doing anything.. just following an algorithm, copying the shapes and colors from gene roddenberrys works and sticking on a price tag every business cycle
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      Companies are still composed of people, and you’re denying their agency and culpability. If you work for Company X and are deciding or helping to implement something bad or wrong, you are personally doing that wrong thing and are culpable. They shouldn’t be able to hide behind the company. Actual people are doing things. Throwing our hands up and saying “well, it’s the company that’s wrong, nobody in particular!” Just helps to enable bad people to behave badly in bad companies. This is true for silly things like Star Trek to serious things like working with dictators, NSA spying, etc.
      - modzu 8y ago
        i agree with you 100%! i think you misunderstand -- thats exactly what im saying
- bodas 8y ago
  Copyright doesn't turn public domain if you don't exercise your rights. A work only becomes public domain if the copyright period lapses or (in some countries) if they make an explicit declaration to that effect.
modzu 8y ago
yup. cbs should be handing the team a wad of cash and saying, "run with it!!!"
technofiend 8y ago
>It's like the music industry ~20 years ago. You should go read some of the movie industry quotes from when Valenti ran the MPAA. He likened Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs) to a serial killer; 'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' [1] Yet his industry was dragged kicking and screaming to progressively more profitable media. VCRs made the movie industry billions. DVDs did it again. Bluray? Yet again more oceans of cash. And still the MPAA fought every innovation and did their best to limit the utility of each iteration. [1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/05/31/1622232/valentis-boston-strangler-testimony https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/05/31/1622232/valentis-bo...
prepend 8y ago
In this case the music industry was rational (although wrong) as 100% of $14 in 1999 is better than 75% of $4B in 2016. [0] Now there’s a more diverse revenue stream for musicians and there’s inflation to consider, but in this case the music industry was acting in their best interest. One or two companies (Apple) came out ok, but the industry would have been stupid to internally decide to give up $11B in revenue. It’s possible that they could have figured out a new model, but unlikely as we aren’t anywhere near record revenue much less higher. Society is better off, but the industry sucks. That’s why it is up to external forces to disrupt. It’s not rational for an industry to destroy itself. Only certain companies can survive when you have a big shift in revenue. [0] https://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/3340/ https://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/3340/
- hakfoo 8y ago
  One interesting aspect is that the market was going to peak and crash regardless of P2P, CD-R burning, or whatever. CDs were the first mass-market audio format that weren't going to wear out through normal use. In a related matter, this made them very viable for used sales-- buying secondhand LPs or tape is a crapshoot by comparison. So you'd end up with a very clear curve on the valuable back-catalog sales-- ramping up as CD players became affordable, then omnipresent, and then trailing off once the market was primarily composed of replacements for damaged discs and a small amount of new consumer discovery. The industry's alternatives were limited: * Try to get people to re-buy their collection again with SACD, DVD-audio, etc. * Ever broader catalogs hoping people will keep buying. Neither was sustainable. Even if people went all-in on SACD, it would have just kicked the can 10 years down the road. And trying to constantly groom new acts is expensive, risky, and eventually consumers say "I've got more recorded music than I know what to do with" and stop buying.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

I'd have gone more of The Orville approach and made a game loosely inspired by Star Trek or something to that extent and made a ship that looks somewhat like the USS Enterprise which I've seen done in at least one commercial game, I can't recall the name of it though. Oh, what sad times are these when IP/copyright ruffians can 'cease and desist' at will to old fans. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design video games are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.

MPSimmons 8y ago
Bridge Crew is basically just a really pretty, licensed version of Artemis (https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_Bridge_Simulator/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_...)
modzu 8y ago
they're sort of mail-blasted out to anything even remotely infringing; you put the onus on the recipient to prove otherwise. for fans and small shops without the resources to make their case (which may well be legitimate), its bullying :(
SpaceManiac 8y ago
The "survey ship" in the Galactic Civilizations series looks pretty much exactly like the USS Enterprise.

captainmuon 8y ago

I don't understand why CBS won't just let them do their thing. It's not like they are loosing profit from it. I further don't understand why the maker's didn't just release this anonymously to begin with. Anyway, I believe (hope) one day copyright and ownership of stories will be seen as a major injustice. Why can't everybody have their own Star Trek? There is no need to control it, or for copyright to be exclusive. There still can be an "official" CBS Star Trek if we legalize fan works.

wanderingjew 8y ago
Because Patrick Stewart signed on for another Star Trek reboot. This would obviously feature the bridge of the Enterprise D. A few years ago, CBS shut down the fan film Axanar, because it told the story of the Star trek universe about 10 years before Kirk, during the Klingon war. Last year, Discovery aired, which tells the story of the Klingon war. Take this as a sign of what the new Picard series will include.
- MPSimmons 8y ago
  >This would obviously feature the bridge of the Enterprise D. I'm not sure that's obvious or even likely, but they clearly are being aggressive about the IP, whether it's justified or not.
- madengr 8y ago
  Yeah, but Discovery sucks. As a lifelong ST fan (grew up watching TOS reruns), I couldn’t make it through 20 minutes before turning it off. What an abomination. Traditional OTA TV companies can’t produce quality content anymore.
- Zardoz84 8y ago
  Don't forget that they go form very relaxed police with fanfilms to a stupid police (for example, they enforce to use ORIGINAL merchandising from Star Trek for props on fan films)
- mrlala 8y ago
  >This would obviously feature the bridge of the Enterprise D. The enterprise D was destroyed.. what kind of trekkie are you?

grizzles 8y ago

The Constitution guarantees the right to free expression. CBS's strategy is based on threats, not law. A common misconception: Stage 9 looks the same as the USS Enterprise and that matters; nope. Legally, if Stage 9 is an original work, there isn't much CBS can do to stop it other than to try to look scary w/endless litigation. With the ACLU's help Stage 9 should easily prevail.

DontGiveTwoFlux 8y ago
From the video linked in the article, it looks like they are using the music, and characters from the show. The content of the screens also appear to be copies from the show. I am not a lawyer, but those do look like infringing elements. Still, maybe with these elements removed they could have a case.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
Do you have something you can cite regarding this? If I write my own novel that happens to look exactly like Stephen King's "It", I can't just start publishing it.
- grizzles 8y ago
  If yours was an original work, how would you know it's the same? It's absurdly unlikely that you could write "It" but I'm sure people co-invent blocks of text every day. I wonder what the longest block of text is on the internet that two people independently wrote.
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    > I wonder what the longest block of text is on the internet that two people independently wrote. Not more than a couple of dozen words I would think. The number of possible combinations is astonishingly high. You might find this interesting: http://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/187848_0ec906d62df443b58a67061303299d63.html http://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/187848_0ec906d62...
  - apetresc 8y ago

DocTomoe 8y ago

"Oh god, we have a fanatical fanbase which wants to drown us in cubic miles of their disposable income, what should we ever do?" "Find out something they like, then sue the hell out of it."

sonar_un 8y ago
That’s what you get when you have lawyers on retainer with nothing to do. They look for someone to sue to make money. Every time the lawyers write a letter they also write a bill for services.
- Folcon 8y ago
  This is what I don't understand, who hires a lawyer to represent them and then gives them an open remit to go after anyone and everything? At some point I would have thought, heads of creative or marketing would be going, "so what's our customer base saying about us lately? Oh, everyone's angry because of something our lawyers did, maybe I should look into that before we lose more valued fans." Is there some enshrined rule somewhere that says, "Lawyers get to burn the house down, if they're doing it there's probably some complicated legal reason. Ho hum." Are people like John Van Citters the apparent "CBS Vice President for Product Development" holding vanity positions that have no real power in the company so the organisation doesn't feel the need to back any statements they make? Or is it just that fans need to learn the lesson, "feel free to enjoy what we give you, just not enough to make anything too much like it, or we'll hit you with a lawyer"?
maxsilver 8y ago
I think it's trickier than that. "Oh god, we have a fanatical fanbase which isn't interested in buying our (expensive new product) but which still loves this (discontinued product), and are making more of it without paying for our licensing" "Find the unlicensed (discontinued product) and sue the hell out of it" I suspect this has little to do with wanting to piss off TNG fans, but about trying to coerce them into the newer products (like Discovery, or the unnamed Patrick Stewart reboot), or at least protecting the licensing fees they still get around TNG. (See how they are suing Stage 9, but are totally ok with Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Star Trek: Online -- which have TNG stuff in them). I don't agree with this method of enforcement. But I could imagine how/why an executive might think this way. They could have easily used these same lawyers time to help Stage 9 move into proper paid licensing instead (making them even more money, and simultaneously being nicer to the fans and creators). But I'm not a highly paid executive, so what do I know?

torgian 8y ago

That's terrible, seriously. If it were up to me, I would move to east Asia and continue this project in Hong Kong or China or some place where this sort of thing happens all the time.

petepete 8y ago

They shut down the (fantastic, at the time) Tricorder app[0] for Android about ten years ago. I have no idea how that (or this) could possibly do anything other than piss off fans of their shows. That being said, Star Trek is pretty much dead to me now. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxvqrwxu-84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxvqrwxu-84

smhenderson 8y ago
I agree, and I really put the fanatic in fan when it comes to Star Trek. I decided I couldn't be bothered anymore when they made Discovery available only on their streaming service. I could think of nothing else it would be good for and did not want yet another monthly payment just to watch one show.
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  I can't remember the last time I watched anything on CBS, and I wouldn't have paid even if I wanted to see the new show. I watched the first episode and it was dreck, one of the stupidest things I'd ever seen. However, Netflix has the other Star Trek shows, and those are still good (well, mostly), so I will continue to enjoy them.
modzu 8y ago
thanks for this! developer here; im going to recreate this app for the sole pleasure of telling cbs to 'suck it' when they send the inevitable cease and desist. and when it goes to court, ill be back pleading for help! :)
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  https://fxedel.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/packages/org.hermit.tricorder/ https://fxedel.gitlab.io/fdroid-website/packages/org.hermit.... https://gitorious.org/f-droid-mirrors/tricorder https://gitorious.org/f-droid-mirrors/tricorder
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
  +1 to you, it's always amazing who hangs out on HN.

teekert 8y ago

Its because lawyers (of which there are already too many) need to have something to do to justify their salaries. They don't care if they hurt the franchise they are "protecting". At this point I'd love for someone like Patrick Steward or LeVar Burton (very interesting guy with nice projects like LeVar Burton reads btw...) to drop some comments on Twitter about this nonsense. These lawyers do nothing but hurt people that love Star Trek a lot and probably are among the franchise's best customers.

bb611 8y ago
A cease and desist letter is one billable hour. Writing a licensing agreement could easily be dozens of hours, and would still protect the company's IP equally well. This is a management decision, as it is for most media companies. The lawyers might even disagree with his strategy, that they wrote a C&D is no more indicative of their minds than an engineer's code. Professional execution doesn't imply agreement, just recognition of authority.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
"At this point I'd love for someone like Patrick Steward or LeVar Burton ... to drop some comments on Twitter about this nonsense." I have heard rumours over the years that a lot of Star Trek actors are creeped out by the fan community. Some might hide those feelings so that they can get some nice income from the convention circuit, but could you really expect them to rush to support obsessive fans in a case like this?
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  Who hasn't met a Star Trek fan that creeped them out? That doesn't mean that the majority of fans are weird or bad people.

pjc50 8y ago

I don't know why people attempt huge efforts like this when they must know that they will get shut down as soon as it becomes sufficiently visible. Same goes for "fan remake" games and the like.

uratool 8y ago
Because common sense tends to prevail.... eventually.... so long as you persist. And for many the years of being slammed for doing it will just make the eventual freedom all the sweeter.
modzu 8y ago
swat teams don't raid COMICON and carry away everyone dressed up in star trek outfits in paddy wagons right? fan art is a legitimate and protected form of artistic expression
mrlala 8y ago
To be fair, it's been just as visible 2 years ago and it is now. Anyone who follows VR has known about this for that long. Also, to the creators it's really a private project that they shared publicly for people to enjoy. I guarantee you they are still fully working on it internally to enjoy by themselves. Additionally, they consider this "fan art". It's not a game by any means, it's a VR experience (which they later released non-VR standalone versions as well). All you do is walk around the Enterprise-D and do some basic interactions with objects for some sense of it not being a completely static world. I think it's a very fair case- how is a 3d rendered environment any different than a picture someone draws and releases?

dommer 8y ago

Sounds a like a real shame, lots of faithful energy put to good quality work. Perhaps this is more about projected issues than this specific work. Law is based off the precedence of previous cases. If this project is allowed to continue other future projects may get legal precedence to continue, and those future projects may damage the brand or the profitability of the IP.

ascagnel_ 8y ago
If it's about setting precedent, CBS could still offer licenses free-of-charge. Lawyers would still get their rights, and PR doesn't have to deal with the fallout of a C&D against a fan project.

StavrosK 8y ago

Alright, so, where should these projects go when they're threatened out of existence? IPFS? Secret organization on Keybase? Maybe I should start a company in Somalia or somewhere which will head/protect maintainers/release worthwhile OSS projects that have been threatened with legal action.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

bitL 8y ago

Lesson to learn: when you are working so hard on something like this, make your own story and design every single time, don't copy somebody's ideas even if it is for free. Team up with similar people if you lack in some part of required imagination.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
apetresc 8y ago
But the whole point of this project was to carry nostalgia for TNG. There's millions of 3d models for generic spaceships. The only reason this one existed was to be Star Trek down to its smallest details.
- bitL 8y ago
  Yes, you are right. However lawyers gave us all an answer we didn't want to hear, hence it's futile to be a creative fan of copyrighted works, unless one wants to restrict their creations to dark web only and risk consequences way out of proportions.

transfire 8y ago

Funny how the lessons of the shows seem completely lost on CBS. I'm done with them. Will always love ST, but the latest movies and TV show miss the mark. Time to move on.

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago

When this project hit HN a month ago I said > It does look cool. And it also looks like a huge labor of love. Luckily CBS and Paramount Pictures already have guidelines in place for allowing noncommercial fan-made productions. One hopes that they will continue to recognize how important hardcore fandom like this is to the success of the franchise. And now I'm saddened.

tony-allan 8y ago

Way to build and maintain a fan base CBS. I'm assume you were legally within your rights to do this but you guys suck!

yosefzeev 8y ago

Creating a vision of a moneyless future of a federation of planets to be ruled over in the actual world by a fracturing money-hungry conglomerate is my vision of all that is wrong in the world.

52-6F-62 8y ago
Worst part is this wouldn't have cost them a dime. Is there a word that holds the same meaning as "irony", but with stronger implication?
krapp 8y ago
>Creating a vision of a moneyless future of a federation of planets to be ruled over in the actual world by a fracturing money-hungry conglomerate is my vision of all that is wrong in the world. It's a television show made to sell advertising, not an anti-capitalist manifesto. Do you really expect Paramount to treat this multi-million dollar franchise differently than any other intellectual property because its fictional universe doesn't use money?

unethical_ban 8y ago

Ignore CBS' unwillingness to cooperate. Remove copyrighted elements like anything you didn't create by hand, remove references to 1701-D and Enterprise and any character. Take it to court. I'll help with the GoFundMe.

imglorp 8y ago
It won't stop them from suing on the grounds that a "typical person" would recognize the material, ie close enough. eg: https://99designs.com/blog/tips/5-famous-copyright-infringement-cases/ https://99designs.com/blog/tips/5-famous-copyright-infringem... So they'll sue and it's not at all clear you'd win. Win or not, that's going to be a huge defense pot to match the CBS lawyer armada. Just my opinion, but if you're going to throw a bunch of money into the wind with low certainty and low reward, there are many worthy charities in great need.

jedberg 8y ago

Back in the day, early on in Reddit's life, people started making fan art of the Reddit alien, and some cases they started making products with their creations and then giving them away. We pretty much just let that go. Then someone started selling their products with their fan art, just to make their costs back. At that point we had a decision to make. Do we shut down all the fan art, or do we do something about it? The decision we came to was that our fans are what make us, so we asked our lawyers to write up a licensing agreement for us that we could use with all the fans. It included provisions for profit sharing so that people could even make a profit off their fan art, as long as they cut us in for a small percentage and got our permission first. And that's how we ended up things like a complete reddit bike kit. [0][1] After that, it was easier for us to license stuff than it was to try and shut it down, not to mention the right thing to do. I'm sad that CBS couldn't come to the same conclusion. [0] http://i.imgur.com/AEPJh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/AEPJh.jpg [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/2je6z2/2015_reddit_kit_start_your_design_engines/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/2je6z2/2015_redd...

unethical_ban 8y ago
Politically controversial yet completely legal things, like weapons parts, were not only banned on manufacturing, but as a logo on the subreddit[1]. Meanwhile, a federally illegal, in different ways controversial activity such as marijuana consumption is permitted[2]. It's the right of the company, but there is certainly bias in the use of the logo, and not all fans of reddit are welcome. 1. https://imgur.com/a/bAOhi#tY6JS4l https://imgur.com/a/bAOhi#tY6JS4l 2. https://old.reddit.com/r/trees/ https://old.reddit.com/r/trees/
- jedberg 8y ago
  I kinda knew this would come up. The gun thing was my call. I'm the one who approved the use of the logo on a lower receiver. I consider it one of the worst decisions I ever made. Yes, it was legal, but it caused a huge controversy and made the controversy even worse when we had to pull it back. The balancing act with allowing fan art is that one group of fans hates the work of another group of fans, you have to make a moral decision as to which group is "right", and it's always the wrong decision to some people. In that case we should have predicted the controversy and said no from the beginning.

deckar01 8y ago

I was recently exposed to this interpretation of copyright law. I was trying to get an ad for 3D printing services approved and I was informed that although I personally designed and built a vase that looks like a prop from the film "The Fifth Element", I did not own the rights to reproduce it in any way, including using photos of my object. When I read into it it appeared that every visual element in a film is covered by an implicit copyright, and any derivative work based on those elements is controlled by the copyright holder. There is no practical way to acquire a license or determine if one is even necessary. I don't understand how people who blatantly derive their work from people who can't defend it feel justified in taking control of derivatives of their work from their fans.

pssflops 8y ago
Whatever happened to "fair use"?
- deckar01 8y ago
  It is narrowly defined as transformative comments, criticism, and parodies. Being inspired by a small visual element of a much larger work apparently requires licensing.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jerf 8y ago
  The thing the Greater Internet calls "fair use" doesn't actually exist. There is a legal concept that does exist and can be used, but it is much smaller than the Greater Internet supposes.
logfromblammo 8y ago
That seems wrong. You didn't copy the object. You reproduced its design. The distinction isn't much in the language, but it is important legally. You couldn't scan the object and print an exact copy, or use still frames from the movie, but you can certainly create your own object and slicer files from scratch to make a novel object visibly indistinguishable from it, or even make a new instance from the original construction recipe (if one exists). You could also take the original prop and make a new photo of it yourself. All that activity is instead governed by patents, specifically design patents. It is very unlikely that a film production company would seek out design patents for random prop elements that were seen in the final cut of a movie, unless they are to be used for merchandising purposes. Lucas could certainly create a design patent on Obi-Wan's and Darth Vader's lightsaber props, so the licensee could have a protected monopoly on selling the reproductions as toys. In that case, you couldn't 3D-print your own Vader lightsaber. You could still make your own lightsaber design, and print that, but the design patent prevents you from making one that looks specifically like the one in the patent. With no design patent, you can reproduce from scratch anything you see. Copyright is about rote copying of an embodied artwork. Derivative works must include some piece of the original. That isn't what you did. Alternately, an image or object can be trademarked, wherein certain visual elements can be claimed as symbolic of your work within a specific domain. That's stronger, but narrower protection. If a lightsaber is a trademark image for something like a computer game production company, you couldn't use similar objects or images to promote your own business relating to computers, software, or scientific equipment. But you could probably use it on a beer label with no problems whatsoever, because that's a different domain. You don't need to register your trademark in order to defend it; you just have to use it in commerce. The major characters, unique props, and distinctive sets are all potential trademarks, particularly if they appear in multiple works within the same domain. Whomever it was that denied you on copyright grounds should not have done so. There is no way to acquire a license because none is necessary. In any case, copyright violation is a civil matter, and only the owner of a copyright has standing to defend it. There is no requirement for anyone else to do it on their behalf. (I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.) As for Stage 9, it seems like that C&D would have been based on a claim that the bridge set of ST:tNG is a trademarked element of the franchise, in the domains of entertainment and computer software. Copyright is not the issue. The set design was integral to the show and the games based on it; it appeared in almost every episode. That's one of the ways you knew you were watching Star Trek, in addition to the uniforms and logos. If someone were to use a perfectly replicated model of the bridge to produce a video, there could be legitimate brand confusion by a viewer, who might think that their video was officially sanctioned by the Star Trek trademark owner. Something like Robot Chicken, which uses licensed toys to make videos that include the elements trademarked in the same domain, walks a fine line, that is likely saved only by the crudeness of the reproduction. It is clear that the sets and actors are toys, and not pretending to be the things they represent.

Aeolun 8y ago

Ah fuck, this is the first I even heard of this, but it sounds really cool. Guess I’ll never get to experience it now. I just don’t get why companies feel the need to be a dick to everything that moves.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

As a dyed-in-the-wool trekkie, this makes absolute sense. Fans understand Trek in ways that CBS execs do not and never will. Therefore, CBS are scared shitless whenever some fan work comes up that they think may remind the fans how shitty the official output is and how far from what many consider the true spirit of Trek. ... yeah, I'm talking about the Abrams stuff. And -more controversially, I guess- Star Trek Discovery [1]. _____________ [1] No, not because there is a black woman in the lead. Christ, already. It's just ... nice SciFi but not Trek.

DiabloD3 8y ago
Babylon 5 is one of the best Star Treks out there. It ain't like CBS isn't already known for their long list of unprofitable behavior ;)
ConceptJunkie 8y ago
"Star Trek Continues" was better than anything commercial that bears the "Star Trek" name going back quite a few years. It is as if they realize they can't compete with people who actually love the show, so they have to shut them down, even though they are not losing money.
krapp 8y ago
>It's just ... nice SciFi but not Trek. I don't know, I'm kind of getting tired of the Trek template. It can be nice to take a risk now and then. They did that with Deep Space Nine and that turned out to be one of the best series IMO. Voyager, on the other hand, stuck to it so much that they ruined their own premise, as did Enterprise.

mattlondon 8y ago

I did not hear about this project until I saw the story yesterday. The wayback machine has an archive of the download page's link to the torrent, which is heavily seeded. The Streisand Effect strikes again...

jorisw 8y ago
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ce1cf2847d8303a8e7e708cb378d9e7ab1534628&dn=Stage9-Mac-v009.zip magnet:?xt=urn:btih:f2b84daf5a60ad9a452c933523de7ec786bbb0bd&dn=Stage9-Windows-v10.exe
- coldacid 8y ago
  Thank you!
- Sargos 8y ago
  More importantly... is there a torrent of the last VR release?
  - jorisw 8y ago
    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2fa616b75593e7e3561e1b80552a70a1b1a14ff5&dn=Stage9%20-%20Windows%20%2b%20Linux%20%2b%20VR&tr=udp%3a%2f%http://2fmgtracker.org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%http://2ftracker.mg64.net%3a6969%2fannounce http://2fmgtracker.org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%http:/...

ravenstine 8y ago

- "Oh yeah, we own that old series? How come we aren't making more money off it?" - "Let's bring that show back and hire showrunners who have stated that they hate the original show." - "The existing fans of the show are geeks and nerds. Let's alienate them so we can appeal to a more general audience. And let's also be sure to punish them for expressing their adoration of the show." - "Add more special effects! Lens flare! Insert gratuitous eroticism and obvious political propaganda! Enraged viewers are profitable viewers." (Rule of Acquisition #287) - "Why aren't millennials watching cable TV anymore? Nitflix? We're a multi-billion dollar company, so why can't we have our own streaming service? That'll be hip with the kids, right?" That's basically why I don't watch Star Trek anymore or TV in general. Why would I pay money to people who don't appreciate what I did for them all those years starting from age 6?

nickysielicki 8y ago
> obvious political propaganda Can someone please recommend an article/documentary/book/etc. that goes into detail about how this works in practice? It's so obvious when you watch shows like Jack Ryan or Madam Secretary or Zero Dark Thirty that there are some backroom dealings going on that insert a particular political association onto the viewer, but the scale and scope of such a targeted insertion is so ridiculous that you start to wonder if you're just being paranoid. The amount of people that would have to be involved with it, and for everyone to go along with it... Someone must have blown the whistle on this at some point, right? I'm not out of my mind, am I?
- ravenstine 8y ago
  I'd be interested in that too, if it exists, although my assumption would be that it arises naturally because, if you want your work to be successful, you've got to conform to the group that you're in and drink the kool-aid. Hollywood and the entertainment industry are like that more than ever because the press, which makes a lot of money off making people enraged, are watching what they're doing 24/7 and waiting for even semi-notable figures to do something politically incorrect. There's a lot of pressure in entertainment to avoid anything that might be politically incorrect because that can mean a loss of profit in short order. If an actor in a movie or show says something on their own time that can be construed as offensive, that can mean millions in losses. So I don't think there's someone from up top telling writers what to write, but the nature of the industry encourages people to write a certain way and believe certain things(publicly).

kerng 8y ago

Extremley defensive reaction by CBS. CBS should have done the opposite, sponsor the project or financially support it, so it becomes theirs or at least have some influence on it. Prosperity for all would follow.

vertline3 8y ago

Star Trek was always a vehicle for communism, kind of funny that CBS protects it with capitalist vigour.

TheRealPomax 8y ago

Usually something _this_ aggressive is because the license owner already has another party lined up to make a product that would be in direct competition with the fan made product, either in name only, or in content. So I guess expect a star trek game that lets you walk around the USS Enterprise coming out in the forseeable future, and expect it to be not as good as Stage 9 because it needs to make money, not let people just "walk around".

deckar01 8y ago
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/star-trek-bridge-crew-ps4/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/star-trek-bridge-cre...

chooseaname 8y ago

> The member of the CBS legal team that issued the order went on holiday for a week immediately after sending the letter through, which slowed things down considerably.” So, only one person on the legal team is allowed to work on this case? This is just hugely unprofessional. I think I would contact the ABA.

neuromantik8086 8y ago

Maybe it's time to reboot Babylon 5.

sailfast 8y ago

Rename it Star Trick, change the badges on the uniform slightly - maybe have the NPCs say random insulting things, and then call it satire. I'd imagine it's at least one way to cover your bases?

logfromblammo 8y ago

This is what we lose when the public domain becomes outlawed by endless copyright extensions. When that genre-based concept gets locked up for decades under the same corporate masters, we get Star Trek: Discovery, behind a paywall on a shard of the fragmented video streaming market. The fans inspired by the earlier series while they were younger simply do a better job-with fan-art like this and Galaxy Quest and The Orville--than the officially-sanctioned studio can crank out. It's almost as though we need some "copyleft" seeds for various genres able to support large fandoms, such that anyone can add to them, and submit pull requests to the community-elected maintainers to become canon. Licensing is free (gratis, not libre) and automatic. Rather than going all in on Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Starcraft, or Stargate, or Star Control, or Babylon 5, or Dune, or Asimov-verse, or whatever, all that open-culture fan-fiction can be actually publishable for profit and adding to the common fandom. Like public domain used to be, before they choked it out. I think it would take an alliance of authors/playwrights who don't individually have great chances at becoming rich and famous to essentially enter into a suicide pact lite, to sacrifice the possibility of more rich to improve the likelihood of more famous. They agree upon the rules for the fiction universe, and divvy it up such that each writes a piece of the canon. Then they publish on a fixed initial release schedule and hope it catches on. Once the fan-fic starts coming in, they actually read it, and declare the best work to also be canon, re-publishing it and paying the authors their cut. If it catches on, do a pilot teleplay with the best community theater actors available. Publish digital models of the signature props for at-home 3D printing. It could eat the lunch of the closed-culture franchises. But it could also fall flat, or fall victim to infighting. It seems like this idea is not new, and it isn't. Creative Commons has laid the groundwork. The problem is that it only provides the vision and the legal framework, and hasn't tackled the aspect of creating an intentional community to seed a specific fertile plot in the field. There's nothing there yet to tie disparate creators together as being part of the same overall thing. Space Opera and Sci-Fi Adventure-Drama are proven genres. The conventions don't lie; people go and spend.

carapace 8y ago

"The Orville" has season 2 coming out. I gotta hand it to MacFarlane, he's carrying the torch forward better than anybody else, IMHO.

ryanhuff 8y ago

My son plays minecraft off and on. Recently he showed me a fan created online world that would surely be shut down if the Corp entity that controls the brand was to discover it. Its not very well know as far as I can tell. It sounds like these Star Trek fans were a victim of their own success and large community.

sehugg 8y ago

"The answer ... is no. We are therefore going anyway." -- Kirk, Star Trek III

nullsmack 8y ago

Here's a prime example of why existing Copyright law is extremely harmful and should be shredded asap.

JohnClark1337 8y ago

And CBS continues on their crusade to eliminate the prime universe.