Anonymous asked: Do you know what the deal with this ST fan film was? I heard about it on the daily byte but I feel like I don't know what the full story is.
tl;dr: a group of people raised a TON of money, saying they were going to make a Trek fan film called Axanar. Then they took that money and spent it to build a studio, which will (presumably) be used to turn a profit from other productions once Axanar’s production is completed. They also sold unlicensed coffee, using copyrighted Star Trek names, and have generally been epic douchecanoes about the whole thing.
Most fan films, even the really polished ones, have very small budgets that rarely break USD10,000, but these people were effectively making a commercially-viable low budget (by Hollywood Standards) film, having raised over USD600,000. And they were going to invest that money into an unlicensed, copyright infringing film using Star Trek intellectual property that is owned by CBS.
They’ve put all fan films at risk, because they exploited the passion and love that Trekkies have for Star Trek to get money, and now they’re acting like they’re innocent victims of big bad CBS. These people are not innocent victims. They are morally and ethically and legally in the wrong, and while I have a lot of problems with copyright and IP law, these guys are not the people I want to be the poster children for reforming those laws.
I love fan fiction and fan films and headcanon and everything fans do to create their own extended universes (ST Online is a great example), and these jerks may have put all of that at risk, because they acted in bad faith from the beginning.
They are not on your side, they are not on Star Trek’s side, they are not good people.
