ChairmanLMAO
Reward them with a penance royalty. For every dollar made by the fans - the prosecutor and their ill ilk must pay the defender .2% forever. And I'm not even a fan.
aksdad
The copyright tyrants of Hollywood strike again! These are the same multimillionaires who force their customers to read at the beginning of every DVD or Blu Ray they purchase their threat of 5 years in prison or $250,000 fines if they make copies of the movie.
If we were still following the very sensible original Copyright Act of 1790, Star Trek would have passed into the public domain upon the death of the creator, Gene Rodenberry, in 1991. A little over 2 years after the Constitution granted Congress power in Section 1 Article 8 "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" they passed the first copyright laws.
They decided that the copyright should benefit the creator for 14 years with the option to renew one more time if he was still alive; reasonably recognizing that a dead person could no longer benefit from a copyright.
Fast forward through several revisions to the Mickey Mouse Protection Act of 1998 which extended copyrights to 70 years AFTER the death of the author, or 95 years for corporate-owned copyrights, which means Star Trek won't be public until 2059.
Interestingly, this incredibly (or ridiculously) generous period is not granted to drug manufacturers. They can only hold a patent on a drug for 20 years from the time the patent was filed. This more closely follows the intent of the Copyright Clause, balancing the public health need for inexpensive drugs (generics) while allowing the inventor a reasonable amount of time to (hopefully) recoup the cost of research and development and to make a profit.
Maybe Congress will grow cojones someday to stand up to the entertainment tyrants and restore copyright periods back to a reasonable length of time, like 14 or 28 years. I'm not holding my breath.
VirtualGathis
When this is combined with the successful crushing of content filtering by Hollywood it is becoming increasingly clear they don't want fans.
That's fine I'm perfectly happy to speak with my wallet. I am a fan of the star trek universe, but not a rabid one. I haven't seen the new ones, now I won't. With the crushing of filtering I'll also not be buying, renting, streaming, or otherwise consuming any content with unacceptable content regardless of how awesome or popular it might be.
ljaques
No wonder more and more movies are NOT made in Hollywood. This version of Star Trek is FIFTY YEARS OLD. 100 year copyrights are ridiculous. Fug CBS. Fug the mandatory minutes on every movie DVD. Boycott 'em. They don't need our dollars, and they don't -deserve- our dollars. Ditto the NFL players.
Nicolas Zart
It's sadly not surprising and it explains why so many of us Star Trek fans don't go to see the Hollywood new ST movies. They have nothing to do with Star Trek. They are disappointing. They are just action movies. That's not Star Trek.
Star Trek is a philosophical program. It pushes us to think beyond our day-to-day shuffle. When I walk away from a Star Trek show, I do with thought-provoking questions. I never do with bang-bang, blow-them-up entertainment movies.
Hollywood can sue all they want. It won't change much. If the word Star Trek can't be used, then let's open source an ST fork. I'm more than happy to contribute to that endeavor, where no one has yet gone :) Seriously.
Firehawk70
I think CBS/Paramount should lobby Congress to push out the copyright for Star Trek until the year of First Contact.
bill
Good comments. It is feasible to boycott Hollywood. There’s lots of free entertainment elsewhere, much of it far better than many $100 million movies.
RykSpoor
The issue really derives from the slow but apparently inexorable creep of copyright length. When the U.S. Constitution first established American copyright law, the term of copyright was limited to 28 years (14+14 renew). This, it so happens, is about one generation, which means that people who grew up inspired by some story in any medium would, as adults, then be free to BUILD upon what they had grown up with. This was the basic reason FOR copyright -- to encourage the *ongoing* creation of works of art, literature, etc., which would then pass -- in a REASONABLE time -- to the Public Domain, there to be used and built upon by the next generation, and so on.
This also meant that there was a good chance that the references and thoughts inspired by the original would still have some relevance after it entered the Public Domain.
Nowadays, however, copyright extends for (roughly) a century (95 years for Work-For-Hire, Life-Plus-75 for individuals' creations. That's over three generations. No wonder the current generation has less and less respect for the apparently-eternal period of copyright. By the original durations, the original Star Trek would be in the Public Domain in its entirety (and would have been for about twenty years). The original Star Wars would be, as well, as would uncountable other works, and people would be free to build upon these modern legends.
Effectively-eternal copyright is a stifling and ultimately damaging legal limit.
over_there
it seems reasonable , they are happy for people to use there work for fun and non profit which is generous but put there foot down when it is profitable. despite them saying its a not for profit film distributed for free where do you think all the money raised goes ? it ends up in someones pocket
Michael Flower
So "Pissing-Off" those that make the Star Trek Franchise Profitable, "Makes More Sense" then "Placating to the Star Trek Fan Based Masses" (aka "Death Wish")...