Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

27:28

Totally didn't see THAT coming 20 minutes ago.  It has picked up, though...

[Buster's Uncle]

45:01

The brunette woman in this reminds me of Dr. McKenna in Continues; there's something a bit off every time she opens her mouth that's tough to put a finger on - and she has a LOT of presence, albeit I can't shake a fake vibe even in her looks, which seem like they could have been even better somehow..

[Buster's Uncle]

55:42

The blonde communications officer really rocks the Starfleet hair, BTW.

Getting into the home stretch, here...

[Buster's Uncle]

59:50

I had wondered why they were passing up such an obvious beat in an alternate universe crossover story...  Saving it, I guess.

(click to show/hide)

They could have played with the doubles thing a heckuva lot more.  I'm still wondering if they'll do a Marlena Moreau ending with the brunette I mentioned last time...

[Buster's Uncle]

1:09:32

Little Easter egg in the credits.

That could have been a lot better - but it was better than I really expected, despite its flaws.  Worth watching.

[Unorthodox]

I posted the Beastie Boys trailer here months and months ago. ;pukingsmilie

This one was a bit different/extended/updated. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Ah.  You say that as if it isn't a bad thing, which I doubt.

[Unorthodox]

Remove the Trek name and I still wouldn't be interested. 

[Buster's Uncle]

It's not how to market to me, either.

[Buster's Uncle]

Paramount Claims Crowdfunded 'Star Trek' Film Infringes Copyright to Klingon Language
The film studio details what in the "Star Trek" universe is protected by law.
The Hollywood Reporter
March 13, 2016  3:29pm PT by  Eriq Gardner



NBC/Photofest



As promised, the lawsuit launched by Paramount Pictures and CBS over Axanar, a fan-funded Star Trek film, is boldly going places where no man — or Klingon — has gone before. As the Klingons say, "DabuQlu'DI' yISuv."

After the Star Trek rights-holders sued producers, led by Alec Peters, who put out a short film and solicited donations with the aim of making a studio-quality feature set in the year 2245 — before Captain James T. Kirk took command, when the war with the Klingon Empire almost tore the Federation apart — the defendants brought a dismissal motion that faulted Paramount and CBS with not providing enough specificity about which of the "thousands" of copyrights relating to Star Trek episodes and films are being infringed — and how.

Ask and ye shall receive.

On Friday, Paramount and CBS filed an amended complaint that responded in a few ways.

To the argument that because the crowdfunded film hasn't actually been made yet, the lawsuit is "premature, unripe and would constitute an impermissible prior restraint on speech," the plaintiffs point to defendant's Facebook post that mentioned a "locked script." They also note a press interview that Peters gave on Feb. 1 where he said, "We violate CBS copyright less than any other fan film," as an admission he indeed is violating copyright.

But the highlights of the new court papers are more specificity about what is alleged to be a copyright infringement.

For example, how about them pointy ears of the Vulcans?




Or how about those gold shirts that Federation officers wear?




There's also word that the defendants are infringing characters like Starfleet captain Richard Robau, the triangular medals worn by Starfleet officers, the Starship Enterprise, the appearance of Klingons, the name of the Klingon home planet, the element of using a "Stardate" to tell time, the logo of the United Federation of Planets, the element of phasers, the element of beaming up via transporters, the element of warp drive and so forth. Read the amended lawsuit in full.

But here's our particular favorite:



Yes, that's right, the language of Klingon.

Why this strikes a particular chord is that last year, the copyrightable nature of Klingon actually became a subject in a closely watched dispute between Oracle and Google. In a nutshell, Oracle looks to protect its Java API code from Google's attempt to use some of it for its Android software. A federal appeals court ruled in May 2014 that one could indeed copyright an API, leading to a collective freak-out by many in the tech industry. Google then attempted to get the U.S. Supreme Court interested, and Charles Duan of both Slate and the Milky Way Galaxy found a metaphor in the language of Klingon.

Duan wrote, "With the rumors about the third Star Trek film starting to fly, it’s high time to talk about how the Supreme Court is about to rule on whether it is illegal to speak Klingon."

In his view, copyrighting an API is akin to copyrighting a language, and what Oracle was doing was an attempt to stop Google from speaking a language. Unfortunately for Google, the Supreme Court didn't agree to hear the case. Over the years, there have arisen other copyright concerns pertaining to the Klingon language without any firm evidence that Paramount indeed would ever claim rights to stop others from speaking it.

Until now.

Maybe API code wasn't the right starship to explore the copyrighting of Klingon. Perhaps instead it's a real-life legal dispute involving Klingon that will inform rights surrounding code. The influence of Star Trek on technology has long been celebrated. Now comes a Star Trek legal dispute that is totally sci non fi.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/paramount-claims-crowdfunded-star-trek-874985

[Unorthodox]

Quality hair and ear job on that Vulcan in the Axanar shot.  It's an easy thing to mess up. 

Be curious to follow what happens.  At some point, such lawsuits will become 'biting the hand that feed you'. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, they are SO far past that.  That's why I was more than a bit "a plague on all houses mentioned" in my remarks about this a few pages ago.



Some steampunk/STO Uhura to clear the palette:

[Valka]

CBS already bit the Canadian hands that have been feeding it all these years when it decided that we're not allowed to watch the new Star Trek series.

For that matter, Paramount bit many fans' hands in 2009 by making nuTrek so abominably stupid.

Yes, Axanar violates a truckload of copyrights. They should be shut down, in my opinion, because they crossed too many lines. It's a shame, because the story wasn't a bad idea.

But this is similar to the Marion Zimmer Bradley situation I described earlier. A fan-written novel was shared with her, she read it, and had to permanently stop work on her own novel that used the same characters and the same time period and some of the same events (the deaths of Rafael Hastur and Rafael Syrtis, who were fighting against rebels smuggling illegal Terran weapons). That story can never be told now, not even many years after MZB's death and publication of further novels by Deborah Ross.

The consequences were drastic: No more fanfic to be shared with MZB, all print 'zines disallowed, and if the MZB Literary Trust finds any Darkover fanfic online, they're apt to order it removed. They'd probably try to stop people selling the old print 'zines online if they could (there aren't many available, so it's a hard thing to pin down).

If CBS/Paramount goes too far, it would mean the end to all fan films, and if they're insane enough to forbid people from using the Klingon language, there goes a lot of fanfic - including some damn good stuff from Orion Press. Some conventions use Klingon-style security (people dressed in the costume and makeup and who speak the language).

Shatner bit his fans' hands with the Saturday Night Live "get a life" skit; ever since then, I've refused to buy any of his books other than second-hand, so he gets no royalties out of my wallet. It took a long time to decide to continue buying them at all.

[Buster's Uncle]

-In fact, Anaxar keeps trying to throw the other fanfilms under the bus with a "why you pickin' on us and not them?" defense.  I honestly don't care for them, other fans immature enough to go to trouble actively undermining them, and CBS/Paramount for Big Brothering even so deserving a target.  Poxes all around.

Not the other fanfilms, though.  Peace and long life to them.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey!

For youse Voyager fans, and writers up for some (silly?) fun in general, I've started a roundtable fiction in Planet Tales with an opening sentence designed to make Valka happy - and leave the plot possibilities as wide as the sky...

Go dash off a sentence or more without worrying about whether it's any good!  This'll be FUN!