By now, you might have heard that Alec Peters’ Axanar, the non-Trek Star Trek Fan Film, is being sued by CBS and Paramount. I am still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing, but so far a few things seem to be coming into focus, for me at least.
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece made by someone looking down from the cheap seats.
This is not a news article.
Look, it’s real simple. The envelope, the line, just kept getting pushed further and further.
At first, it was all out-of-pocket, and the only rule was don’t sell it. Then the caterer had to get paid, and that was OK because people gotta eat. Then someone outside donated to pay for the caterer, but nothing was being sold so no one cared. Then came the crowdfunding, and the big worry was that the production was driving that extra mile to the directors brother’s store to buy lumber, using the production to funnel a bit of the funds to friends or family. But nothing was being sold, so no one cared.
Then Peters wrote himself a check…
In a nutshell, Axanar’s revised 2015 Annual Report clearly shows Alec Peters drawing a salary of $38,000 for the year, or about 6.5% of the budget.
That Report was released on December 15, 2015. About a week later the lawsuit was filed. Coincidence?
The issue seems to be hard for a lot of fans to grasp. Surely it must be about the amount of money raised! Or maybe it’s that Paramount is jealous at getting shown up over quality!
No, I am starting to think it’s where that money was going.
The concept of ‘making no money’ has somehow turned into ‘not making a profit’, which is not the same thing. A hat tip to Michael Hinman over at 1701news.com for pointing this out. Seriously, it’s a great opinion piece, way better than mine, you should go read it.
“But it’s a nonprofit!”
The problem with this theory of ‘no profit’ is that it can be used to totally make taxable income for yourself as the creator of the project, and that money can be used to pay for a wedding, or a new car, or your rent, and so on. What did Peters do with his $38K? How should I know, go ask him. The point is that if I raise, hypothetically, $3 Million and make a film for $2.5 Million….can I just pocket the remaining half Million and point to the balance sheet and say ‘see, no profits!’? Does it matter if that money is taken after production, or during pre-production as a monthly salary? If I get paid a monthly salary am I ‘making money’?
Fan Films have until recently been something that one did out of love with cash out of pocket. You made the film and came out with a net loss. Then came crowdfunding, and it was understood that you could pay the caterer and some other services…BUT NOT YOURSELF! If you got Patrick Stewart to come in and it cost you $5,ooo or some, we get it. He’s a professional, and it was basically OK for him to get a check, or at least reimbursed for travel expenses. But in no case was it ever OK for the guy running things to get a check.
“We continue to object…”
The other thing that keeps bugging the shit out of me are all the people running around online posting ‘It’s a nonprofit, blah!’. Okay, show me. Don’t find a quote somewhere or take a vote. Don’t give me hearsay…show me, like I did with the salaries above. Take a moment and look up the Articles of Incorporation for Axanar Productions, then get back to me about this whole thing being nonprofit. Here, I’ll even help:
I have a feeling CBS was a lot clearer about how they felt than we have been led to believe. Just look at the quote from CBS in this article from TheWrap.com:
CBS has not authorized, sanctioned or licensed this project in any way, and this has been communicated to those involved. We continue to object to professional commercial ventures trading off our property rights and are considering further options to protect these rights.”
Axanar has already said in January that the studio, a studio paid for and built using donor cash, will go on to be used for other film productions, having “already acquired the rights to a fantastic book series by David ‘I have no dog in this particular fight’ Gerrold”. So will Ares Digital, which replaced Backerkit for perk fulfillment live on after Axanar to compete with Backerkit, as a for-profit company?
I don’t know, how about a cup of coffee?
Small potatoes…
Where did they spend $118,428.88 in advertising?
Why are most just now learning that Tony Todd left the production ‘three months ago’? And why is he still listed on the site, and being used to sell coffee? I get that Ramirez and all are not Trademarked and therefor blah blah blah…but the Klingon D-6 being used on the Decaf is Trademarked, no?
I am a fan and therefor I own it!
Sure, and you probably think ‘Freedom of Speech applies too, eh? Seriously, I had no idea SO MANY Trek fans were up-to-date on IP and Copyright law. Seriously.
So…
As someone who donated to Axanar, I’d like CBS/Paramount to come together and work things out. I’d like to see some sort of deal worked out, sure. But when you start to appreciate that this is not about ‘how we envision Trek’ or which timeline or character or blah blah…it seems unlikely.
This is instead a simple matter of…what next? If Peters can simply pay himself to make Trek, then what next? No really, I am asking…if he can do that then what comes next?
Update: Apparently what comes next is….A YouTube video! Not mine, but funny:
this is all based on a myth anyway – that you have to show that someone was profiting/making money to prove copyright infringement – you don’t.
So a defence based on ‘we are a non-profit’ isn’t a defence of any sort.
That’s true. Fan productions are ALWAYS problematic for rights holders. On one hand, they keep a property in the public eye, and can act as a gauge for the rights holder as to the viability of their property, what the fans want, etc. On the other hand, if they DON’T come after anyone making fan material it looks like approval, and can harm their brand, limit their own productions (in case of something that looks TOO much like a fan produced work…. see the Hawaii episode of the “Tiny Toons” show….) and all sorts of other shenanegans. On the OTHER other hand, if they come down TOO hard they run the risk of cheezing off their fan base.
There was a big problem with this back in the day (late 80’s/early 90’s) with the Japanese fan industry. The rights holders let them go on for a LONG time, and then suddenly started cracking down. There are a few ideas as to why; notably that a lot of the small producers were becoming notably large, and some of what they were doing (ie a lot of dojinshi) took their properties places the rights holders didn’t want. Same happened here with the garage kit companies back in the mid 90’s…. and I suspect we’ll see something similar soon…. on a wide scale…. with our fan film industry.
Don C.
Ares Digital was pretty basic/trashy when first launched. No ability to combine accounts, passwords stored using 2way encryption, no validation on input from the backer side.
I’m not really sure if it has changed, as my backer status was … ‘revoked’ after I (not politely) called out the CTO/whatever he calls himself on this. They may want to be a ‘professional studio’, but they don’t act like one
Sounds like Terry McIntosh.
He’s such a nice guy, isn’t he? Did you know that he once posted a donors email to his personal (but publicly viewable) Facebook page so he and his friends could mock it? Yeah, I called him out on it and he called me a ‘little cunt’. Alec Peters said he thought there was nothing wrong with his staff making fun of donors on Facebook, too. And yeah, I save the HTML from that page, and I have the email from Alec…I can prove what I just wrote.
ding ding ding
I will fully admit to my lack of tact when it came to discovering and initial handling of this, but at the same time, the guy is ignoring 10+years of web development best practices.
Disclamer: Let me qualify my comment below by pointing out I don’t actually know who paid for the development of ‘Axanar Digital’ as the “transparent’ ‘annual report’ doesn’t detail that in any way.
Gald to see you point out Axanar Digital. That was tucked away at the end of the “annual report”, and few have brought it up. As a web-developer, I understand how much they would have had to pay for that development if it wasn’t done for free out of the kindness of the developers heart (maybe as a ‘donation’). I noticed something like $700 being shown for ‘software’ in thier expenses, but I don’t think that solution could be produced for such little cash. Maybe if they went to a firm in India for the code. Anyway, I haven’t seen their fullfilment software (so I don’t know the extent of it’s capabilities) but I’d be guessing that if this wasn’t hand coded by someone on the Axanar team, it cost them a couple thousand at least (just for the code). It was also unnecessary to fulfillment, and used donors money for a purpose that wasn’t exposed up front. It could well be that they were able to develop this for less than backerkit was going to skim off the top for such a large project, but if you are being ‘transparent’, you -need- to make that case.