Stage 9 was a non-commercial, virtual reality recreation of Star Trek The Next Generation's Enterprise starship. It allowed fans of the series to explore the beloved vessel and immerse themselves in the chief setting of the series. It was built over the past two years using Unreal Engine 4 by fans who have taken great pains to state that the project was not affiliated or licensed with CBS or Paramount and that they weren't doing this to make money, only to artistically demonstrate their fandom. That did not stop CBS from sending a cease and desist letter, thus shutting down the project as CBS was reportedly unwilling to engage in dialog.
From Techdirt : CBS Bullies Fan Star Trek Project To Shut Down Despite Creators' Pleas For Instructions On Being Legit
and at Ars Technica : Amazing NCC-1701-D simulator issues final command: "all stop"
and at TorrentFreak : CBS Shuts Down Stage 9, a Fan-Made Recreation of the USS Enterprise
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:25AM (14 children)
So many of these companies seem to forget that their intellectual property only has value if people are interested in it. The more they stomp on the fans, the fewer fans.
Oh well, many of the C-level execs prefer to have control rather than profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:01AM (12 children)
It's why we need sane copyright laws. I personally like ST:DIS so far but I know I'm in a very small minority. ST:TOS should be public domain by now. Then the two fan series that revived ST:TOS would be in the clear to move forward. They were both exciting projects, and I liked what they produced. Nothing would be stopping CBS from making ST:DIS if they want more money from a cash cow, and in fact, it may even prevent them from treating it like a cash cow because it would be competing with 70s nostalgia. (Or not, who knows.)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:45AM (11 children)
You cannot fix stupid. In the context: if you hope sane copyright laws to fix stupid execs, you are naive.
Stupidity is a gas, will fill or use any empty space available. And, boy, no sane law is without holes (the more you try to fill the holes in a law the more insane the law becomes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:07AM
If their stupidity has no teeth, does it matter?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:00AM (9 children)
Sure, you won't fix stupidity. But you can control the damage that stupidity does.
If you give a madman a gun, he'll possibly shoot someone. If you don't give him a gun, he's still as insane, but he won't be able to shoot anyone.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:41AM (7 children)
As a side note, your analogy has big limitations in applicability to the current case:
- we aren't speaking of madmen, we are in the context of stupidity
- we aren't in the context of violent death, but in the larger context of caused harm (in the case of a madman, you aren't taking in consideration maiming the spouse in domestic violence crisis withou using a gun)
So, no, I maintain that there's no sane law that can prevent harm from active stupid, even less from a stupid in a position of influence.
Sure, you can try to guard against all manifestation of stupid in a given domain, but the resulting law will be insanely complicated and still not stupid-proof.
Try to make something idiot/stupid/fool-proof and they'll invent a better idiot/stupid/fool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:47PM (6 children)
5 years of copyright since publishing, extendable twice: first time for 3 years (costly), second time for 2 years (damn costly).
Ok, that wasn't so complicated after all. Alternatively, we could choose to kill copyright for good and replace it with a right to attribution.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:40PM (5 children)
Simpleton thinking.
You have not considered, for example, that almost everything that offers a chance to Linux to resist abusive CoC-ing (if they choose so) is the copyright [iu.edu]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:50PM (3 children)
Different AC.
Let the CoC up The Kernel. With the resources of the military intelligence agencies likely behind things like CoCs, it's inevitable.
We may fork. That is the beauty of free software. There is no The Kernel, as in One Kernel to Rule Them All. However, I suspect we'll need to wait several years before we know for sure whether it's a bunch of dog-whistling and hyperventilating or if my COINTELPRO intelligence agency theory is correct.
I'm still systemd-free. The apocalypse has not happened despite all the endless hyperventilation about that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:08PM (2 children)
You may fork but, if ESR is right, you still may suffer if many Linux contributors rescind their copyright, even in a fork without CoC-ing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:28PM (1 child)
Who is ESR?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:35PM
Does "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" rings any bell?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:40PM
Copyright will not stop CoC. And even if it did, it isn't a reason to keep it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:41PM
Ideally, you would treat the madman, since they're insane and may do any number of harmful things to others. A gun is a "convenient" murder weapon, but I would say a knife is even more convenient. The reason you don't want a madman to have a gun, is the same reason you don't want a madman to have a steak knife. Except with a steak knife, you don't get the obviously loud report that someone just shot a gun.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:16AM
This was working when people had time to do something other than purchase and throw away. Then, fan fiction could really help in advertisement.
Now they don't have the time. And if they have, it's needed to show them how to spend it on purchasing and throwing away, not creating. This is simple optimization of sales.
Let's look at the whole environment related to these things, it doesn't matter it it Sci-fi movies, TV series, even some books. The movies in recent decade have been constructed to make literally zero return factor to them, but to maximize return factor to the brand. The technical representation of this is streaming media. So, after users have been just robbed of their own copies which they could use as they want, do we really expected that companies will be happy when fans increase a return factor? With movies not in cinemas anymore?
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:41AM (2 children)
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stopping-internet-plagiarism/your-copyrights-online/3-copyright-myths/ [plagiarismtoday.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverherzfeld/2013/02/28/failure-to-enforce-trademarks-if-you-snooze-do-you-lose/ [forbes.com]
"defend or lose" only applies to US trademarks, but, when even the lawyers can't tell the difference, this happens.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:29PM
Even with Trademarks, the "defense" response does not have to be to sic the lawyers on them.
(Score: 1) by MikeVDS on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:26PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:43AM (14 children)
I guess it's more important to the studios that the general public remain ignorant of the fact that it's possible for a few very talented and passionate individuals to create fantastic looking entertainment like this.
We all know that some really innovative movies can come from a shoestring budget, but the studios love telling us how much the CGI on each blockbuster cost. We don't want just anybody to be able to entertain the masses though, do we?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by black6host on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11AM (13 children)
The cat is clawing its way out of the bag and there's no putting it back in. Minor setbacks like this, while disappointing, are not the harbingers of the future. If these folks can do this, and the big companies won't let them, their artistic talents will turn to new creation. In other words, instead of supporting the studios, they will compete with them. In the long run, I think that's a good thing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:40AM (10 children)
Or folks could host their creations on torrent sites and not use their real names in connection with their projects. How is it that CBS can just stop this fan effort in its tracks? Because the fans are naïve.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:06AM (9 children)
Funding is the problem. Cryptocurrencies may solve that, but we must keep in mind Bitcoin in particular is not anonymous. An army of lawyers would be dispatched to tear somebody a new asshole.
Otherwise, it seems to me that fans could create "not-Trek," that is, it's basically Star Trek, everybody knows it's Star Trek, but the future history and names have been changed to protect the innocent artists. IANAL so I dunno how much exactly would need to be changed to be free of being a derivative work.
Of course copyright reform (or revolution) is the only real solution to the problem of immortal corporations locking up our culture.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:34AM (7 children)
Stage 9 didn't require funding:
Again, why is it that they need to make "Not-Trek"? Every episode of Star Trek, and pretty much every TV show and movie in existence, is available somewhere online for free.
All they needed to do to prevent this outcome was to not identify themselves, and throw the end result or updates onto various hosting and torrent sites. The project lead, Bryan, appears to have fouled that up since I see his name in the DNS record [securitytrails.com].
They even handed a copy to Ars Technica, apparently. They could distribute it 5 minutes from now if they wanted to. But CBS Legal knows who they are. Ego did them in.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:08AM (4 children)
As a fan of something, you want to be able to have fun in creating it and not have to hide like a thief in the shadows. This sort of fan participation is much more about enjoying yourself in your object of enjoyment. If it was just about modelling, they could easily flick over to a Star Wars ship, a BSG carrier, heck, the Babylon 5 station. If it was just about the show itself, they would be watching it non-stop.
It's not about distributing the final outcome only (which of course they could do via any way quite trivially), it's much more about being able to enjoy themselves and feel truly a part of the journey for fans like this. That's what CBS can however shut down.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:21AM (3 children)
They could have easily created pseudonyms, Discord chats, subreddits, and whatever else they needed to feel like a community. They could have kept discussion "in-house" and only publicized it after it was done. Can Viacom or Disney sue "Fluffeh"? Not without some serious legwork, I'd hope.
It's not like they didn't know this was a possibility. There was the Axanar [wikipedia.org] lawsuit filed in late 2015, a pretty fresh event, but apparently before work started on Stage 9.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:52AM (2 children)
I'm not disagreeing completely, I just don't think it was ego. Naivety more likely - hoping that because their project is art and it's also non-profit and stuff they hoped they could be included and allowed to do it. In any case, it doesn't really matter - another fan-made production has gotten shut down because someone thought they were losing money.
I wish we had more of the franchise-embraces-fans type stories rather than these.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:54AM (1 child)
Fuck.
</i>
Wondered where that was from...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:12AM
Close tags, the final frontier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:30PM (1 child)
To avoid infringing trademarks. I don't understand what your observation has to do with this. Maybe you're confused about getting something gratis with getting the rights to it? All rights reserved and selling price are orthogonal issues.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:54PM
I'm not confused at all. My point is simple. There is no way for CBS to purge fan-made content from the Internet. They can't even purge their own content. Best case scenario for CBS, they prevent it from getting on "legitimate" platforms like YouTube, so it's a little harder to find the infringing fan-made content.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:45PM
Already happening. Check out Tim Russ's Renegades.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:01AM (1 child)
You can't win, CBS. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:44PM
Wrong series.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:19AM (12 children)
What's sad is that people seem to think fanfic should be based on source maaterial that other people own.
And many fanfic authors themselves object to others making second-order fanfic based on *their* work.
We need fanfic that isn't based on anything else specific -- just on a genre.
Or several fanfic authors enthusiastically making fanfic based on each others' fanfic, recursively. And opening their creations to further fanfic by, well, by just about anybody.
And there's no need for such fanfic to be restricted to text mode.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:41AM (2 children)
We'll call it... fiction, or ficc for short.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by richtopia on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:33AM
I'm starting a new genera:
Auto-biographical fan-fiction
Really, just a book about how I wish my life went. Spoilers: I get superpowers
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:11AM
f h i c c
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:18AM
There are some projects for collaborative sci-fi canon. I think Orion's Arm [orionsarm.com] might be the one somebody here linked a while back that was fairly polished.
I also came across Terran Shift [lostluggagestudios.com] looking for Orion's Arm again, but it looks like all they've developed is a future history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:03AM (3 children)
This works for something like "the Orville " , people are willing to give it a chance because they know the creator. An unknown author with their own content - get real - When was the last time you took a chance on an unknown author?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:53PM
Last Tuesday. You?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:24PM (1 child)
I don't know about other people, but I could've cared less about who made the show. I started watching it because it was clearly Star Trek-inspired and on a major network (in contrast to the actual Star Trek show on right now, cough).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:43PM
But it's got Sergeant Schlock after he switched career paths to engineering and tentacle rape, voiced by the pigeon from the Mike Tyson cartoon :)
I mean how much better can you get than that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:10AM
Everything is a fanfic if you dig hard enough.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:52AM (1 child)
If it's not based on anything specific then it's fully original work and not a fanfic. And before you do anything both original and good you need practice. And fanfics are a good way to get such practice.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:08PM
That's why I mentioned having several authors basing fanfic on each other's writing. Maybe the first few posts would be original, but after that, fanfic all the way!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:22PM
If it's no longer based on a specific thing, it's by definition not fanfiction anymore; it's just original literature.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:55PM
It's also about software rights to the characters (and universe).
I recall there was a piece of software called "Star Trek: Captain's Chair". ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Captain%27s_Chair [wikia.com] ) It was just several of the different starships and their bridges and other station panels, with sound, and one could explore the stations. No plot, no objectives, no "game" in that sense. Just a simulator of the bridges.
It was pretty buggy on my system too, IIRC. But my point is that I'm sure someone at CBS is thinking that if this sort of fan-creation is allowed to exist then their contracts for having Simon & Schuster or whomever they are licensing digital media to.
So, that fans can do it.... should that prohibit the company from retaining their rights to sell the ability to create that if they want?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mobydisk on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:32PM (1 child)
Instead, CBS should partner with the group to stick ads for Trek-related products in there. The fans get funding for their project, CBS gets revenue and free advertising. Everyone wins!
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:09PM
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)
I thought this was talking about the USS Enterprise as in the aircraft carrier and thought it was awesome that a VR recreation was made and confusing that it was shut down.
Isn't the Enterprise in Star Trek supposed to be an intergalactic ship or something? Why does it have the ship prefix of United States Ship? I've heard that Star Trek had a lot of attention to detail, but it seems like this was one glaring detail that they overlooked.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:40PM
Nope. It's the United Space Ship Enterprise.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:02PM
Though you're not alone either. According to Memory Alpha [wikia.com] citing Whitfield's book Making of Star Trek, Roddenberry had to correct NBC of the same thought. Though the NX-01 Enterprise of the Enterprise series did not use "USS" - same MA article noted that it was pre-Federation therefore not United Space Ship, and gets into geekery about a ship pre that one that was.
This sig for rent.