Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

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Honestly, I don't understand the logic of some people.

They're so desperate to keep a tight grab on what they have, they lose sight of what could be. It's like the music industry ~20 years ago. Rather than suing people that were downloading - FANS that were downloading - they could have gone "how can we monetise this?" Or even, "we have a ton of cash, let's buy the small companies that are doing MP3 stuff and see what happens." But they fight it to the extreme (looking at you, Metallica) and everyone loses. Until now, when a large portion (what was it last week, 75%?) of the revenue is now precisely what they fought against, but they've lost a large portion of the control.

Same thing here. I haven't watched Star Trek for ages. But fans and fans talking are what makes something successful. Based on the article alone, this looks far more like a passion project than a revenue driver. Surely a more sensible approach would be "We love that you've done this. We'd like you to advertise our new/old show/merch/whatever" and we'll send you some goodies to say thanks. Everyone wins.

Sigh.

>It's like the music industry ~20 years ago.

You should go read some of the movie industry quotes from when Valenti ran the MPAA. He likened Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs) to a serial killer; 'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' [1]

Yet his industry was dragged kicking and screaming to progressively more profitable media. VCRs made the movie industry billions. DVDs did it again. Bluray? Yet again more oceans of cash. And still the MPAA fought every innovation and did their best to limit the utility of each iteration.

[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/02/05/31/1622232/valentis-bo...

Short term profits > long term profits in the minds of many managers.

This year's profits & bonuses are more important than "what may happen to humanity if we open up to...".

Plus they want to set a precedent and show to anyone else that may want to make an Star Trek spin-off/infringe their IP that no mercy means no mercy.

In other words, you're not going to get fired for what might happen 15 years from now. But you could get fired if you fuck something up this quarter.

How does shutting down Stage 9 help their short-term profits, either?

I don't think it does help the short term profits. But if you want to have complete control the brand, you need to lock stuff like this out.

It's not personal. It's business. Though that may not be what the fans feel.

In this case the music industry was rational (although wrong) as 100% of $14 in 1999 is better than 75% of $4B in 2016. [0] Now there’s a more diverse revenue stream for musicians and there’s inflation to consider, but in this case the music industry was acting in their best interest. One or two companies (Apple) came out ok, but the industry would have been stupid to internally decide to give up $11B in revenue. It’s possible that they could have figured out a new model, but unlikely as we aren’t anywhere near record revenue much less higher. Society is better off, but the industry sucks.

That’s why it is up to external forces to disrupt. It’s not rational for an industry to destroy itself. Only certain companies can survive when you have a big shift in revenue.

[0] https://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/3340/

One interesting aspect is that the market was going to peak and crash regardless of P2P, CD-R burning, or whatever.

CDs were the first mass-market audio format that weren't going to wear out through normal use. In a related matter, this made them very viable for used sales-- buying secondhand LPs or tape is a crapshoot by comparison.

So you'd end up with a very clear curve on the valuable back-catalog sales-- ramping up as CD players became affordable, then omnipresent, and then trailing off once the market was primarily composed of replacements for damaged discs and a small amount of new consumer discovery.

The industry's alternatives were limited:

* Try to get people to re-buy their collection again with SACD, DVD-audio, etc. * Ever broader catalogs hoping people will keep buying.

Neither was sustainable. Even if people went all-in on SACD, it would have just kicked the can 10 years down the road. And trying to constantly groom new acts is expensive, risky, and eventually consumers say "I've got more recorded music than I know what to do with" and stop buying.

It's a legal thing. Everyone is worried that their intellectual properties might turn public domain.

Copyright doesn't turn public domain if you don't exercise your rights. A work only becomes public domain if the copyright period lapses or (in some countries) if they make an explicit declaration to that effect.

Copyright would cover the original design documents for the sets and props, but not the shapes and colours themselves 'as seen on TV'.

From what I understand unlicensed clean-room reproduction of sets could violate design marks, if those were even registered. Like other trademarks those do indeed need to be enforced.

But trademark infringement doesn't trigger merely from copying.

The infuriating thing about dealing with lawyers on IP is they'll write a C&D that "your work infringes on the IP of my client." There is never any mention of what infringes, except the broadest possible, and there is no responsibility for a false claim.

> It's a legal thing. Everyone is worried that their intellectual properties might turn public domain.

If that's the case, couldn't CBS have just licensed its IP to these people in a good-natured way?

cbs seems to be a machine of human automatons not actually thinking or doing anything.. just following an algorithm, copying the shapes and colors from gene roddenberrys works and sticking on a price tag every business cycle

Companies are still composed of people, and you’re denying their agency and culpability. If you work for Company X and are deciding or helping to implement something bad or wrong, you are personally doing that wrong thing and are culpable. They shouldn’t be able to hide behind the company. Actual people are doing things. Throwing our hands up and saying “well, it’s the company that’s wrong, nobody in particular!” Just helps to enable bad people to behave badly in bad companies.

This is true for silly things like Star Trek to serious things like working with dictators, NSA spying, etc.

i agree with you 100%! i think you misunderstand -- thats exactly what im saying

This is why phrases like "IP" are tricky: copyright is not in danger of going public if undefended. Neither are patents. Trademark is, because trademark is about preventing consumer confusion, not about encouraging you to innovate.

And even if this was a concern, you can grant fan licensing, as reddit (see that comment), Lucas arts, most rpg companies, etc have done. In fact, paramount has such a policy, but apparently aren't applying it here.

It really bugs me that companies have convinced people that they "have no choice" but to make people less happy by twisting a law intended to HELP consumers.

That's not the case, and even if it was they still have options.

The only thing you can lose by failing to defend it is trademark. Declining to enforce copyright or patent now does not prejudice your ability to do it later. That's actually the whole point of "submarine patents". You wait until the infringement is profitable, then you sue to take it.

yup. cbs should be handing the team a wad of cash and saying, "run with it!!!"

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