{"id":4919,"date":"2017-02-02T21:32:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T01:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=4919"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:57","slug":"star-trek-fan-settlement-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/star-trek-fan-settlement-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Settlement Break for Star Trek Fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

YouTube provides creators the great ability to express themselves on an online forum. But what happens when what the creators produce constitutes copyright infringement? YouTube tends to be a breeding ground for copyright infringement claims. In fact, Google, the company which owns YouTube, has recently published its own \u201cTransparency Report<\/span><\/a>,\u201d which shows that from September 2015 through September 2016, 342,000 websites were affected by \u201crequests to remove content that may infringe copyright,\u201d with nearly 846 million URLs being removed. This is an issue which has only gotten worse with the growth of the internet.<\/p>\n

In January of 2013, requests to remove or delist content due to alleged copyright infringement hovered around 3 million; the number has increased to roughly 20 million<\/a><\/span> requests in today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 
\nIn Paramount Pictures Corp. v. Axanar Productions Inc. <\/em>(C. D. Cal. No. 15-cv-09938), a case that recently settled, CBS Corp. and Paramount Pictures Corp. brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against a \u201cdie-hard Star Trek fan<\/a><\/span>\u201d who made professional 20-minute videos. The complaint<\/a><\/span> alleged that the defendant\u2019s videos were \u201csubstantially similar\u201d to videos from the Star Trek movie series. The complaint<\/a><\/span> further alleged that the defendant had used both a setting and characters which were substantially similar to Star Trek\u2019s copyrighted works.
\nThe case had been set for trial to begin at the end of January, but the two parties were able to come to a settlement agreement<\/a><\/span> just days before the start of the trial.
\nThe defendant, Mr. Alec Peters, tried to argue that his use constituted fair use. However, District Court Judge, Judge R. Gary Klausner, ultimately determined<\/a><\/span> that the defendant had \u201cmined the copyrighted works down to \u2018excruciating detail<\/a><\/span>,\u2019\u201d and that the work did not constitute fair use.
\nAs noted by Bloomberg Reporter, Edvard Pettersson<\/a><\/span>, this case gained notoriety as it was one of the few instances where the movie production companies were willing to go after one of the fans for creating a derivative work. According to what has been disclosed of the settlement agreeme<\/a>nt<\/span>, Peters will be allowed to leave his video up on YouTube, but must take off ads. This essentially ensures that Peters will not be able to profit off of these videos, as most of a YouTuber\u2019s money comes from viewership via ad-revenue<\/a>.
\nThis case may seem to be a big hit on fan works that are posted to YouTube, but a more in-depth analysis of the specifics of this particular case show this is not true. Mr. Peters \u201cripped off the plot, characters, costumes and spaceship design from their 50-year-old science fiction franchise<\/a><\/span>,\u201d as well as raising over $600,000 through a Kickstarter<\/a><\/span> campaign with the intent of making \u201ca feature-quality Star Trek film . . . on a small budget.\u201d<\/a><\/span>
\nAs Judge Klausner noted, the fact that the copyright works were mined down to \u201cexcruciating detail\u201d<\/a><\/span> ultimately led to the defendant\u2019s downfall. There was not nearly enough parody or criticism<\/a><\/span> for Mr. Peters\u2019 use to qualify as fair use under the traditional fair use doctrine. So long as a fan does not profit off of a movie\u2019s copyrighted work, or ensures that their product will fall under a category of fair use, fanatics should still be able to make and disseminate their work at their discretion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YouTube provides creators the great ability to express themselves on an online forum. But what happens when what the creators produce constitutes copyright infringement? YouTube tends to be a breeding ground for copyright infringement claims. In fact, Google, the company which owns YouTube, has recently published its own \u201cTransparency Report,\u201d which shows that from September …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7127,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions\/7127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}