CBS : The Culture vulture.
I have written before on how copyright and intellectual property laws are unnatural and detrimental to society and sadly there has once again been an outrageous attack on cultural expression by a company that is not only ultra aggressive when it comes to their IP, but they are also an incredible bunch of hypocrites. CBS, a couple of weeks ago shut down Stage 9. A non-profit fan made virtual recreation of the TNG starship enterprise-D. It is yet another prime example why soulless companies should not be allowed to hoard cultural expression indefinitely for their own portfolio and profit.
There are some who will insist on the argument that CBS needs to protect its IP and licensees. Some feel that CBS even has the moral high-ground, but these voices never really explore the notions of culture as intellectual property. This argument only works if the property if 0% derivative and 100% complete, which it never can be. Further more, what a burden it must be for CBS to enforce their rights for which they have actively lobbied for decades in order to gain more unnatural control over their portfolio.
The Star Trek franchise is 50 years old. It has been abandoned by it’s owners numerous times, left to age and rot. CBS in the roll of a “care taker” of the property is a less than stellar one. In the end, it is the community that enabled the franchise, not the other way around. Like a drunk absentee father, CBS has now realized he can milk his kid for some cash and is therefor lashing out against the temporary care takers that tried to keep the universe going. Is CBS really going to make more original series? Of course not? Then why did the fan based Star Trek Continues have to stop? What argument for ownership of Star Trek can really be made to conclude that control of original works within the same fictional universe must lie with CBS? A company that axed the original series after only 3 seasons and was so careless with the copyrights that it was fragmented along the way, making this a legal hornets nest even for the respective “owners”!
Then there is the fact that CBS are a bunch of hypocrites as well. Not only do they care not one iota about somebody else s IP, they also gladly have taken a big dive in our public domains cultural treasure chest and helped themselves to a boat load of literature, history and art to work into their “property”. The independent game developer for the game “tardigrades” found out the hard way how much respect CBS has for properties that are not theirs. Entire plot points from his game were lifted out and latched onto Star Trek Discovery (STD from now on). This game is still in active development, not some abandon ware from 20 years ago. CBS just ripped that off almost verbatim.
But then there is the simple fact that CBS is indebted to the treasure chest we call public domain. How many times has literature and art been pivotal to the Star Trek narrative? How many cultural references have been used to advance an episode? I have said it before and i will say it again : Culture does not exist in a vacuum.
This is a short incomplete list of direct usage of literary examples only from TNG. This list would be much much longer if you would include literary tropes, literary themes, style-forms, cinematographic methods and so on.
- Raymond Chandler: The big sleep and the long goodbye in TNG S1E11
- Various Sherlock Holmes episodes
- Shakespeare in The defector and Emergence
- Dickens a Christmas carol in Devils Due
- The Gilgamesh epic in Darmok
- Mark Twain in Times arrow
- And who can forget Moby dick in the movie (That was Paramount not CBS, but you get the point)
CBS just blatantly takes these works and transforms them into something they now think should be their property by right! And that simply is evil. Without giving back to the public domain, something on which future generation can build should be criminal, it is theft!
It is idiotic to the highest degree that CBS claims the right to control anything in the star trek universe dating back 50 years. During that time, the show has imprinted itself onto various parts of society. That can not be owned! It has had influence in many lives! That is not property. What CBS is actually doing is taking away the possibility for people to act upon the culture that formed them. That simply is unnatural, unethical and wrong.
CBS and it’s ilk are parasites and thief’s. The stolen from the public without giving back and they obstruct the advancement of society and culture by denying humanity it’s natural way of progressing. If we want to stop the world from becoming a flaccid landscape filled with mediocrity, this concept of corporate ownership of imaginary sandboxes has to be stopped. CBS has to be stopped. Disney has to be stopped. It is time to take back what if by right all our property, our cultural heritage and the right to build upon that!
voxullus 