The Star Trek Thread

[comrade_general]

Okay after hearing what he has to say I have more hope for it.

[SaidaiSloth]

The end of that video is sort've depressing - its really obvious that he's trying not to say

"IM SORRY IT portugalING SUCKED PLEASE, ITS GOOD, PLEASE DONT HATE US "

[comrade_general]

Happy Future First Contact Day everyone!

[comrade_general]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/star-trek-lawsuit-debate-klingon-888419?facebook_20160428

Some of you guys should be interested in that because it's all legal and technical and philosophical and wut.

[Clockwork]

Fans of a thing are cool and whatnot but I don't understand that level of obsessiveness. Same with LotR or GoT or whatever.

[Jubal]

I dunno, I think con-langs can be quite interesting to look at and study from an academic perspective, and they can be kind of fun to use for odds and ends of communication, it definitely adds an extra layer of depth to a setting to have a language that's well crafted for it. How people communicate says a lot about how they see the world, I guess, and that applies to well crafted fantasy peoples as much as real world ones. Things like raising a kid with Klingon as a main language are rather beyond the mark though IMO.

[Pentagathus]

Trekkies are super weird.

[Jubal]

I mean, there is that too.

[comrade_general]

I don't understand how they can sue them for using it in a non profit fan film. Unless I missed something. I didn't read the article after all.

[Jubal]

I mean technically non-profit fan films are basically illegal for most of this stuff, on the grounds that even if you're not selling it, you're hurting their profit margins. Which is frankly rubbish, and we should definitely reform copyright law to decrease the amount of this nonsense, but even so.

The language stuff is a sideshow to the main case; it's just one of a whole list of things that the copyright holders claimed were theirs and thus in breach of copyright (some sensible, like the characters, others pretty silly, they're also claiming copyright over the shape of Vulcan ears). But it's an unusual one in legal terms, because it's basically never been legally tested whether someone can in fact own a language. If they rule that the holders can in fact own Klingon, that means hypothetically that any speech or writing in Klingon breaches their copyright, and there's enough of that now that it's a big legal area potentially.

[comrade_general]

All just a money thing, like always.

[Clockwork]

I won't get into whether or not you can own fictitious language or not because I'm pretty sure that's clear cut. But what I will say is that I think why they're pursuing the infringement is actually mostly to do with how USA copyright/trademark laws operate. To hold onto one I think you have to make efforts to keep others from using it. If you don't do that then I think further cases can be made along the line that the owner of the copyright isn't licensing it but it is being used so has to relinquish the copyright.


Also this is sort of why you get 'silly' claims like the shape of Vulcan ears. If someone else trademarks it then Star Trek has to change it or pay royalties.


So basically, I don't think it's a money issue at all actually, I think it's an ownership one. Whoever owns Star Trek doesn't need any money, at all.

[comrade_general]

No they don't but they're always wanting more.

[Jubal]

The UK has a similar copyright control system, and yes, both need changing badly.

I suspect that owning Klingon is actually very complex indeed; if a company can create and own grammar rules on the one hand that's potentially a ridiculous amount of power. If on the other hand a company can't own things like the Klingon letter shapes, that's a huge erosion of things like the ability to copyright logos etc. There's so many elements in the language that I think it could be very legally murky.

[Clockwork]

You can't copyright grammar but the shape of the hieroglyphics or whatever they are you'd have be able to.