Warning to Virtual World Star Trek Fans: CBS Sent Cease-and-Desist to Fan-Made VR Recreation of the Enterprise

Take a good look at this video before CBS quite possibly gets it pulled from YouTube -- it depicts a lovingly, painstakingly accurate recreation of the Enterprise from the Star Trek: Next Generation era, created by fans in the Unreal game engine, accessible in VR... and just killed by the lawyers of Trek corporate owner CBS:

In a video update, the head of the project, who goes by the name "Scragnog", explained he had no choice but to can Stage-9 after lawyers from CBS refused to budge on their cease and desist.

Throughout the project, the developers made it clear Stage-9 was not an officially-licensed endeavour with no affiliation with CBS or Paramount. Money was not involved, either. "We were just fans creating fan art," Scragnog said. "I thought we'd made that pretty clear."

Longtime readers of New World Notes know there are copious fan-made roleplay Trek experiences based on Second Life and other virtual worlds, such as this one. About a decade ago, CBS announced they would not go after fan-made projects like these. But the wording made it clear that the company reserved the right to change their mind at any time. And it looks like they have.

It's as yet unclear how wide a net CBS lawyers are casting to take down fan-made Star Trek content in online worlds. Quite a lot of it exists -- and not only as not-for-profit recreations. For example, a basic search in the official Second Life Marketplace today shows this:

Notably, Linden Lab's Sansar has a Star Trek-themed region, but it's apparently authorized, seeing as it's owned by Gene Roddenberry's son:

Sansar®, the premier destination for social VR, today announced their latest collaboration with Roddenberry Entertainment: the Roddenberry Nexus in Sansar - a new virtual experience for fans that showcases the best of Roddenberry’s science fiction properties, including never-before-seen art and artifacts from Star Trek®’s fifty-two-year history and new stories such as the short film Instant. The hangout space will serve as a venue for future Roddenberry events and fan meet-ups...

Coming up on Sansar:

Oct 11th 7pm PDT - a Star Trek discussion with @RodRoddenberry & @MissionLogPod
Oct 25th 7pm PDT - Star Trek Trivia Night 2!

All aboard this virtual recreation of the TOS Enterprise Bridge.

Download Sansar for free here: https://t.co/jlwFbZyCOv pic.twitter.com/IUTUwIff47

— Sansar (@SansarOfficial) October 1, 2018

I hate to say it, but of course I still will:

When it comes to virtual worlds, IP rights are still boldly going where's no one's gone before.

Hat tip: Waxy.org.

Comments

[Amanda]

Maybe Roddenberry Entertainment is planning their own virtual Enterprise and didn't want the competition.

[Ryan Schultz]

Yep, they reserve the right to change their minds about "fan art" anytime they want to. It's a shame though, about the Stage-9 thing, it looked interesting...

[AbbyFraserSL]

I don't think they can really prevent people from using (or making) "Fan stuff" in virtual worlds. No matter if its Sansar, SL or something else...
OK, first of all, i am not from the USA, and i don't know much about their laws. But Star Trek is so popular and has so many fans worldwide, there will always be people wanting to make or use those things.

[Pulsar]

It's entirely possible that this could affect Second Life too, if CBS changes their mind about that as well. In November 2010, Universal pressured LL to take down anything related to Battlestar Galactica. I remember a BSG roleplay place that was going to close down or to change names because of that. Eventually, few months later, as far as I remember, there was an agreement and the content was allowed again, as long as there wasn't profit. However it had some effect. And there are still Vipers called "Interceptors" in SL. Now there are BSG sims in SL in 2018, but the traffic is quite low.

[Joe Nickence]

One word: Greed.