Star Trek Discovery gets sued over plagerism and other problems

[Q99]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTfAb9Yrz_c


You know the spore drive, which uses aliens called tardigrades due to their similarity to the Earth species? Turns out there was an indie video game with a very similar premise called Tardigrades, and also some characters that have similarities in design to some of the Discovery crew.


Considering how specific tardigrades-for-long-distance-space-travel is, it strikes me as a very strong case.

[Crazedwraith]

Quick google shows this being pick up by a lot of special interest video channels but not major news site that I can see.

[The Romulan Republic]

If true though... Jesus, Trek management simply isn't capable of not fucking up every possible opportunity, are they?

[Q99]

Quick google shows this being pick up by a lot of special interest video channels but not major news site that I can see.

The lawsuit hasn't actually begun and it is possible they'll just strike some deal and it won't actually go to court, but they do have comments from some people well involved with Trek so I think this is real.

[Crazedwraith]

Quick google shows this being pick up by a lot of special interest video channels but not major news site that I can see.

The lawsuit hasn't actually begun and it is possible they'll just strike some deal and it won't actually go to court, but they do have comments from some people well involved with Trek so I think this is real.

Fair enough.

Someone will bring it up so... it wouldn't be the first time. DS9 is (apparently less obviously) ripped off of B5 according to JMS.

[Q99]

Fair enough.

Someone will bring it up so... it wouldn't be the first time. DS9 is (apparently less obviously) ripped off of B5 according to JMS.

That one is a lot less direct. Like, take the concept of a space station, sure, but you have one that's a diplomatic hub, the other that's a frontier station around a planet recovering from occupation suddenly next to a new exploration route. They're similar enough that influence is possible, but the different parts are more sizeable. Rather than plagerism, it's at most, "Hey, that's a good idea, I bet I can make a pretty different take on that."

If someone played the game, and thought, "Oh, what other animal could I do this with?" then that wouldn't be a problem. It's just so direct.

[Master Six]

Man, I'm trying really hard to feel sorry for CBS.

............still trying.

[bilateralrope]

So the first homosexual characters on the main cast of a Trek show were plagiarized. As was the biggest problem of STD fitting into the Prime Timeline.

And CBS' response when pointed out was "we promise not to sue you". Has that ever worked to make plagiarism accusations go away ?

[The Romulan Republic]

At this point, I am so sick of Trek's bullshit that this may be the first time that I will genuinely support perma-killing a major franchise.

[Elheru Aran]

It won't get perma-killed, but Discovery is probably a write-off if this goes much further, unless CBS settles with whoever's suing.

Doesn't mean other Trek shows and movies won't get made; they'll just have to try a little harder.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its just... let's be honest, they haven't managed much of anything that evened out to more than mediocre since DS9. And even the good Trek tends to feel quaint and dated a lot of the time, now.

[Elheru Aran]

For all that, they aren't going to stop trying to wring the cash cow dry. But I do think an extended hiatus in all things Trek, apart from STO perhaps, would not be a terrible thing. That's how we got TNG after all, Trek took a pretty decent break after TOS until the movies, the first one was a flop, took them awhile to make Wrath of Khan, and when the Trek movies took off that was able to build a reasonable foundation for continuing the television series. So I wouldn't mind if that happened here.

[bilateralrope]

At this point, I am so sick of Trek's bullshit that this may be the first time that I will genuinely support perma-killing a major franchise.

I'm hoping that Paramount's financial difficulties get worse and they are forced to sell Trek to someone else. Because I can't see Trek improving while Paramount still has control.

Preferably someone who already has a major franchise of action movies, so that they don't try to hammer Trek into that role.

[Q99]

Yea, I'd be down for a hiatus too, especially since we have Orville which helps illustrate, "Hey, people like the classic trek's optimism and brightness." It doesn't need to be a long hiatus, just long enough to (1) build some anticipation, and (2) do something about whatever's going wrong in selecting people to run it and tell stories.

I'm hoping that Paramount's financial difficulties get worse and they are forced to sell Trek to someone else. Because I can't see Trek improving while Paramount still has control.

Preferably someone who already has a major franchise of action movies, so that they don't try to hammer Trek into that role.

Both the Paramount and CBS sides seem to have issues,which sucks. If it was just one we could lean on the other.

[Elheru Aran]

Paramount is owned by Viacom, CBS became its own separate thing as far as television went though before they had been part of the same group. They appear to be possibly merging again in the near future though. So... I dunno how that all works.

The future of the Trek movies, at least nu-Trek, is in doubt anyway given the issues with Pine and Hemsworth's contracts. Without those two it would be really hard for them to keep the 4th nu-Trek movie afloat. My guess is they're probably hanging on to hopes of holding up the franchise via the Picard series and whatever else they can pull out.

[Vendetta]

This is one of those lawsuits that's almost certainly going to go the sum total of nowhere.

In order to show some kind of infringement, Anas Abdin (the guy who is making the game) will have to demonstrate that the people who wrote Discovery had had access to his game and to prove substantial similarity between the two works. Rather than "we both watched Cosmos".

Which really doesn't exist, as even though they have similar things in them the specific expressions of those things are actually very different. (The one in Disco is, for instance, basically a guild navigator from Dune).

(Though from the RPS article Abdin basically gets what he want if the case is dismissed, because then the court has said it's not substantially similar and CBS can't C&D him either).

[Solauren]

Using Spore to FTL?
What's the difference between that and using say SPICE or the corpses of Dead aliens (Voyager - Equinox episodes)?

[bilateralrope]

In order to show some kind of infringement, Anas Abdin (the guy who is making the game) will have to demonstrate that the people who wrote Discovery had had access to his game and to prove substantial similarity between the two works. Rather than "we both watched Cosmos".

Is posting details about the game publically in 2014 enough to prove they had access ?

The similarities between the human characters could be interesting. The STD crew chose actors that looked similar to the video game characters. I don't know if that's enough to get any casting notes through the discovery process. But if it is, the question of why they chose those actors is going to be interesting.

[Vendetta]

In order to show some kind of infringement, Anas Abdin (the guy who is making the game) will have to demonstrate that the people who wrote Discovery had had access to his game and to prove substantial similarity between the two works. Rather than "we both watched Cosmos".

Is posting details about the game publically in 2014 enough to prove they had access ?

No, you have to prove that they actually saw it.

"Real person A looks like low-fi pixel art drawing B" is about as weak a similarity as you can get. The game art is sufficiently low-fi that literally anyone matching a wide range of physical descriptions would look "similar".

[Q99]

I don't think there's much ground on the characters, yea. The specific use of tartigrates for FTL is the only real sticking point.

[Vendetta]

I don't think there's much ground on the characters, yea. The specific use of tartigrates for FTL is the only real sticking point.

Again though, that isn't enough for substantial similarity under copyright.

You can't copyright ideas, only specific implementations.

[Vendetta]

Now it's posted as a separate video: Actual copyright lawyer weighs in

[Q99]

Good to know, and it does really rip into it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Someone will bring it up so... it wouldn't be the first time. DS9 is (apparently less obviously) ripped off of B5 according to JMS.

As I recall the claim was that he pitched the idea of B5 to the network only about 1 month before they announced DS9 would be a new series set on a space station. At which point even if every detail changed, they kinda did rip him off if true. But as noted before Bab 5 and DS9 end up having nothing in common, and copyright law isn't supposed to impede innovation.

[Darth Lucifer]

Update: the link shows a letter to the judge re: Abdin's complaint, requesting a pre-trial conference for a Motion to Dismiss. It's about six pages long because CBS cites a fuckton of case law.

https://www.scribd.com/document/3950057 ... from_embed

And the next link is an article which highlights parts of Abdin's reply to the above letter. I wish I could see it, but you need to have a PACER account to see documents that haven't been posted to outside sources.

http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=break ... sal_letter

Lastly, Leonard French from the above link posted another update earlier this month. On a side note, Leonard is wearing a tinfoil hat because in the same podcast he was commenting on Edward Thomas Kennedy, one of those "sovereign citizen" people.

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