Paramount was really showing their incredibly tone-deaf ways in this lawsuit.
Things in entertainment are changing rapidly in the internet age. In writing, for example, fan-fiction has been around pretty much since the first BBS fan boards on AOL starting popping up. Not technically legal, people would post stories with characters they didn’t own.
As long as people weren’t trying to make money from the stories, however, most writers and publishers were content to let the kids play in the sandbox.
Occasionally someone would try to sell something, and they would be put down hard. But then self-publishing exploded and a lot of writers would dive into the world of fan-fiction to try and build a following from free stories to lead people to their original works.
Some publishers started cracking down on fan-fiction at that point, but it always came back to bite them. The attitude has changed in the last five years, and now publishers are looking at ways of monetizing fan-fiction (like Amazon does with their Kindle Worlds program where the world copyright holder, Amazon, and the guest writer all get a split of the sales from an unsolicited story in certain story worlds.)
Independent film makers now have inexpensive equipment available to make movies, and some are undoubtedly going to try what writers did with fan-fiction: they are going to get attention by putting out non-licensed movies with no chance of profit just to get attention and gain a following.
Paramount was (until this news) doing what the big publishers were doing 5 or 6 years ago by going after someone who was actually giving their product free advertising and promotion. I guess someone in their offices finally got through to them that embracing your biggest fans, instead of threatening to sue them, would work better in the internet age.
The quality from these fan shows vary from “cheezy cheap” to very good. “Axanar” & “Star Trek Continues” are some of the best.
When I first saw Axanar I thought I was watching an official Paramount prouction...it’s that good.
Lucasfilm realized rather quickly that fandom wasn’t a nuisance but an asset. They outright encourage fan films and hold competitions....CBS/Paramount could learn from that.