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By CARLOS PEDRAZA | JULY 21, 2019 | 7 MIN. READ
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The situation: San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday featured big Star Trek news, including the first trailer for Star Trek: Picard, teasing surprise appearances from beloved characters, including Voyager's Seven of Nine and TNG's Hugh the Borg; the series is scheduled to premiere in early 2020. Attendees also got their first glimpse at the upcoming animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks.
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1. Attorney: AxaMonitor Won't Remove Anything From Site About Alec Peters
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Hyperbolic threat. A lawyer for AxaMonitor replies to a legal threat by Alec Peters' Nevada lawyer, calling it "more of a hyperbolic threat than an actual demand to cease and desist," and defending our coverage as "accurate, thorough, properly sourced and fully protected by the First Amendment."
- Davis Wright Tremaine. AxaMonitor's represented by Tim Cunningham of Davis Wright Tremaine, an AmLaw Top 100 firm headquartered in Seattle, and known nationally for its media law practice. Cunningham is especially versed in laws prohibiting the use of litigation to silence critics on issues of public interest.
- Fails to identify: Writing on behalf of Peters, Nevada lawyer Kory Kaplan demanded we remove all false and defamatory statements about Peters by yesterday but wouldn't specify what those statements were. "Your letter fails to identify a single statement that is allegedly false, let alone defamatory," Cunningham writes.
- Everything's true. Cunningham tells Peters' attorney:
“I suspect the reason your letter failed to specify any false or defamatory statement in the article is because everything in the article is true.”
- Enterprise model sale. The article referred to is AxaMonitor's story in which a former Propworx employee says Peters cheated the widow of Trek VFX artist Gary Hutzel out of $94,400 from the sale of a shooting model of the starship Enterprise. Peters responded to a request for comment by AxaMonitor by threatening, "Please know that if you publish anything about my business at Propworx, I guarantee I will be suing you."
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Download the letter from Tim Cunningham of Davis Wright Tremaine, replying to Alec Peters' lawyer, Kory Kaplan, who demanded AxaMonitor remove allegedly defamatory content related to Peters. Click on the image to download the 64KB PDF document.
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First Amendment protection. Cunningham's letter lays out precisely why Peters could make no credible claim of defamation.
- Truth is a defense. Cunningham points to the veracity of the Hutzel article's claims: Peters is being accused of shorting Mrs. Hutzel. "There is nothing false about reporting what Mr. Peters already knows," Cunningham says. "He is in fact accused of not fulfilling his bargain with [Mrs.] Hutzel."
- Protected speech. Various statutes and common law privileges would prevent a defamation suit by Peters because the article is meticulously sourced and cited.
- Absent malice. Another problem is Peters status as a limited-purpose public figure, having "thrust himself to the forefront of Star Trek fandom and memorabilia." Trying to successfully pursue defamation as a public figure requires Peters to "show there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant. … No such showing will be possible where, as here, the reports and sources are plainly credible on their face," and AxaMonitor contacted Peters for comment.
- 'Eviscerated distinction.' Further, any reporting on Peters' Propworx business is fair game, too, given that Peters "himself has eviscerated any distinction between his work with Axanar and his work with Propworx by promoting Propworx through Axanar channels."
- Peters' prior failure. Cunningham reminds Peters' attorney his client has been down this road before, trying to silence blogger Jason DeBord for criticizing Peters' Propworx shenanigans.That case was thrown out, with a judge ordering Peters to pay DeBord's legal costs.
- Pursuing Peters in Georgia. Should Peters attempt to bring suit agains AxaMonitor, Cunningham warns we could take legal action in Georgia, Peters' home state, which has an effective law to strike down frivolous litigation intended to deny critics' constitutional rights.
No change at AxaMonitor. Cunningham confirms no content about Peters has been removed from AxaMonitor, and no defamatory statements will be published in the future.
Bottom line: If Peters wants to pursue legal action to silence AxaMonitor, he's going to have to try a lot harder (and spend a lot more money) than this weak cease and desist effort demonstrates.
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2. Axanar Seeks Help to Fix Ares Digital
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HELP! As Ares Digital continues to frustrate users, Alec Peters turns to the private Axanar Donors group on Facebook for people to help (apparently as volunteers) to help get the software — already months late — ready to handle fundraising for Axanar Lite.
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3. Axanar Fan Film, ‘Interlude,’ Fundraiser Meets Halfway Mark But the Effort’s Running Out of Time
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Halfway there. Axanar surrogate Jonathan Lane's proposed fan film, "Interlude," now has more than half its $19,500 budget, thanks to GoFundMe, but the other half may not come in as soon as it's needed.
- Point of no return. In his latest blog, Lane's happy he's raised so much money but his campaign's rapidly reaching the point where he may not have raised enough soon enough to meet his planned production schedule in November.
- Practical considerations. Despite about $9,800 in hand — a "solid start" in the campaign's first month — Lane acknowledges donations are slowing down. "I need to look at practical considerations now," he says.
- Scaling back. Lane needs to make key financial commitments by September. He'll have to figure out what he can cut if he wants to stick with his production schedule. "What is the minimum we need to get this project filmed?" Lane asks. "Can we do it for $17K? $15K? $13.5K? Do we have enough with just the nearly $10K raised so far?"
Bottom line: Lane says he has enough in hand to not have consider canceling the production but figuring out how to pull it off is his, and his more experienced director-producers', next challenge.
Pro tip? Start by reconsidering the $9,100 you're spending — 47 percent of your budget! — just on slavishly reproducing non-standard, Axanar-specific Starfleet uniforms for so many actors.
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Short Take: Trekzone's tricky Midnight's Edge interview
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Controversial interviews have become the stock-in-trade for Matt Miller of Australia's Trekzone website.
- Alec Peters: Miller's had probably the most in-depth interview of Alec Peters where the Axanar producer didn't control the narrative (I was a guest in part of that series of interviews).
- Jonathan Lane: Miller aired a three-hour interview with Jonathan Lane in which the Axanar surrogate walked all over him.
Midnight's Edge, the controversial YouTubers whose allegedly "well-sourced" reports of turmoil behind the scenes of Star Trek's production and corporate goings-on, are Miller's latest guests.
- Released this week. The 20-minute interview is currently available to Trekzone's Patreon supporters, and scheduled for public release on Thursday.
- Exploring Midnight's Edge's reporting process was the focus of the interview. The YouTubers rely almost exclusively on supposedly "inside" sources whom they can never name to undermine the Star Trek series currently in production.
Bad timing? Unfortunately, Miller's interview is airing the same week as a raft of new Star Trek announcements at San Diego Comic-Con appear to discredit Midnight's Edge's narrative of Trek turmoil, with release of an impressive trailer and details about Star Trek: Picard, and images and casting for the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Why this matters: Midnight's Edge may exhibit shoddy reporting style but they have a large following, and their unsubstantiated rumors and reports often spread far and wide in fandom as fact; they exercise plausible deniability when falling back on attributing on unnamed sources.
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Find Us on Super Geeks
Join AxaMonitor editor Carlos Pedraza every week on the Super Geeks podcast, and Geek of Thrones review show, both on Subspace Radio, Mondays at 8 p.m. PST/11 p.m. EST. If you miss it live check the "rewind" section for recorded episodes. Super Geeks is hosted by George Silsby. Check out the Facebook page, The Real Super Geeks.
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