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"Show Me the Money!" |
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"Show Me the Money!" |
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Greetings, Fleeters! As we are all aware, the core of Star Trek has always been the fans. Us, the people who care so much about a TV show and the message it conveys, that we commit part of our lives to trying to attain the ideals it espoused. In the past couple of years, Paramount (the company that owns all rights to Star Trek) and Viacom (Paramount's parent company) have proceeded in a deliberate campaign to maximize their profits from the Star Trek cash cow. This is understandable; after all, it IS a business, and profit what it's all about. However, in the process, they have been alienating those same fans that made Star Trek what it is today. The most recent blatant disregard for fandom started at the end of last year, when "cease and desist" letters went out to several prominent webmasters. According to Paramount, this was an attempt to keep copyrighted material out of public domain and protect their copyright. Again, according to Paramount, this was not intended to shut down any site, just a removal of the copyrighted material. However, the timing of this letter is awfully suspicious. At the same time the letters went out, Paramount entered into an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft and it's msn.com service to provide exclusive Star Trek content under the purview of MSN. There is one small portion available to the net in general, but thee's nothing on it that can't be gotten elsewhere. In order to view that majority of the content, you MUST be a member of MSN. I decided a few weeks ago to get the trial membership to msn just to see what the Continuum was all about. I ordered the CD (free), spent an hour installing the thing, then started the signup procedures only to find out that to join msn you MUST have a credit card. Unfortunately, some of us do not have a credit card and, for one reason or another, are unable to obtain one. This strikes me as being HIGHLY elitist ("you aren't good enough to have a credit card, so we don't want you") on the part of both msn and Paramount This kind of discrimination is against everything Star Trek stands for. By preventing the free flow of information about Star Trek, Paramount is slowly killing the show. There is a protest being organized against Paramount about its current practices. Help us to send Paramount a "wake-up" message to The Powers That Be that we're not going to take it any more... Until Next time,
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