Joel looking to kickstart MST3K 2.0

[Zeke]

He's heard, and he's exercising the better part of valour and not commenting on it. My stakes are lower, so I'll say this much at least: I'm very surprised. Trek's owners have let this sort of thing go on for a very long time -- they even ran their own fanfic contests and published the winners. The choice of target is strange too. People sell copyright-abusing T-shirts for actual profit all the time; why go after a non-profit? (Of course, now that the chain from Roddenberry has been casually broken -- to widespread applause -- there's no reason the new management should be anything like the old. Yay for "new blood".)

That said, while this franchise has been easygoing in the past, there's lots of precedent elsewhere. Several major fangames, such as the King's Quest XI project, have been C&Ded out of existence (or underground). Fanfiction.net and other fic sites maintain lists of banned authors (such as Anne Rice), partly to respect their wishes but mostly to stave off lawsuits that would be too expensive to fight. So we shouldn't be too surprised.

Little disappointed, maybe. But if you thought these were the kind of stewards of Gene's legacy that we could respect... why? Based on what?