Paramount
From Fan History Wiki
Paramount is a movie and television studio. They own the rights to such television shows as Star Trek.
Around 1997, unlike the Star Trek community’s relationship with Paramount, Lucasfilms Ltd. would be involved and trying to maintain some control on the type of content which appeared, according to Verba, almost from the start.
In 1982, Paramount mistook a fan effort for a professional effort and sent a cease and desist letter to Syn Ferguson for her fan art on her fanzine cover being sold as a fundraiser.
[edit] Fan concerns about Paramount's reactions
During the late 1970s, fandom rumor claims that women were not actively sought to write professional Star Trek novels because many of the ones who they had used had connections to the slash community. Paramount was worried that these female writers would try to work in more Kirk/Spock material and other homoerotic material, which they were uncomfortable publishing because that was not the way they wanted the franchise to go.
The following was posted in 1985:
Aug 14 1985, 7:09 pm
Newsgroups: net.startrek
From: s...@uoregon.UUCP
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 19:09:00 EDT
Subject: Re: Requested information on K/S
Feminists who are interested in erotica written by women for women should find themselves very able to "stomach" K/S. They should check out the rave review of K/S written by SF feminist author Joanna Russ in a fanzine namec NOME, "Another Addict Raves about K/S." Natrually there is a spectrum of material-from mild to X-rated, from well-written to total trash. This material is widely circulated, but not "Published" in the ordinary, or profit-making sense, and is in fact underground material of great interest to the participants-the writers, readers and editors. Unfortunately, attention paid to K/S for its feminist
importance, may be damaging to fandom as a whole, if Paramount gets too interested in it. Starsky/Hutch and Star Wars fandoms were severely restricted by
paranoid producers. Joanna has refused to supply the names of K/S editors and writers to the editors of Penthouse FORUM--but FORUM is interested. As for the writers involved, writing fan material is wonderful fun, and may just provide the impetus for writers to break into publication, as a number of fan writers have. While it is true that REAL SF writers look ascance at Trek as formula
fiction, the first item of importance to most aspiring writers is GETTING PUBLISHED. Trek is a "hungry" market.
One of the ongoing discussions in 1990 on-line was fan rights and fan ownership. By this period, a number of Star Trek fen felt that if it were not for them, Star Trek was dead and that the attempts on the part of Paramount to crack down on some fannish activities. These activities included fanzine production and the distribution of fan fiction and fan art.
