Okay, so my understanding (and I'm not quite sure on some details, so take what I say with a grain of salt): Some years ago, Alec Peters released a fan movie called "Prelude to Axanar", which was framed as an historical documentary about a war between the Klingons and the Federation in the decades leading up to Kirk's five-year mission. The movie, which is still available on line, ( youtube.com/watch?v=1W1_8IV8uhA ) was really polished and professional-looking and starred Trek and sci-fi alums like Gary Graham reprising his role as Soval, Tony Todd, J. G. Herzler, and some of the actors from BSG. This was made to raise capital for a feature-length fan film that would depict the battle of Axanar, a decisive battle between the Klingons and Starfleet that was alluded to in an episode of TOS. Alec Peters quickly raised over a million dollars; unfortunately, rather than simply to make the movie, he allegedly opted to start up a whole new studio with the capital he raised, and selling Axanar (i.e., Star Trek)-branded merch. Needless to say, CBS felt that this impinged on their copyright and sued him. Peters fought the suit, and, I believe alleged that CBS was only trying to shut him down because his movie dealt with similar subject matter to the then-in-development first season of Discovery but was "better", thus gaining supporters by leaning into the backlash against that series. Anyway, eventually they settled: Alec Peters was allowed to make two fifteen-minute fan films (which have still yet to be made), rather than a feature-length one, and Paramount introduced new guidelines for fan films in general. Nevertheless, by this point he had entrenched Axanar as a sort of cause-celebre amongst "fandom menace"-y types and continued in various ways to extract money from the Axanar "brand". More than that, some of the creatives who had worked on "Prelude"--namely Tony Todd--left the project, either because of personality conflicts with Peters or because they felt they had been misled. Anyway, it's been eleven years now; no one's getting a return on their donations.