It seems that most Starfleet members feel it is inappropriate to engage in sexual activity with holodeck characters when they have partners in the real world, and presumably, theft, arson, rape and murder are no nos, but what are the grey areas?

Is it wrong to, say, have another version of your spouse on the holodeck to turn to if you and your real life spouse aren't getting along? What about having lunch with a hologram version of an ex, every now and then? A hologram parent who doesn't have alzheimers like a real one might? What about creating a different cat from the one you have at home, only this one comes when you call? Where is the line between enjoying a fantasy, and having it infringe on reality? If you have no personal life (like, say, Barclay) is it wrong to spend so many hours there?

I always think of TNG and when Geordi made the fake Leah Brahms in the holodeck, and how pissed (and unlike the fantasy Leah) the actual Dr Brahms was. So I guess the line would stop at the living, maybe? Or if this was the 21st century with holodecks, maybe celebrities, and with those, very limited usage, I'm thinking. Oy, this isn't at all what I was trying to say.

If the person being duplicated approved, or if it was an emergency (as it was with Tuvok), it would probably be considered perfectly fine. I'm sure Janeway's holo-boyfriend would have just been seen as odd, but not unethical. I suppose it really just depends on what exactly your relationship with the hologram is - if it's just sex it would probably be seen as more akind to masturbating/watching porn.

As for people like Barclay who try to replace real life with a holographic one, it would probably be treated as an addiction or psychological problem, but not seen as unethical.

I'm sure there are plenty things that are considered unethical, and probably illegal. Running an holobrothel using holograms of real people without thier knowledge is probably high on that list. Just ask Kira. Reminds me of the Babylon 5 movie River of Souls where exactly that happened. Lochley found out people were using her character, got pissed off, blew up the brothel with thermal grenade, then had it writen off as a justifiable military action.

I would imagine that it would be common to seek a license for celebrity images to be used in Holosuites (at least outside the moneyless Federation) and such celebrity licensed Holo Programmes would command a premium. So it would be "Risan Vacation - 2 bars: Risan Vacation with Pamela Anderson - 3 bars." Of course, that would still make what Quark was doing wrong as he didn't cut Kira in on the deal (although since Kira was never going to go along with it at any price, there wasn't much point asking).

Ethical issues (and vanity) are probably why the doctor who created the EMH (his name escapes me right now) used his own image for it. He didn't have to create a brand new image, and there were no licensing issues using someone else's image. If you think about it, it's an invasion of privacy to use someone else's image in a holoprogram without their permission. People are going to use the images for their own purposes, and just like you wouldn't want people to be looking at naked pictures of you, you wouldn't want people undressing your hologram. And even if they're not undressing the hologram, it's still an invasion of privacy. Leah Brahms was absolutely justified in being pissed off at Geordi. It's one thing to use her image in an emergency, and there's a fine line there, but to give her image a personality and to then flirt with that image as if it's really her is wrong.

As for what people do with holograms of nonexistent or historical figures, that's between them and their real life romantic partners.

It may or may not be the Fed's policy... but the rest of the species feel no qualms about Holodeck Pr0n. Quark had probably no issues, he just got caught taking pics of Kira. Bashir and his imaginary Dax in 'If Wishes were Horses' probably did the dirty deed. Also, the skeevy holodeck producer guy from 'Pale Moonlight' thought the captain wanted an amazing XXX holoadventure. Plus, going farther back, I bet you a gold press latinum bar Minuet and Riker were just a few scenes short of doing it... So, meh... I think the Federation policy regarding ..ahem.. intimate activities in the holodeck its mostly 'Don't ask, Don't tell, and fer cryin' outloud, don't get caught!'

Factoid-of-the-day: The only time I saw interspecies Pr0n being featured in a SciFi TV series was on the B5 spinoff 'Crusade'. I don't remember if Firefly had any.

Firefly is in a humans only universe (or 'verse, to be technically correct), so no interspecies, unless you count good ol' fashioned bestiality (which, I suppose, is probable, but not mentioned on the series or movie).

penny, that's also probably why Lewis Zimmerman (the EMH creator) chose Bashir for his next model- as a Starfleet officer, he (Bashir) didn't have rights to his likeness for Fleet purposes. Come to think, Zimmerman, being an officer, likely didn't either, but he wasn't an MD.

Of course, that means there's probably a real Starfleet doctor who looks and acts like Andy Dick running around...[shudder]

And for the men: And make sure to clean up after yourself! Ew.

I've not seen more than a bit and a dribble, but I'd see if Red Dwarf ever took care of that. Futurama may have shown some interspecies Pr0n, they certainly had some interspecies nasty (but not in the pasty - that was strictly human and incestual).

Firefly had boy and girl whores, so I doubt they'd draw the line at Pr0n. It was probably in Jayne's bunk, but we never saw it.

My understanding of the whole deal with Barclay was that there wasn't an official policy per se, but that it was *just* *not* *done*. Do I misremember?

I always wondered whether anybody found out about Seven's socialisation program from 'Human Error'. Its a loathesome episode with a great central concept about a person who was so uncomfortable in conventional social circumstances and around the people that she worked with on a day-to-day basis that she slowly retreated into a holodeck fantasy-world in-order to have the things that she most wanted, acceptance and to be like everybody else. Isn't that interesting?

The direct duplication of living persons is I believe directly stated to be illegal so that answers the ethical question in the broadest sense, but what if it was with their permission? I mean would it not have occurred to at least the Doctor that she was struggling, to use that example, and therefore sought consent for at least a respectable proportion of the crew to have copies of themselves running with the whole "a friend in need" thing and "she would do the same for you" and "you let the silver blood copy you". Is there a medical, psychological or even tactical get-out if there is a good reason for it if it meets certain proscribed criterion of need? I think of 'Worst Case Scenario' where Tuvok copied the crew to make a tactical simulation in-case the Maquis mutinied and Seska was later discovered to have tampered with it. I doubt he asked permission to do that but somehow it is acceptable to make the copy and then presume that Chakotay, B'Elanna and others would be disloyal. That is an interesting lack of consistency and speaks to the lack of thought that TPTB have actually put into the awesome power of the technology they have dreamed up and what it can really do beyond causing a disaster of the week. That rather sucks.

Well, I think they missed something really good with some of the crew, probably Tom and Harry at the rate they go through Holodeck programmes, discovering the programme and then one-by-one, over the course of a few episodes as a small C-story, replacing their holo-equivalents until eventually most of the crew had experienced the new and improved Seven and eventually she could emerge and move beyond a need for the programme completely, no doubt complete with an 'Its A Wonderful Life' ending as she orders the computer to turn off the holodeck, yet there's a bunch of people still on the holo-grid and then everybody says, "we're real, we know about the programme and we love you anyway, you don't need to pretend with us anymore, just be yourself." I know its tacky but its a 100% improvement on what we actually got. And B'Elanna's response to the social and easygoing Seven in a Starfleet uniform, looking totally human and behaving in a much more relaxed manner would have been priceless.

Roads not taken....

PS - while I'm thinking about it, what makes the silver blood in 'Demon' and 'Course:Oblivion' any different from holograms. They are not the authentic article and yet we consider them as something different when extremely well programmed simulations are basically the same thing but in someways treated as somehow decidedly less valid somehow. All very interesting indeed. Or is it just that we were tricked into believing that they were for real throughout most of 'Course:Oblivion' that somehow adds a degree of empathy that we don't feel for the 'folks' of Fair Haven. Is empathy the answer? Or is it just that holodecks are suggested as techological knocking shops and the aren't organic that means we somehow just can't empathise as much. Very interesting thought.