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Using concepts from non Star Trek novels.

tiro100tiro100 Member Posts: 73 Arc User
One of the lines from the foundry's EULA reads as:
You many not make use of any copyrighted or trademarked material of third parties, and only may use the Star Trek Properties as explicitly defined in this agreement, without irrevocable licenses granted specifically for that purpose

That is one of the few parts of the EULA that isn't Star Trek specific. What I take from that line is that one is not allowed to put (for example) Harry Potter in a foundry episode. That makes perfect sense. But I have some questions on this subject. And as examples, I'm going to be using "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.

Using concepts from other novels: I assume straight up putting the Multivac AC computer into your story would not be okay. But say the mission had you tasked with defending a computer that has for hundreds of years been calculating the answer to a single question from, say, the Borg, and that question would be how to massively reduce the net amount of Entropy in the Universe. Would that be okay, as long as it wasn't called the Multivac AC? Or perhaps if asked a certain question, a computer would respond with "Insufficient Data for a Meaningful Answer." Is it okay to use concepts from other novels, as long as you don't straight up copy them?

Using titles from other novels in the episode name: As cool as this would be, I would imagine the answer is no. However, even though I can't think of any particular ones, I could swear I remember Star Trek doing this on multiple occasions. Name an episode after a novel, play, or old movie, and have the plot of the episode loosely based on it. I could be wrong though. But just for clarification, would it cause any problems if the foundry mission that has you defending a supercomputer tasked with calculating the answer to a single question from the Borg is titled "The Last Question"?

I'm not planning on making a foundry episode based off of The Last Question, but someday in the future I would like to make an episode loosely based off of another great piece of Science Fiction. For that reason, I thank anyone in advance for Clarifying these questions for me.
Playing STO on and off since January 2nd, 2011!
Post edited by tiro100 on

Comments

  • paxfederaticapaxfederatica Member Posts: 1,496 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    As long as nothing in your Foundry mission is expressly identified, or easily identifiable, as an element of someone else's work, you should be OK. In other words, you can't use any characters from the other novel, but you can make characters under different names that fill similar roles. As far as story goes, you can adapt other stories to the Star Trek universe, but again they should not be easily identifiable. You'd have to write your own dialogue from scratch; just lifting it from the novel and then changing a few words here and there is still a big no-no.
  • odyssey47odyssey47 Member Posts: 524 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Taking inspiration from someone else's work is ok but not beyond that. I'm pretty sure you have free reign to use other titles as your own as that seems to be a common practice.
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Art inspires other art. It occurs all the time. In fact it's incredibly rare that anything made is completely original. The key is to make sure you still make it your own. When you begin to copy a work, you get into plagiarism.
  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
    — Sabaton, "Great War"
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  • adverberoadverbero Member Posts: 2,045 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Some things may in fact be in the public domain by now, You can use those without any issues as far as I'm aware
    And don't forget to brush up on the conditions of "Fair Use"


    But as always play it safe if your unsure, better not to have to pull the mission for EULA violation
    solar_approach_by_chaos_sandwhich-d74kjft.png


    These are the Voyages on the STO forum, the final frontier. Our continuing mission: to explore Pretentious Posts, to seek out new Overreactions and Misinformation , to boldly experience Cynicism like no man has before.......
  • thegreendragoon1thegreendragoon1 Member Posts: 1,872 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    adverbero wrote: »
    Some things may in fact be in the public domain by now, You can use those without any issues as far as I'm aware
    And don't forget to brush up on the conditions of "Fair Use"


    But as always play it safe if your unsure, better not to have to pull the mission for EULA violation

    None of the Star Trek novels are old enough to be in public domain.
  • castsbugccastsbugc Member Posts: 830 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    now if only we had some Chaotica! assets.... *sigh*
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