The Doctor writes a holo-novel that sparks a debate on the rights of holograms.
A new link to Earth gives each crew member a short turn to talk to family, and the Doctor plans to publish his holonovel, Photons Be Free. Tom Paris finds it is about a mistreated hologram on a ship called the Vortex, whose officers are cruel copies of Voyager's crew. The Doctor says his real aim is to expose how Mark I holograms are treated, and Paris responds with a parody that makes the Doctor the villain.
The Doctor agrees to make his characters less recognisable, but his publisher, Ardon Broht, has already released the original. Because the law does not count the Doctor as a person, Broht says he has no rights over his work. A Federation arbiter declines to rule on whether the Doctor is a person but decides he is an artist entitled to control his novel. A closing scene shows Mark I holograms doing menial work on an asteroid and recommending the story to one another.