What Happened To...

[All Seeing Eye]

...Professor Moriarty?

He was shoved into that box if I recall where he would go on a nice adventure but what happened to the box? Was it destroyed with the Enterprise on Veridian 3?

If he survived and the box still exists should Moriarty be allowed out now that Holograms since Voyager returned have more rights? Should the back engineering and recreation of more of the mobile emitter be given to Moriarty?

 

[rahullak]

He should be allowed out and sent for rehabilitation. He's a dangerous criminal in fiction. Now that he's real, those tendencies won't just disappear because he's in the 24th century. But I seriously don't see any character campaigning for his release, so it probably won't happen. He'd be in that box forever, if it survived the Veridian crash. Box would probably be kept at a Cold Station or some high-security place so that the criminals of the AQ don't decide to "use" his services.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

But he's still a hologram with computer programming just like the EMH. His subroutines should be able to be altered or tweaked or even new ones added and old ones taken away.
His so called sentience is simply created because he has more complex and more in number subroutines put there by the computer to make him smarter than Data.

Rehabilitation would be nothing more than reprogramming.

 

[rahullak]

I don't think the EMH Doctor and other sentient rights activists would take too kindly to that. That kind of reprogramming would be like dumbing him down and changing Moriarty's essence without giving him the chance to change himself. If he truly is sentient, then he has the ability to change himself. Which means reprogramming isn't required. Rehabilitation is. If Starfleet is to consider holograms as equal to other sentient beings, reprogramming is out of the question. Actually, in the novels, Starfleet still (in 2381) has not decided what to do about the issue of hologram rights and is pending judicial review. Depending on the outcome of this (and knowing the nature of Trek, it would probably be: Yes to hologram rights), we would know what should happen to Moriarty.

 

[trevanian]

I don't think the EMH Doctor and other sentient rights activists would take too kindly to that. That kind of reprogramming would be like dumbing him down and changing Moriarty's essence without giving him the chance to change himself. If he truly is sentient, then he has the ability to change himself. Which means reprogramming isn't required. Rehabilitation is. If Starfleet is to consider holograms as equal to other sentient beings, reprogramming is out of the question. Actually, in the novels, Starfleet still (in 2381) has not decided what to do about the issue of hologram rights and is pending judicial review. Depending on the outcome of this (and knowing the nature of Trek, it would probably be: Yes to hologram rights), we would know what should happen to Moriarty.

Lobotomize the hologram: One Flew Over Moriarty's Nest.

 

[Timo]

The general trend with these sentient or otherwise complex computer programs of Trek seems to be that they quickly grow so complex that they no longer can be manipulated. Copy-pasting them seems impossible, perhaps because they are too big for copying, perhaps because they are too active for being frozen for even the eyblink required for the copy-paste op. No doubt adjusting their specific subroutines would also be a challenge far beyond the means of most programmers. VOY "The Swarm" already heavily suggested this.

I'm not convinced the Moriarty box would have remained aboard the Enterprise for any length of time. Unlike Kirk and, say, his marooning of Khan, Picard isn't the sort of skipper to try and hide his irregular actions from his superiors. Picard also knows he can't handle Moriarty, and that Moriarty becomes a deadly threat to the ship every time he gets loose. So one would assume that Picard would offload the box as soon as he could, and send it to some facility better equipped to deal with the dangerous artificial person.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Farrens]

I've always found it odd that the court case that granted the right to choose to data is never cited when considering this issue. While Data is certainly different than a hologram his court case did at least establish the concept of an artificially created sentient life form. The difference between Data and the EMH or Moriarty seems to simply be one of physicality. What difference does it make where the sentient program is being ran from?

 

[rahullak]

Actually, that court case only disallowed Maddox from considering Data Starfleet property. It didn't rule on Data's sentience, and this was probably beyond its purview. Given this as precedent, the Voyager EMH Doctor could only ask for a ruling that Starfleet don't consider him Starfleet property, which they don't anyway looking at how the novels have continued the Voyager timeline.

There is also one important difference between Data and the EMH/Moriarty. In the later case, they both grew out of the use of Starfleet property in unexpected and hitherto unexplored ways. And both require the use of some Starfleet property to continue to function (holodeck/holo emitter). Whereas Data is completely self-contained and doesn't need something external to function and was built by Dr. Soong who was not part of Starfleet.
I don't know how that will affect any future judgement calls on the EMH/Moriarty's right to not be considered property or right to be considered sentient.