I'm curious about what Cryptic's plans are for dealing with the inevitable problem of Plagiarism with this player authored content. What are the plans for making a complaint about a suspected mission being stolen? What can the author of the mission that was plagiarized have to do to get Cryptic's attention? What can an author do to defend himself against those accusations and prove himself in the right? Any answers from Cryptic would be appreciated.

Interesting thought - something I hadn't considered before.

Given the current details of the system, it may be tough to copy another player's mission, unless we do detailed reconstruction of object placement, dialogue trees, etc. I'd imagine that, if someone goes to all that trouble, Cryptic wouldn't really have the resources or people to deal with it. Hopefully, though, it will be rare.

Missions are created for the benefit of the community.

If someone creates a "copy" or tries to put their own spin on it, then I cannot see why it shouldn't be taken as a compliment. This isn't a scientific process or something to promote a person's product or art form, it creating player quests for other players.

In that sort of situation, I cannot see how Plagiarism even plays a role here?

Interesting point but when you do a mission or a character bio, you are signing all rights over to Cryptic for the work.

In the Subspace Radio Interview it was stated that we the players can share resources, so you could create a map, and pass it on to me so I can add the story, but it was also stated that there were going to be permissions to the maps so someone could not edit it unless it allowed people to edit it.

I would say they should go for a system like Spore has with the creature / vehicle / whatever content. It tags the creature when you download it, or even reload it to the Sporepedia with 'Original file by xxxx'

That way you can't 'forget' to credit someone.

This is the intention - that all projects come with credits of who made them

I'd imagine it's like this Creative Commons Licensing:

• Attribution-Sharealike-Noncommercial

• You must attribute the original authors
• You must share-similarly.
• Obviously, nothing created with UGC by players is a commercial product.

Of course, this also brings up the specter of plagiarism from external sources... not that Cryptic hasn't had to deal with that before.