Okay, so I was watching the Twins game the other night (on Fox Sports Net), and they ran a little advertisement/PSA about Admiral Farragut. It's part of a series called "Americans in Focus." You can see them all online here - Farragut's is at the top of the second column.

Anyway, there's a "U.S.S. Farragut" dedication plaque that is partially visible right at the very beginning, and they show it in more detail later on, particularly when they focus on the "Damn the torpedoes" quote. The Starfleet emblem is pretty eviden if you're looking for it, and when they show it later, you can actually read the references to things like "Starfleet," "Gene Roddenberry," and "United Federation of Planets."

The really interesting thing, though, is that they got the graphic here. It's not even an official Paramount "Star Trek" graphic - it was made by a fan for his fan-fic website! And....they took the graphic without even notifying the website owner! When I e-mailed him about it, he had no idea his graphic was being broadcast on national television.

As he said, he doesn't think he'd be able to issue a "cease & desist" order or sue for compensation since it's a derivative work to begin with, but I still found it interesting all around. Not only that they'd take a graphic off the internet without even acknowledging it, but that they'd use a "Star Trek" graphic without acknowledging it!

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

And they are talking about the words being "etched in Annapolis".

What... is that plaque that they show actually at Annapolis with all the ST references, or are they just too lazy to get a picture of the real thing? Or, are they just trying to disjointly trying to combine two different things?

Edit: as I think about it... With such a poor reference, what makes you think they would take the time for credit?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Now that's funny

Here's some bridge designs. The second one (rejected) was called the Star Trek bridge

They're conflating two different things. I'm pretty sure the plaque they showed does not exist in physical reality anywhere - it's nothing more than a computer-generated graphic (albeit a very good one).

True.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Richard Roeper has a lengthy complaint about unattributed internet copying in his Hollywood Urban Legends (yes, it's relevant to his discussion!), because, yes, people apparently take things from the internet all the time without attribution. Even news organizations.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Did anyone contact Paramount so they can do their cease and desist thing?

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Man, that's lame. Somebody seems to have googled 'Farragut plaque'. It's the first thing to come up on the image search. That's almost funny if it didn't scream LAZY. Not knowing about Star Trek doesn't endear them with me either.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Let's not do that- they'd probably issue the C&D to Mr. Garcia, instead.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Since Mr. Garcia explicitly acknowledges Paramount's trademarks, and that the plaque is a derived work, I think they're more likely to go after Fox who do not acknowledge their trademark, as they are an actual threat to keeping it.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Ha, I tried the same thing. I can't even find a picture of the right plaque, and the ST references are the majority. (or so it seems)

You don't even need to know about ST if you actually read the plaque. And; we can't assume they didn't if they were looking for the quote.

Let's look at some of the clues this ain't reality. Even without ST knowledge these should be suspicious.
Starship.
Starfleet.
Stardate.
United Federation of Planets.

Ok; Farragut was a star living on the planet?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Well, though I reported it to Paramount's legal department, no-one seems to care about Hoagland's incessant use of Star Trek imagery on his disgusting website. He even calls it "The Enterprise Mission" and uses images of the starship Enterprise on many pages. Apparently legal actions for copyright infringements only apply to students downloading movies and not, it seems, to amoral flim-flam men who make a bucketload of money out of lies, misrepresentation, slander and libel.

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This is not an idea to be tossed aside lightly - it should be thrown with great force

"Even"??

Boy, have I been watching the wrong channels.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Print, too.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Oh dear, that's not even a well-done plate. </photoshop-nerd>

The web being used as a free clipart source even by the big players is starting to be rather annoying. I've not had my stuff used by professional media yet (though clips have popped up in other places), but I have had friends who this has happened to, and it's very annoying to receive nothing but stony silence on a legitimate complaint.

At least, considering how much they yell when you use some of their content without permission...

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."