Tom Paris asks the Doctor to let him preview Photons Be Free, set on the fictional USS Vortex a Starfleet ship lost in the Delta Quadrant.
The protagonist of the story — a holographic doctor — wears a huge cumbersome backpack-like mobile emitter to get around and is constantly mistreated by his crewmates.
Worse, each member of the crew is a thinly veiled allusion to an actual crewman but portrayed as being cruel or obnoxious—for example the Tom Paris character is a self-serving adulterer, Harry Kim is a hypochondriac and Captain Kathryn Janeway is a tyrant and murderer.
The Doctor, while insisting that the story was not based on his crewmates, claims his novel was meant to highlight the plight of Mark I holograms back home.
The issue seems to become moot when Admiral Paris from Earth lets Captain Janeway know that Photons Be Free is already being distributed without the Doctor's permission by Ardon Broht, his intended publisher, and people are wondering how fictional it really is.
After several days the arbiter rules that the Doctor is not yet considered a person under current Federation law but is an artist and therefore has the right to control his work.