Remailers, Copyright, and Scientology

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:15 PM 5/20/96, Rich Burroughs wrote:
>At 01:08 AM 5/20/96 -0700, tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote:
>[snip]
>>And the issue of CoS seeking legal actions against those they claim are
>>violating their copyrights is separable from their religious status.
>
>Not at all.  Their actions are based on their religious doctrines, as passed
>down by Hubbard.  "Always attack, never defend."  Their claims of copyright
>violation are part of an ongoing effort to silence those who criticize their
>illegal and immoral practices.  They should be examined in that context.

I don't care what their motivations, religious or other, are.

As I see it, some people here (including some good friends of mine, by the
way) are caught up in a religious war. Those opposed to CoS are "outing"
putative CoS secrets by aggressive use of remailers. The CoS is fighting
back. Is anyone surprised?

>> As I
>>have said many times, "Newsweek" would likely take similar actions in
>>similar circumstances.)
>
>AFAIK, "Newsweek" does not file lawsuits just for the purpose of harassment,
>as Hubbard counselled his followers to do.  AFAIK, "Newsweek" does not hire
>PIs to harass those who criticize them.\

Well, I have heard Brad Templeton (Hi, Brad!, when you find this reference
to yourself with Alta Vista) say several times why he and his company,
Clarinet, aggressively go after those he thinks are infringing. Brad has to
protect his copyrights, or the transitive copyrights of AP, Reuters, etc.,
that he acquires through licensing.

And as I recall, a whole bunch of people have gotten "cease and desist"
letters. Even some friends of mine.

This gets less attention than do similar letters sent to Grady Ward and
Keith Henson, for example, because Grady, Keith, and others are caught up
in a Holy War against L. Ron, and the Battles with the Clams are more
interesting to most of us than some otherwise-obscure copyright
infringement filed by "Newsweek."

(Having worked at Intel for a number of years, let me assure you right away
that if remailers were used to post internal Intel documents--and I don't
mean stuff like the "unauthorized opcodes"--that Intel would come down on
the remailer sites and anyone else they could reach like two galaxies
colliding. By the way, I expect something like this to happen eventually.)

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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