Maybe this is about something else (the NOTS materials), or
maybe the threat of legal action was enough to do Hacktic in, despite what would seem to be a favorable precedent.
It wasn't the Fishman Affidavit that was posted - it was the NOTS materials. The Affidavit material has been in a public court record for some years now, and was an important factor in the favourable Dutch ruling. The NOTS have never been subject to public scrutiny. In fact, the Church claims them as trade secrets as well as copyrighted materials. That may or may not have changed now that the NOTS have been viewed by who knows how many people.
It's not clear to me that Scientology is only concerned about copyrighted material. That's what they claim, but then Hubbard said, "The purpose of the suit is to harass..." Copyrights became the issue, IMHO, because they have some legal ground to stand on there.
Damn right!
I think their goal is to make all their Net critics come out into the open, and they're willing to use the legal system as a pawn towards that goal. You can't threaten or intimidate anon posters as easily. You can't send your private investigators to harass them and their families.
The Church dislikes anonymous remailers intensely, despite exploiting their advantages themselves. The few comments that their PR reps have made indicate that the Church wants some way of stripping someone's anonymity away if they "abuse" this anonymity. I dislike that idea intensely. Everyone remember anon.penet.fi?
I appreciate the incredibly difficult position that all of this puts remailer operators in, but I don't think CoS will be statisfied with just stopping anon Usenet posts. IMHO, they more likely want the remailers gone, altogether. Don't believe that this is about copyrights, just because they say it is.
Like it or not, posting the NOTS _is_ a violation of copyright. While many people think the Church of $cientology is abusing Intellectual Property laws in order to keep their secret materials secret, the remailers have the ability to violate _anyone's_ copyrights. I can imagine a scenario in which the NSA starts spamming wholesale copyrighted works anonymously in order to give the Government a compelling reason to legislate against anonymous remailers.
Rich Zed(hendersn@zeta.org.au) "Don't hate the media, become the media" - Jello Biafra PGP key on request