-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@EFF.ORG> Subject: File 4--EFF Open Letter to Church of Scientology Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 18:25:35 -0500 (EST) *****POST FREELY AS APPROPRIATE***** An Open Letter to the Church of Scientology (CoS) and the Net from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Over the past several days, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has received several reports from system administrators and others about threats of lawsuits they have received from attorneys for the Church of Scientology and the closely associated Religious Technology Center and Bridge Publications, Inc. These threats apparently are designed to convince sysadmins to discontinue the carriage of certain newsgroups that involve discussions of the Church of Scientology and its teachings, solely on the ground that some of the messages sent through these newsgroups allegedly involve infringements of CoS copyrights or other intellectual property rights. EFF has also received a letter from CoS stating that it would not use the threat of lawsuits against sysadmins if there were any other way to deal with allegedly wrongful messages. EFF believes there is a better way to deal with allegations of wrongful messages -- and that using the threat of litigation to shut down entire newsgroups, or to persuade sysadmins who have not originated any allegedly wrongful messages to shut down newsgroups, is itself highly inappropriate. Electronic communications are in their infancy, and most of the providers are not big corporations with substantial funds to spend on expensive litigation, but rather small operators who cannot afford protracted litigation, even if they are in the right. The mere threat of a lawsuit could result in some sysadmins refusing to carry all sorts of contentious newsgroups simply because they could not afford to put on a case to show that they should not be held responsible for another party's alleged wrong. Rather than attempting through threats of lawsuits to induce innocent sysadmins to censor speech, Church members are encouraged to participate in Usenet discussions to make their views known and refute erroneous posts -- in other words, to answer allegedly wrongful postings with more speech. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis articulated in 1927: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." If CoS claims that a copyright violation or other wrong not remediable by speech has been perpetrated by a particular person, then it should confine its legal threats to that person -- not direct them at an innocent sysadmin who did no more than forward a message, and certainly not at the innocent participants of a newsgroup seeking to exchange views through the newsgroup channel. Even if CoS cannot determine the identity of the person perpetrating an alleged wrong against it, that provides no excuse for cutting off the free flow of information over the net. Events like these show us how important it is to search for new paradigms for handling disputes that arise from time to time. We think the better way to handle this dispute would be to submit the claims and counterclaims to arbitration or mediation, perhaps in a proceeding conducted over the net among the parties to the newsgroup discussion. EFF offers its services to help find an appropriate mediator or arbitrator who would be available online for this purpose. Any party to this dispute that refused to participate in such a forum would, of course, have to explain why it had done so if a case were brought in a more traditional court. Meanwhile, we urge CoS to leave the innocent sysadmins out of their fight. We urge CoS not to take actions designed to cut off the free flow of information through the net. Where there are legitimate disputes about particular messages or the wrongful actions of particular individuals, those can and should be addressed -- perhaps most efficiently through the new communications medium itself. The Electronic Frontier Foundation 1667 K St. NW, Suite 801 Washington DC 20006-1605 USA +1 202 861 7700 (voice) +1 202 861 1258 (fax) +1 202 861 1223 (BBS - 16.8k ZyXEL) +1 202 861 1224 (BBS - 14.4k V.32bis) Internet: ask@eff.org Internet fax gate: remote-printer.EFF@8.5.2.1.1.6.8.2.0.2.1.tpc.int - -- ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ |PGP Key available on the keyservers|GJ/CS d H S:+ g? p? au+ a- w+ v++ c++ UL+| | PGP Encrypted E-mail welcome. |UU+ US+ P+ 3 E N++ k- W++ M-- V po- Y++ | | |t++ 5+ jx R G' tv+ b+++ D++ B--- E+++ u**| |SUB ROSA: Confidential, secret, not|h-- f++ r+ n+ y++-- | |for publication. |[ For the geek impaired, a description ] | - ------------------------------------+------------------------------------------ - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. 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