LAWSUIT DROPPED; SPA STILL DEMANDS MONITORING

[sameer]

For Release October 24, 1996
Contact: Sameer Parekh 510-986-8770

	    LAWSUIT DROPPED; SPA STILL DEMANDS MONITORING

Oakland, CA - In an ongoing attempt to force Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) to monitor their customers' web pages, the Software
Publisher's Association (SPA), acting on behalf of three member
software companies, dropped a lawsuit against Community ConneXion,
Inc., dba C2Net, but reserved the right to bring the suit again if
C2Net failed to adopt a policy of monitoring their users' web pages
for copyright infringement.

The three plaintiffs, Adobe Systems, Inc., Claris Corporation, and
Traveling Software, Inc., seemed surprised to find that they had filed
the lawsuit, and sought to distance themselves from the action. For
instance, Adobe's PR department maintained that Adobe has definitely
not filed any such lawsuiT. (Contact Carol Sacks -- (408) 536-4033)

C2Net, a small, Oakland-based ISP and software company, has always
forbidden illegal activity on its servers. This includes copyright
infringement and contributory copyright infringement.  "We're very
aware of the problems that software companies face from piracy; most
of our revenue comes from software and we have our own problems with
people pirating our software," said C2Net President Sameer Parekh. "I
just don't think that bullying hard-working ISPs into embracing a
highly questionable set of policies does anything constructive about
the problem of piracy."

The Software Publishers Association wants ISPs to sign a 'Code of
Conduct' which would force ISPs to actively monitor users.  Under
current case law, this greatly increases the ISP's liability, in
addition to being extremely expensive, time-consuming, and distasteful
to users.

"The telephone company isn't required to monitor all their users to
make sure they're not saying illegal things," said Parekh. "How can we
be expected to do that for our customers' use of the Internet?"

Of the over twenty ISPs contacted by the SPA, many caved in and signed
the 'Code of Conduct', fearing a lawsuit from the SPA more than the
future expense and liability problems that result from ongoing
monitoring. A coalition of ISPs and other concerned parties, the ISP
Defense Coalition, has formed to oppose these bullying tactics by the
SPA.

"The SPA thought they could bully small ISPs, but they didn't 
realize we had principles and couldn't be cowed," said Parekh.

Mike Godwin, Staff Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
said, "My personal view is that the Software Publishers Association
has forgotten that it is the legislature, not the courts, that is the
primary avenue for seeking changes in copyright policy.  What we see
here is a perversion of the notion that the courts should be used to
seek justice -- SPA seems to have picked defendants in the hope that
they'd be too weak to resist. I find that decision morally
objectionable. Speaking as a lawyer, I have to say that this is the
kind of tactic that justifiably confirms in people's minds whatever
low opinions they may have of lawyers."

The suit alleged that C2Net users were providing tools to get around
copy protection in the plaintiffs' software, and were providing
pointers to other sites that actually contained pirated software. The
SPA provided no examples, and did not allege any direct copyright
infringement on C2Net machines.

"Despite our best efforts to get specific information," said Parekh,
"the SPA did not provide us with any specifics about our customers
engaging in infringing activity. We suspect that they had no evidence
of infringement, but acted merely on vague reports of questionable
conduct on the part of a few users."

C2Net provides high-security encryption solutions for the Internet
worldwide.  More information about C2Net's products are available at
https://stronghold.c2.net/. Information about the forming coalition
may be found at https://www.c2.net/ispdc/.