Subject: More on Scientology vs. Carnegie-Mellon

From: "Declan B. McCullagh" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 10:24:31 -0400 (EDT)

Carnegie Mellon's attorneys seem unwilling to take a stand against the
Church of Scientology. The school's counsel is the law firm of DeForest
& Koscelnik, which CMU retained in the fall of 1993 when the Defense
Department started a criminal investigation of the university's handling
of contracts (which is still ongoing, BTW). Walter DeForest is at
[email-masked]; Jackie Koscelnik is [email-masked]. The firm
is at 412-227-3100, 412-227-3130 fax. Koscelnik sat with me on the
newsgroup censorship committee sparked by Rimm's "obscenity" claims;
months after I resigned from it, the committee decided to uphold the
original ban of most of the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.tree.

-Declan

---
 
For more info on the Church of Scientology, check out:

EFF:                 http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Legal/Cases/CoS_v_the_Net/
Jerod Pore:          http://www.well.com/user/jerod23/clam.html
Dave Touretzky:      http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/
Ron Newman:          http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html
David Dennis:        http://amazing.cinenet.net/scientology.html
Modemac:             http://www.tiac.net/users/modemac/cos.html
Skeptic Magazine:    http://www.skeptic.com/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html
Bob "Sloth" Bingham: http://www.sky.net/~sloth/sci/sci_index.html
Tilman Hausherr:     http://www.snafu.de/~tilman
Daniel Tobias:       http://www.webcom.com/~dtobias/sosueme.html 

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Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 22:39:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Bardwell <[email-masked]>
To: Bulletin Board Administration
    <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Scientology vs. Carnegie-Mellon -- Impending Censorship?
In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]>
References:
<+cmu.andrew.graffiti.bboard-censorship+MkA=[email-masked]
	<[email-masked]>

John Ockerbloom <[email-masked]> writes:
> In any case, if Dave T. or anyone else here wants to put up pages
> critical of Scientology that don't raise any serious copyright
> concerns, they should be welcome to do so.  (You could, for instance,
> get a copy of the OT documents from the California court, and then put
> up a page explaining their meaning and critiquing them in plain
> English, without actually reproducing the text beyond clear 'fair use'
> guidelines.  Given the jargon-laden style of the extracts I've seen,
> this might be useful even to folks who have the court records
> already.)  People should be free to do this without any hindrance from
> the University, even if the Scientology organization disapproves and
> makes threats.
Unfortunatly this is not the case...

I had, a month or so ago, been reposting posts that contained small
excerpts (which I beleived to be protected by the "fair use"
exception) from some of the OT documents, that had been canceled by
someone apparently working for the CoS.  CMU received notices
indicating that the CoS (RTC specificically) considered these to be
inviolation of Copyright law (partially due to the claim that these
are unpublished documents that the excerpts were from) and Trade
Secret law.

The CoS lawyer asked that a) the reposts be removed b) my account be
removed or I be reprimanded and promise never to do it again.

The reponse which they were given was that I promised not to knowingly
violate relevant laws.  I subsequantly reposted further material (I did
not and do not believe any of my actions were illegal), and
the CoS lawyer sent further complaints to CMU.  I am currently under
orders not to post any of the said material in any quantity until the
CMU lawyer has had time to review the issue.

To date I have not heard any conclusion from the CMU lawyer (I have
spoken with him and presented the issues as I see them.)

I am afraid that CMU would infact rather not give me an answer,
because no matter what they choose someone will be annoyed, and
because the CoS will probably only get whiny if further material is
posted.

William Bardwell
wbardwel+@[cs.]cmu.edu