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Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:08:40 -0600
From: FACTNet International
Net censorship, access cost increase, and Intellectual Property alert!
Every netizen or organization that wants low cost net access, net free speech, and uncensored e-mail has a high stake in a court case soon to be decided in the litigation war involving Scientology, the Internet, and a nonprofit electronic library and historic archive called FactNet.
An emergency Internet and legal issues briefing has been prepared for you and/or your organization at (www.factnet.org). Factnets Board of Directors urgently asks your help to promote both media coverage and a vigorous dialogue among netizens on the immediate and substantial threat this briefing discloses to the future of the Internet.
To help understand the importance of this briefing to Internet costs, Internet slowdowns, Internet intellectual property and Internet free speech please find the following media quotes.
"If the church's (Scientologys) lawsuits prevail...future providers of bulletin boards and newsgroups on the World Wide Web, as well as the companies running such subscriber services as Prodigy, Compuserve, and America Online might be forced to monitor or restrict information simply because they fear being sued...If system operators are liable for the content of the postings, it will lead to censorship...It would change the whole idea of how the Internet develops -- it's that important." --Shari Steele, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as quoted in "The Net: Copyright or 'Free Press'?" Newsday, 10/10/95
"Besides the technological curtailment of free speech, a skirmish like this one has the potential to completely disrupt the online operation not only of individual users, but also of entire networks overloaded by traffic their circuits were never designed to handle." --Colman Jones, "Freedom Flames Out on the 'Net: Who Launched the largest-ever Sabotage of the Internet?" www.now.com/issues/15/44/News/feature.html
"Other [Internet] users have reported mysterious incidents: investigators visiting their neighbors, strangers attempting to get into their telephone records, e-mail sent to their sysadmins asking that their accounts be closed down. How did we get to this, in a free country?...
"It turns out that a belief in free speech and an interest in Scientology may involve you in the bitterest battle fought across the Internet to date. A fight that has burst the banks of the Net and into the real world of police,lawyers, and armed search and seizure. Ultimately, however, the drama doesn't matter: the real issues here are the boundaries of free speech and the future of copyright and intellectual property in the face of a technology that can scatter copies across the world in seconds... "Whatever the motives, when computers are seized because they contain allegedly purloined intellectual property, messages are intercepted as they traverse the network, or the security of anonymous remailers is pierced by police, the days of the Internet as a cozy, private, intellectual cocktail party are over. .." --Wendy M. Grossman, "alt.scientology.war," Wired, 8/95
Lest anyone doubt Scientology's intentions, an article in the most recent issue of an internal Scientology magazine called "High Winds" proudly trumpets "groundbreaking lawsuits against both copyright infringers and the computer service companies that served as electronic conduits" for them. It goes on to predict "landmark decisions" in which, "for the first time, Internet access providers will be held responsible for any copyright infringements posted through their facilities."
"The Internet is an information age tool that empowers individuals and reduces the need for a large, authoritarian government. It empowers the poor with an unregulated world of entrepreneurial opportunity... Information and the new frontier could create a more fair, peaceful society The free flow of information is central to America's foundation, and '90s technology only enhances it. Unfortunately, it's all big threat to those in power who rely on the control of information to secure their lofty positions. No matter what they call it, free speech is the issue." --Wayne Langsen, "Raiding Free Speech," Boulder Weekly editorial. 8/24/95
PLEASE help protect our mutual Internet freedoms by appropriately forwarding this briefing to your personal or organizational network of individuals, newsgroups, listservs, net media, and net watch organizations where it hasnt appeared yet.
Your timely attention to this critical briefing is appreciated,
The Directors of Factnet Boulder Colorado USA
P.S. Factnet has been reconstructing its electronic files since they were sabotaged and returned to us by court order after the Scientology raid. Our original mailing lists consisted of individuals and organizations who had viewed materials or had an interest in Scientologys Internet abuses and other human rights abuses. Because of the raid we are not fully certain that our reconstructed mailing lists contain what they originally contained or have been reassembled back into the proper lists. These reconstructed mailing lists are far to important to the battle for Internet free speech not to begin using again just because they were in Scientology's possession.
If you have received this alert and you have not previously reviewed or been interested in any information on these issues let us know and we will immediately correct the situation. We ask your understanding if there has been an error or duplicate mailing. Try to imagine someone illegally seizing all of your computers and computer files then searching and altering and destroying parts of them. Finally you get it all back to you in boxes and pieces. That's what happened to Factnet. Over the last 12 months with minimal resources it has had to reconstruct 6 gigabits of its deliberately disordered returned libraries and files. ```
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