March 20 Assignment: U.Miami School of Law: Law & Internet Seminar

March 20 Assignment: Law & Internet Seminar (LAW 745)

Scientologists, Copyrights, and The Control of Information
I would like us to concentrate on two (related?) issues.
The first is the technological war between those seeking to propogate documents belonging to or concerning Scientologists, primarily via USENET, and the counter-effort of those attempting to use various techniques, e.g. "cancel" messages, to stop them. Most of this information can be found from links on the The Church of Scientology vs. the Net page noted below.
The second is the legal war between the Church of Scientology and those it believes guilty of copyright infringement and theft of trade secrets. For the purposes of this class, we will assume that the Church holds a valid copyright in all the documents and that the matters at issue are indeed trade secrets, and that these property interests in a "religious" context are identical to that in an ordianry "secular" text. We will instead concentrate on

The legal tactics used by the Scientologists
How the courts have responded.

Reading:

A wealth of information, collected from an anti-Scientologist perspective can be found at The Church of Scientology vs. the Net. I don't expect you to read it all, but you should spend some time looking around here. Please pay particular attention to the links to the "cancelbunny", "rogue agent", and the threats to anonymous remailers. We will talk about these issues in class.
Wendy Grossman, one of the better reporters covering the 'net, wrote a good journalistic summary of the issues, especially the cancelbot wars, in WIRED.
The Church of Scientology Homepage gives the Church's official account. Note especially
the page on recent developments in Internet copyright; and
the materials under the "Freedom Magazine: The Internet Promise and Perils" subhead to be found at the Goddman homepage...and
the description of the Dennis Erlich case buried in this article on Internet crime.

Religious Technology Center v. Netcom, 907 F.Supp. 1361 (N.D. Cal. 1995). We will discuss this in class.
The Dutch lawsuit.
Karin Spaink, a defendant in the case, provides many links. Note especially
a lay account of the hearing,
a summary of
the unofficial translation of the verdict.
If you want to see what the fuss is about, click here.

A similar series of cases arose in the U.S. Here is a journalistic summary, a page to skim -- containing more than you may want to know --, and one summary by an interested party.
A useful (overdetailed?) timeline showing the various Scientology-related net.incidents in 1995.

Doing:
I think it's that time again: please send your favorite as-yet-unmenioned URL to the class mailing list, along with short description.

Optional

The EFF "Legal Cases-Church of Scientolgoy" Archive" has it all.
The Scientology Critic's Information Page has many links.
CNN has some journalism and many valuable links; and also a second story.
The Steve Fishman homepage says it was created by the former CoS member who has now seen the error of his (and its) ways. Despite the reference to activities in Coral Gables, I found this story a little hard to follow...

Seminar homepage.
Last week's assignment.
Next week's assignment.

Version 1.2a
Last modified: Mar 17, 1996. 23:00