The cure for cults that want to deny others their freedom of speech is more freedom of speech -- Fredric Rice

Date: 14 Jun 2002 08:33:24 From: "Fredric L. Rice" <frice@raids.org>
To: archive@talkorigins.org, jlucas@infidels.org
Sub: ICR cult claims you're violating their copyrights

Greetings, TalkOrigins and Infidels.

This past week someone at the ICR cult sent my organization -- The Skeptic Tank -- a rather bizarre and disjointed complaint about one of my web pages which gets created automatically by software I wrote demanding that I remove it as they (the ICR cult) claimed copyright. The web page is a form that Internet viewers can fill out to request text files that debunk and otherwise criticize Creationist cult propaganda.

http://www.raids.org/flist026.htm

After informing the cult that he could not claim copyright ownership on my automated forms I received further rather bizarre e-mails, confirmed that the cult was attempting to curtail my freedom of speech, and _finally_ after about a week received a list of text files the cult claims to violate copyrights on (they don't however. I informed the cult that I would examine each text file and verify that they don't. And in fact the cult has no way of knowing if they violate their copyrights since the cult never acquired copies of the text criticism so the cult is making unfounded guesses based upon file names.)

Any way in one of the disjointed e-mails I received from the cult there was a claim that both TalkOrigins.ORG and Infidels.ORG violate the ICR cult's copyrights. I'll send you the entire e-mail later this evening however here's the sentence that concerns your organizations:

> Here is the list as if you didn't know. Nobody has
> threatened you yet. We have requested that you respect
> our copyright and link to our articles rather than
> reproducing them like talkorigins.org, infidels.org,
> and others.

Infidels.ORG has a solid and well respected reputation on and off the Internet. My intention is to publicise the ICR cult's demands for the removal of criticism from my computer systems however I'll censor your two organization's domain names when I do since such unfounded claims can be damaging to organization's reputations. But I thought it best that both of you are made aware of the fact that the ICR cult is making this allegation to other individuals.