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

Date: 11 Jun 2002 10:50:46
From: "Fredric L. Rice" <frice@SkepticTank.ORG>
To: "Niles"
Sub: Fw: ICR cult copyrighted materials?

At 12:36 PM 11/06/2002 -0500, you wrote:

>> Right, I can't figure out what exactly he's asking to be
>> removed. I'll contact the Chilling Effects clearing house
>> and see if they thing I should take any action. I sent this
>> inquiry to the Institute for Credulous Retards. I see the
>> idiot sent you a censored version! How amusing:

>Yet, he didn't censor the Subject title. hehe

<laughing!> I didn't notice that! I'm almost thinking that maybe he didn't know how. This guy doesn't seem to be the brightest star in the galaxy.

>> a copyright notice in its source. I've added criticism to
>> the web pages and in so doig incured the wrath of IRC
>> cultists who have sent me nut rants because of it. So it's
>> not as if the cult isn't aware of the fact that these files
>> are Fair Use criticism of the cult's bizarre claims.

> I don't know enough about fair use, but alot of those
> files (without >reading into them) appear to have comments
> from many people not associated with the ICR.

I'll go check. Ah, yes, you're right, there's a lot of information about the IRC that's from a lot of different people and organizations. It looks more and more as though his complaint is one of not wanting the criticism on the Internet.

I'll ask him again for _specifics_ when I point out to him the fact that he's claiming one of my web pages is copyrighted by his cult. Maybe if I can get some specifics I'll know which text files need attention.

> I wonder if he received written permission from each
> of those people? I have a feeling that Steven J Gould
> would have NEVER given a cult permission to publish any
> of his writings, speaches, etc. I know I saw his name
> in there somewhere, and he was a pretty firm Evolutionist.

It's kind of hard to ask Mr. Gould his opinion now. }:-}

>> What I'll do is I'll go through each of the text files
>> and make sure that there's Fair Use criticism contained
>> within each one; a debunking of the bizarre claims. I'll
>> make sure that they all conform to Fair Use which I do
>> believe that they all currently do since they're criticism
>> as well as coming from a non-commercial organization (The
>> Skeptic Tank is non-profit.)

> It would really seem to me that the additional
> information you provide with these texts would have an
> effect on the copywrite. Again, I don't know enough about
> copywrites to have much of an opinion though.

I've watched the Scientology organization's copyright claims since 1994 and I do know what constitutes Fair Use and what doesn't. Entire texts can be provided for non-commercial use provided it's done as criticism of the piece with an eye toward asserting that the piece being criticized wasn't taken out of context.

There's a _lot_ of texts on my web site that cover the IRC and it's a wonder he hasn't enumerated all of them.