From: Rich Burroughs <richieb@teleport.com>
Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 03:08:48 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAST
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960517171832.00ab0b9c@mail.teleport.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:02 PM 5/15/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> wrote:
[snip]
>The copyright issue is probably irrelevant to the Scientology dispute, 
>anyway.  The material on which the copyright is claimed almost certainly 
>wasn't marked, appropriately, as it would have had to be for the copyright 
>to be valid.  While current law no longer requires the "circle-C" notation 
>long used for this purpose, the material involved is far more than old 
>enough to have been subject to this requirement, and once a copyright is 
>lost (or not claimed) I believe it couldn't be regained.

I think you're wrong about that.  You're confusing copyrights and
trademarks, I believe.  It's a trademark that you lose by not asserting it
or defending it.  Someone please correct me if I have this wrong :)

There have been claims that the copyrights were not transferred properly
from Hubbard to RTC, but they have yet to be proven in court.

CoS won against Arnie Lerma in a summary judgement.  Copyrights were
definitely the issue in that decision.

>The threat to remailers is one of the many reasons the Leahy bill sucked, 
>and that would have made it worse by imposing criminal sanctions on this 
>kind of thing.  Ironically, with the way remailers are used, it would 
>actually have been possible for some copyright holder to fabricate a 
>violation of copyright law by posting his own material through remailers, 
>and then sue the final remailer, or have its owner prosecuted.

The ugly provision in the Leahy bill had to do with obstruction of criminal
investigations, didn't it?  The CoS copyright cases have all been civil.  I
don't see how it applies.

>I'm glad the people around here finally saw the light.

That part of the bill stunk, I agree...


Rich
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Rich Burroughs  richieb@teleport.com  http://www.teleport.com/~richieb
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