Received: from dora.tertius.net.au (dora.tertius.net.au [203.30.75.1]) by athene.tertius.net.au (8.7.1/8.7.1) with ESMTP id GAA01844 for ; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 06:19:43 +1000 Received: from aughra.glasswings.com.au ([203.14.59.250]) by dora.tertius.net.au (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id KAA01425 for ; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 10:36:46 +1000 Received: from netcom8.netcom.com (netcom8.netcom.com [192.100.81.117]) by aughra.glasswings.com.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id CAA10989 for ; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 02:39:37 +1000 Received: (from hkk@localhost) by netcom8.netcom.com (8.6.13/Netcom) id JAA04961; Wed, 9 Apr 1997 09:34:11 -0700 Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 09:34:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Helena Kobrin Subject: Unauthorized use of copyrighted material To: skud@tertius.net.au Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: skud@athene.tertius.net.au Content-Length: 2858 Dear Mr. Roberts: I represent Religious Technology Center ("RTC"), the owner of the confidential Advanced Technology of the Scientology religion and the holder of exclusive rights under the copyrights applicable to the Advanced Technology materials. The Advanced Technology materials are confidential, unpublished, copyrighted works. RTC's works include, among others, the individual works comprising a level known as "NOTs." I have just been informed that one of your subscribers, David Gerard (fun@tertius.net) has posted certain NOTs works to the alt.religions.scientology newsgroup. The message ID for his posting is: slrn5kjf9s.1q3.fun@dora.tertius.net.au. These works have been posted without the authorization of my client. The works are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office under registration numbers TXu 257326 and 257527. These postings violate U.S. and Australian copyright law. Because they have been made through your system, they are copyright infringements for which you could be held liable. I therefore request that you have this posting canceled immediately. We are currently involved in litigation over the same and similar materials in several lawsuits. Preliminary injunctions based on copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation are in place in three of those suits in the United States District Court in San Jose, California. And a United States District Court in the state of Virginia has granted summary judgment in favor of my client, related to copyright infringement of some of these works. In one of the San Jose cases, in which Netcom On-line Communication Services was a defendant, the court ruled that an access provider which is informed that infringement is occurring through its system and does nothing to stop it can be liable for contributory infringement. Mr. Gerard's posting claims that my client does not have the rights to these works. That is incorrect, and he is not qualified to make that determination, nor are the other posters to this newsgroup, from whom he likely got this erroneous idea. It is noteworthy that several of those persons are enjoined by the court in San Jose from making the same posting that Mr. Gerard has made. We are not seeking to become involved in litigation, but we will take all necessary measures to protect my client's intellectual property rights. We presume that you do not want your system to be used as an instrumentality of infringement, and that we can resolve this amicably. Please confirm that you have removed the copyrighted material as requested above. I must urge you that speed in dealing with this situation is critical in light of the fact that unpublished materials are involved. Sincerely, Helena K. Kobrin