Is Free Speech Too Expensive? One church's threat of costly lawsuits over newsgroups is rattling providers. By Shari Steele (originally printed in the April 1995 issue of BBS Magazine) A new threat to free speech hit the Internet recently. And it came from an unexpected source -- the Church of Scientology (CoS). System administrators all over the Internet reported threats of lawsuits from attorneys for the CoS and the closely associated Religious Technology Center and Bridge Publications, Inc. These threats apparently were designed to convince sysadmins (or sysops) to discontinue the carriage of certain newsgroups that involved discussions of the Church of Scientology and its teachings, solely on the ground that some of the messages sent through those newsgroups allegedly involved infringements of CoS copyrights or other intellectual property rights. The notes from the CoS claimed that certain users were either anonymously or admittedly posting certain published and unpublished copyrighted materials, including certain of the confidential Advanced Technology materials. These confidential materials, the posts claimed, were stolen from CoS. "There is reason to believe that the materials which are uploaded by these users may also be downloaded by other users, and that these activities may be occurring through the systems which are linked into the Internet." The two newsgroups under attack were alt.technology.clearing and alt.religion.Scientology. The notes went on to ask sysadmins to lock out the two newsgroups from their systems to eliminate the potential for reposting and downloading. This is very disturbing. Using the threat of litigation to shut down entire newsgroups, or to persuade sysadmins who did not originate any allegedly wrongful messages to shut down newsgroups, is highly inappropriate. Electronic communications are in their infancy, and most of the providers are not big corporations, but rather small operators who cannot afford protracted litigation, even if they are in the right. The mere threat of a lawsuit could result in some sysadmins refusing to carry all sorts of contentious newsgroups simply because they could not afford to put on a case to show that they should not be held responsible for another party's alleged wrong. Rather than attempting through threats of lawsuits to induce innocent sysadmins to censor speech, Church members should participate in Usenet discussions to make their views known and refute erroneous posts -- in other words, to answer allegedly wrongful postings with more speech. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis articulated in 1927: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." If CoS claims that a copyright violation or other wrong not remediable by speech has been perpetrated by a particular person, then it should confine its legal threats to that person -- not direct them at an innocent sysadmin who did no more than forward a message, and certainly not at the innocent participants of a newsgroup seeking to exchange views through the newsgroup channel. Even if CoS cannot determine the identity of the person perpetrating an alleged wrong against it, that provides no excuse for cutting off the free flow of information over the net. Events like these show us how important it is to search for new paradigms for handling disputes that arise from time to time. A better way to deal with this particular dispute would be to submit the claims and counterclaims to arbitration or mediation, perhaps in a proceeding conducted over the net among the parties to the newsgroup discussion. Any party to this debate who refused to participate in such a forum would, of course, have to explain why it had done so if a case were brought in a more traditional court. CoS should leave the innocent sysadmins out of their fight. They should not take actions designed to cut off the free flow of information through the Net. Where there are legitimate disputes about particular messages or the wrongful actions of particular individuals, those can and should be addressed -- perhaps most efficiently through the new communications medium itself. For those of you who want to help, an Internet petition opposing CoS's bullying tactics is being circulated by Jon Noring. To sign it, 1) Prepare an email message. In the main body (NOT the subject line) of your email include the ONE-LINE statement: SIGNED You need not include the "<" and ">" characters. 'SIGNED' should be capitalized. As stated above, your full name is optional, but highly recommended. If you do supply your name, please don't use a pseudonym or nickname, or your first name -- it's better to just leave it blank if it's not your full and real name. *************************************** Example: My e-mail signature would be: SIGNED ssteele@eff.org Shari Steele *************************************** 2) Please DON'T include any other text in your message. 3) Send your message containing your signature to the following Internet email address: =========================== cos-petition@netcom.com =========================== 4) Within a few days of receipt of your signature, an automated acknowledgment will be emailed to you for email address verification purposes. You do not need to respond or reply to this acknowledgment when you receive it. Shari Steele is Director of Legal Services of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing freedom and openness in computer-based communications. Send your legal questions to Shari at ssteele@eff.org.