From news-central.tiac.net!news-in.tiac.net!news.gte.com!cam-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news00.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!mn5.swip.net!news Mon Apr 28 06:29:03 1997 Path: news-central.tiac.net!news-in.tiac.net!news.gte.com!cam-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news00.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!mn5.swip.net!news From: Zenon Panoussis Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: The present and the future Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 00:47:49 +0200 Organization: - Lines: 107 Message-ID: <3363D794.7A6116EF@dodo.pp.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup122-7-3.swipnet.se Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: s-40153 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.0b3 [en] (Win95; I) CC: Madame Kobrin , The Twit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) The final hearing in one of my side-cases was on Thursday. The court issued a TRO against me in September, forbidding me to "infringe on RTC's copyright" to the OTs and NOTs at penalty of 50.000 crowns (some 7.000 USD). A couple of days later I filed the OTs and NOTs with the same court. I also informed the court that I had distributed the same material to a few persons that are not "the public". The scienos then claimed that both these actions were a violation of the TRO and demanded that the penalty will be levied. That's what was up on Thursday. During the months that passed, the scienos took back some of their allegations in this case. For example they alleged originally that I was responsible for the court's distribution of the NOTs to the public, but took it back one week before the final hearing. Strangely enough, the scienos didn't even claim that my filing of the NOTs with the parliament was an infringement or a violation of the TRO. The hearing went well and a ruling will be given on May 7th at 11.30 h. As much as one can speculate about the outcome of court cases, I expect to win. As usual I will put the recording of the hearing on the net as soon as I can. Yet, I am not satisfied with the present situation. I feel that I have fallen in the scienos' trap and that I - of all people - are now dancing to the tune of their pipe. I lost sight of my goals for a while. I reminded myself what I set out to do. Originally I entered a fight for the freedom of speech on the net. At that point I knew very little about scientology, except that scientology acted in a most unacceptable way against the net. This was the time of the "Fishman papers" and the infamous clambed. My goal then was to teach the CoS that free speech is free either they like it or not. Soon enough I learned what sort of an organization I was dealing with. I set a new goal, to expose the scientology, the CoS and Hubbard for what they really are. By November last year both these goals were achieved to a higher degree than I ever could have hoped for, much thanks to the fact that the CoS sued me. Until then, the litigation that the CoS initiated served my purposes. Now it doesn't any more. I am drowning in the paperwork that Magnusson and his team of lousy lawyers are producing by the ton and I am sick and tired of having to counter-prove and argue against legal statements the one more unreasonable than the other. I have had enough of the CoS' lies and twisted truths in court and I am endlessly fed up of bad faith litigation. In other words, I have arrived to the point where litigation actually serves its Hubbardian purpose: to harass. If there is one thing I dislike more than what I just described, it is the very fact that I let myself fall in this trap. So I intend to exit immediately, one way or another. I therefore phoned Magnusson on Wednesday and proposed the following settlement: The CoS admits officially and irrevocably that the OTs and NOTs have been legally published according to Swedish law. The consequence of this is that the sciptures can be copied for personal use, can be lended by libraries, can be quoted etc. Furthermore the CoS drops all pending cases against me. In return, I admit copyright infringement through the net in the summer of 1996 and I agree to pay a purely symbolical tort. Moreover, I agree to abstain from future massive reproduction of the scriptures or their distribution to the public. As you see, it's a very basical deal I propose. I ask that the CoS admits what actually is a fact already and I offer not to treat the scriptures with less respect (in the copyright aspect) than what I have for any other published material. The alternative I offered the CoS, should they turn down this proposal, is just as simple: I admit all claims and charges, thereby ending all litigation in a way that ridicules the CoS. Considering my financial situation, I don't pay a cent anyway. I stop playing sportily and by the rules, and embark instead on a full-time full-effort crusade to spread the OTs and NOTs. I print them and I spam them all over the net and I establish free scientology churches all over the country and in general I see to it that these scriptures escape nobody's attention. And every time I am sued, I admit all claims again and continue as before. Any reasonable organization would know that the settlement I offer is more favourable than the probable outcome of the pending litigation and definitely more favourable than the alternative I set forth. Any reasonable organization would thus accept the offer gladly. The CoS is certainly not a reasonable organization, but they have lately shown signs of some very elementary connection to reality anyway. I judge the chances of them accepting as a 10-15%. And I have been promised a reply by today. Hold your breath and get a killfile; you may soon want to put "NOTs-Zenon" there. Z -- oracle@everywhere: The ephemeral source of the eternal truth...