Church files suit in Holland
a.r.s., February 4, 1996

zthomas@pacific.telebyte.net (Zane Thomas) wrote:

> Karin,
>
> Congratulations on forcing the cult to expose itself, its evil nature,
> and its pathetic sci-fi beliefs to the public.

I had no hand in exposing them at all. They did it themselves, by raiding xs4all, harassing users and providers, starting litigation, calling Felipe a censor and me KKKSpaink, making lots of bruhaha and then - out of fear - dropping their case two days before it was to go to court.

As for exposing their sci-fi beliefs: as far as I am concerned, thery are absolutely free to believe what they want. It is their actions that have caused great concern in me and in the other participants.

> I'm sure you have
> spoken with numerous attorneys by now and are confident in your
> position. Accompanying all acts of courage, such as that undertaken
> by you, there are risks --- as you are undoubtedly aware. Calculated
> risks are taken by brave people who understand the risks surrounding
> what they do, but who selflessly take those risks for the benefit of
> others and society at large.

Zane, thank you for this flattering picture of me. Can I put this on my certificate? ;-)

But please be reminded that I am not the only one in this position, but simply the only one who has been subpoenaed. The other participants are as brave and courageous as I am, and without them, I would not have been able to continue for so long. (It has been almost four months now that we have this huge amount of Fishman homepages.)

As for the confidence we put in the position I am in: I am most certainly able to be a vocal critic of CoS by now. They have more or less forced me to become one, to study their history, their behaviour, their methods etc. And I am afraid I will have to write a book about this whole CoS-versus-Internet affair - if only to justify the huge amount of time I have spent on this. And yes, by now I do think a larger audience needs to be educated about Scientology.

As for winning: we are most confident that we can present the judge with a clear case, and argue convincingly why we felt we had to go to court on this. A judge will certainly not order hyperlinks to be copyright infringements, which is what CoS currently requests. We do not know whether the judge will declare ISPs to be held accountable for their users' activities, which is also what CoS requests - there is simply no law and no rule about this in the Netherlands as of yet. We want to find out about these things. We are not quite sure whether the judge will condone our having the complete Fishman Affidavit available - there is indeed a chance that he or she will order us to take down the parts taken from OT3 - but that is less important. We seek a judge's opinion on this because CoS's opinion is, to say the least, biased and very unreliable, and thus provides no proper guidance at all.

Once we have a judge's verdict, we will happily oblige, and either adorn our pages with a legal 'Feel free to read, download and disperse'-stamp or take parts of them down.

> The clams will suffer a major PR defeat in Holland, regardless of
> whatever else happens.

Regardless of what else will happen, they already have suffered a major PR defeat. They are considered to be... well, let me say: as an object of scorn, suspicion and derision.

> Congratulations again on forcing the clams onto the battle-ground of
> your choosing, obviously they haven't been paying attention to Sun
> Tzu.

That is indeed what we have accomplished: they will have to back up their claims. And by now - even before having faced a judge - they have already retracted parts of their original claims. The subpoena focuses on OT 2 and 3 and on 'On the dissemmination of material'. They have more or less given up their claims to OT 1 and OT 4-7.

Copyright Karin Spaink.
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