UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
| RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY CENTER, a
California non-profit corporation, Plaintiff, vs. GRADY WARD, an individual, Defendant | )
) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) | No. C-96 20207 RMW FAI OPPOSITION TO TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER |
INTRODUCTION
The Defendant Grady Ward is a computer lexicographer who has published six volumes of material -- Moby Words, Moby Hyphenator, Moby Part-of-Speech, Moby Pronunciator, Moby Thesaurus, and Moby Language -- in editions amounting to a total of more than five million words since 1989. As virtually his sole source of income his family relies upon the protection of U.S. Copyright law.
Since the customers for his products include all computer programmers who intend to add natural language capability to their software products (the limited ability to understand and generate natural English), he has spent much time on the computer network known as the Internet and has contributed both software and participated in hundreds if not thousands of lively discussions involving computer semiotics and language acquisition, persuasion and propaganda, issues involving privacy, cryptography, and government intrusion into private affairs of language and communication and the implications of emerging technologies upon traditional notions of fundamental human rights. He is a technical contributor to the Internet privacy product known as PGPfone and is a vendor to the National Security Agency. He has held a Secret Clearance while contracting to MITRE and the Naval Underwater Systems Laboratory.
Defendant Ward chose to resign his position as Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Apple Computer, Inc. in 1989 to produce and promote the above series of Moby works and to be able to fully participate in the raising of his first son, Adrian, who was born in May of 1989 and second son Isaiah, born in September of 1990. Seeing first hand the democratizing potential of the Internet which is not under a central, hierarchical control, Grady Ward has been an outspoken defender of free speech since the late 1980's. He is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an electronic civil liberties and analysis group based in San Francisco, California. The EFF has an active role in promoting, defending, and challenging ideas of freedom and intellectual property as they rapidly evolve on the Internet.
Before January 11, 1995 the Defendant Grady Ward had not participated in any discussions concerning the practices of the belief system known as "Dianetics," or "Scientology," or the science-fiction writer founder of Scientology known as "L. Ron Hubbard."
Grady Ward has never been a member of any Scientology enterprise.
On January 11, 1995, Attorney for the Plaintiff, Helena K. Kobrin, executed a special computer command called a RMGROUP (for "remove group") to automatically destroy the Usenet discussion group designated alt.religion.scientology. (Exhibit A.) The news of this unique attempt by a counsel of record to unilaterally and arbitrarily obliterate all discussion of a topic was relayed to the EFF Usenet group comp.org.eff.talk, which Grady Ward was an active participant. Out of curiosity, Grady Ward subscribed to alt.religion.scientology to see why its content so provoked this response from a religious corporation. It seemed to him to be a vastly inappropriate response to issues of criticism and commentary.
After subscribing for several days to the alt.religion.scientology, the individual known as Dennis Erlich (Case No. C-95-20091 RMW) was served a Writ of Seizure by this court and was physically violated in what seemed to Defendant Ward to be an egregious violation of his First and Fourth Amendment rights and a violent and immediate threat to free, lawful, criticism and commentary on the Internet.
Defendant Ward has actively participated in the Usenet group alt.religion.scientology
since that time until March, 1996.
OPPOSITION TO TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER
(1) The Order is overly broad and would violate the Defendant's right to discovery.
The term "Advanced Technology" as used in Page 3, Line 4, Line 16; Page 4, Line 8; Page 5, Line 3, Line 18; and Page 6, Line 10 is not distinctly limited to direct and limited reference to Order's Exhibit C. works only, as this term has been applied by the Plaintiff to virtually all their marketable scriptures, including those that do not have trade secret status and those that have been fairly quoted at length in various articles such as the Los Angeles Times of June 24, 1990.
Part 3 of the Order forbidding acquisition of the Order's Exhibit
C. works even by the Defendant's attorney for purposes of proving
that they in fact do not have trade secret status nor are owned
by the Plaintiff may prevent an effective defense to Plaintiff's
allegation that those rights were violated;
(2) The wording of the Order forbids acts that have not been established
to be possible. Page 2, line 28 "further unauthorized
disclosure" (emphasis added) is not possible since it has
not been proven that the Defendant has in fact ever disclosed
any Order's Exhibit C. material, nor has he threatened to do so;
(3) The post hoc propter hoc reasoning that the Plaintiff provides to allege that the Defendant is or is causally associated with the group known as SCAMIZDAT in lieu of direct or indirect evidence in seeking this ex parte order is further vitiated by the Plaintiff's bitter animosity toward the Defendant and the strong likelihood that the Plaintiff or persons working in concert with the Plaintiff have repeatedly violated law by unlawfully forging dozens of "cancel" computer messages intended to eradicate Usenet discussion contributions of those critical of the enterprise of Scientology without due process of law; (Exhibit B.)
Indeed, these forgeries whose disregard to rights of fair commentary
and due process of law are remarkably similar to Counsel for the
Plaintiff's RMGROUP message -- and often disguised in the same
manner as the Usenet posts representing themselves to be apparently
from a similarly anonymous group calling itself SCAMIZDAT. The
authors of the cancel forgeries, similarly posted from Europe
and other sites around the world, can arguably be working in concert
with the authors of SCAMIZDAT to provide the means of further
intimidating legitimate, lawful criticism of the enterprise of
Scientology by apparently laying the foundation to this ex
parte Order and the accompanying Complaint.
Indeed the Defendant has directly and indirectly been the target of criminal and harassing acts by the Plaintiff and associates to the Plaintiff.
A man that I later identified as Jeffrey George Quiros, an official with the investigative arm of Scientology in San Francisco perpetrated the crime of trespass against me and my family at our home in Arcata, California on April 14, 1995. A criminal complaint was subsequently filed by me with the Arcata Police department against Mr. Quiros and his associate.
On May 8 a person identifying himself as Gene Ingram, investigator for the enterprise of Scientology, phoned my publisher, the Austin Code Works, in Austin, Texas to inquire into my finances and to accuse me of criminal activity.
(Exhibit C.) is a portion of a newspaper article identifying Ingram as a long-time associate of the Scientology enterprise
On May 10 this same investigator for the enterprise of Scientology was identified as committing a theft from my mother in Tacoma, Washington.
My 74-year old mother and her companion positively identified the man shown in (Exhibit D.) as the man who identified himself as "Jack Hoff" and through further unlawful deception was able to obtain a current photograph of the Defendant and his wife and children.
My mother subsequently filed a criminal complaint against Eugene
Martin Ingram (# 95-1530374 Tacoma Police Department).
The counsel for the Plaintiff, Helena K. Kobrin, has repeatedly harassed and libeled me through e-mail, accusing me of Copyright violation, violation of the Lanham Act, Trade Secret misappropriation, and alleging discipline by my Internet Service Provider which did not occur (Exhibit E.) In this case, the provider merely reminded me of its Terms of Service as it routinely does when it receives allegations of improper conduct, but did not accuse me of any acts that Counsel Kobrin subsequently asserted.
Plaintiff Counsel Kobrin has been censured for her zealous over-litigation before. (Exhibit F.) This censure by the court is particularly relevant to this Order's Exhibit C. materials because one victim of Kobrin's overzealousness was David Mayo who has asserted authorship of many of these same NOTs materials.
Moreover, Defendant Ward has never threatened to unlawfully post intellectual property of the Plaintiff, nor has he ever unlawfully solicited Trade Secret material. The Defendant's solicitations of secret enterprise of Scientology materials has been accompanied by statements either acknowledging that those materials may be protected by copyright or trade secret laws and that only those materials that were not unlawful infringement of Plaintiff's legitimate rights were to be sent to the Defendant.
For example the last paragraphs of Declaration of Warren McShane's Exhibit 24, "…and, yes, I am still looking for authentic cult materials for my personal research. Send any material withi[n} the guidelines of "fair use" as defined by the US Copyright code to grady@netcom.com. To avoid unlawful harassment by the criminal cult, please use my PGP key:…"
The seemingly conspiratorial atmosphere of using anonymity and encryption to ensure privacy is reasonably necessitated by the harassing acts by the Plaintiff and the enterprise of Scientology itself and as such is not credible evidence of an unlawful conspiracy to deprive the Plaintiff of their legitimate intellectual property rights.
My sustained and repetitive taunts concerning the SCAMIZDAT literature
and indecent personal comments concerning the harassing acts of
Plaintiff and the documents referred to as scriptures by the enterprise
of Scientology were protected by the First Amendment and were
designed by a professional student of the English language to
elicit acts by the enterprise of Scientology that would expose
their unseemly and harassing behavior towards anyone critical
toward them in an effective way.
For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff's request for a Temporary
Restraining Order should be denied
March 26, 1996
Grady Ward
in Pro Se