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From: AMPaquette@aol.com [mailto:AMPaquette@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, 14 July 2000 2:47
To: abuse-report@apana.org.au
Cc: AMPaquette@aol.com
Subject: Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Materials
Dear Sir/Madam:
Our office represents 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 The Advanced Technology materials are confidential, unpublished, copyrighted works.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". The NOTs works are registered with the United States Copyright Office under registration numbers: TXu 257 326 and 257 527.
Your subscriber, Frank Copeland, has placed one of the NOTs works, NOTs 34, on his home page on your web site without the authorization of our client. This work was the subject of a copyright case here in the United States in which the infringer, Mr. Keith Henson, was found liable in the amount of $75,000 for posting this work on the Internet. That portion of the transcript in which the NOTs 34 work was discussed was sealed by the Court. In fact, Mr. Henson was found in contempt of court for distributing copies of the transcript with the copyrighted work to his friends on the Internet. This contempt order was recently affirmed by the appellate court here and Mr. Henson fined. He will now also be ordered to pay attorneys fees and costs. Apparently, Mr. Copeland, your subscriber is one of the friends to whom Mr. Henson gave this portion of the transcript containing this work, which is now on Apana's web site.
This work can be found under the following URL:
http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fjc/scn/mirrors/www.users.wineasy.se_80/noname/transcripts/Trialday4.html Your subscriber's action in this regard violates Australian and United States copyright law. Pursuant to 3.3 of Apana's Service Terms & Conditions, Apana specifically prohibits the transmission of "any material that infringes any third party's intellectual property rights or any other rights." Accordingly, we request that this work be removed immediately.
In addition to the case involving Mr. Henson, there have been numerous permanent injunctions have been entered regarding similar infringements. For instance, a United States District Court in the state of Virginia granted judgment for damages, costs, and a permanent injunction related to similar copyright infringement. Permanent injunctions have also been entered in three additional U.S. cases.
Similar results have been reached in Europe. On September 14, 1998, a Swedish court enjoined a defendant who engaged in similar infringements, in addition to finding that his actions in placing our client's copyrighted works on the Internet violated the owner's rights under Swedish copyright law. He was also fined for his illegal actions and ordered to pay litigation costs. On June 9, 1999, a Dutch court found an individual and numerous Internet service providers had engaged in copyright infringement by posting, or hosting, our clients' copyrighted works on their web sites. The court ruled that the service providers must remove such postings as soon as they are notified of them, subject to a monetary penalty for each day on which they do not comply.
I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Moxon & Kobrin
3055 Wilshire Boulevard
Suite 900
Los Angeles, California 90010
Tel: (213) 487-4468
Fax: (213) 487-5385