Posted by Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S. on July 22, 1998 at 08:45:36:
In Reply to: Re: PUBLIC NOTICE TO COPYRIGHT VIOLATORS posted by Ram Samudrala on July 22, 1998 at 02:05:03:
Mr. Samdrula,
You have now failed to produce any certified
evidence of the author's prior permission to
promote and/or host "The Federal Zone" anywhere
on the Internet, primarily because NO ONE EVER
GOT THIS AUTHOR'S PERMISSION TO DO SO and
NO SUCH PERMISSION WAS EVER GRANTED TO ANYONE!
You received lawful notice from us last Fall, and
you did nothing at that time about the violation
which we documented on your computers at
Stanford University. The industry standards
documented by the Software Publishers Association
contain a very clear definition of contributory
infringement (aka "indirect infringement").
See URL:
http://www.spa.org/piracy
We therefore refer you to Internet URL:
http://supremelaw.com/wwwboard/messages/1200.html
with the same legal force and effect now served
upon you, sir.
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
REMOVE ALL REFERENCES TO "The Federal Zone"
in any files, databases, or indexes presently
in your possession or control. This applies
as well to all known aliases for this book,
including but not limited to "fedzone",
"fed zone", "fedzone.zip" and the like.
This demand also applies to search indexes
where evidence(s) of your violation can be
found, now or at any time in the past.
If you do not comply with our desire to
remove this book entirely from the Internet,
we fully intend to prosecute you for criminal
violations of the applicable copyright laws.
I trust that I have made myself quite clear.
For someone with your brains, this notice
should be quite sufficient.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S.
Author (under a pen name)
: I have been (implicitly at least) accused
: of infringement for allegedly having a link
: (which Paul Mitchell has to prove in court)
: to a site which allegedly infringed Paul
: Mitchell's copyrights. The interesting thing
: is that my page allowed (and allows) people
: to arbitrarily add links without any monitoring,
: much the way a search engine does. So even
: assuming Mitchell is right, I am no more infringing
: than a web search engine is infringing.
: I believe even the SPA wouldn't say that Yahoo
: or Infoseek is infringing copyrights even though
: they're point to several "warez" sites that
: contain infringing copies of software. It
: would be interesting to see which court in
: this country uphold's Mitchell's claims.
: Have you sued anyone yet? Has anyone countersued
: you yet?
: As far as e-mail to me goes, I've put you
: in my filter file so e-mail to me will not be
: seen. In the future, you will have to address
: me by US postal mail if you want me to look
: at it.
: --Ram