Computer Science Department Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 September 16, 1996 Mr. Roger M. Milgrim Paul, Hastings, Janofsky, & Walker, LLP 399 Park Avenue New York, NY 10022 Dear Mr. Milgrim: Thank you for your letter of August 22 concerning the web site I maintain at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/NOTs, called The NOTs Scholars Home Page. I appreciate your assurance that RTC does not desire to engage in litigation with me over this web site or impinge on my legitimate First Amendment rights. In return, let me assure you that I have no desire to become involved in litigation either, or to violate RTC's legal rights to its intellectual property. From its inception, my web site has been devoted to the scholarly analysis and criticism of the NOTs documents to the extent permitted by law, but no further. I have always tried to obey the law as it pertains to these documents, and I find it significant that your letter does not allege any illegalities in either the present version of The NOTs Scholars Home Page or any previous version. Your concern, as expressed in the concluding paragraph of your letter, appears to be about illegal actions your clients imagine might occur at some time in the future. Their fears stem from misunderstandings that I am happy to resolve here. Let me begin by affirming that I understand the NOTs documents to be copyrighted works, and I have no desire to violate the rights of the copyright holder. I have given your clients no reason to think I would post these documents. No public statement by me has ever implied this, and there is nothing on my web site that could be construed as suggesting it. Furthermore, my web site has always included the warning that while anyone may submit commentaries on the NOTs documents, "materials that clearly violate US copyright law will not be accepted." Limited "fair use" quotation for purposes of commentary or criticism is permitted by the US Copyright code. As you are no doubt aware, your client's suit against the Washington Post last year for publishing brief quotations from OT III was dismissed by Judge Brinkema as "reprehensible." The Post's quotes were clearly fair use. She found that RTC's real motivation was "stifling of criticism and dissent of the religious practices of Scientology and the destruction of its opponents," and ordered RTC to pay the Post's legal costs. Even Messrs. Henson, Ward, and Erlich, who are currently under injunctions in California with regard to RTC's copyrighted material, have been explicitly told by Judge Whyte that he is not curtailing their First Amendment rights to discuss this material, including their rights to make fair use quotations from it. I do not believe any of the materials on my web page contain quotations that exceed fair use. I understand that RTC also believes some of the NOTs documents to still be trade secrets, despite their having been posted to the Internet on several occasions. By my count they have been posted six times now, the most recent postings occurring last month from Sweden and the Netherlands. They are also presently available to the public in an unsealed court file in Sweden. My knowledge of Pennsylvania's trade secret law is admittedly limited, but I am unable to see how anything on the NOTs Scholars Home Page could constitute a violation of that law, and I note that your letter to me does not allege any violations at the present time. I assure you that I have no intention of violating Pennsylvania law in the future. Third, you write that my web page "appears" to contain a solicitation to receive the NOTs documents themselves. I do not believe that solicitation of access to someone's legally-obtained NOTs pack for purposes of scholarly research would violate Pennsylvania law, but in any case, my web page contains no such request. The "Call for Contributions" section asks for "information, commentary, and criticism of any aspect of NOTs." I never intended this to be construed as a solicitation of the documents themselves, and I don't believe most readers would make this mistake. Nonetheless, because I do not wish to be misunderstood on this point, I am considering clarifications to the wording of that section. In conclusion: we appear to be in agreement that I an not at present violating your client's intellectual property rights with respect to NOTs. At any future time, if RTC feels it has a legallly valid objection to some of the material appearing on my web site, I request that you notify me of this and specify the URL for the document in question, the specific passage to which RTC objects, and the legal grounds for that objection. Sincerely, Dr. David S. Touretzky Senior Research Scientist cc: Walter DeForest, CMU General Counsel Provost Paul Christiano