1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
2
Civil Action No. 95B2143
3
RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY CENTER,
4
Plaintiff,
5
vs.
6
F.A.C.T.NET, INC., et al.,
7
Defendants.
8
9
REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT
10 MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION
11
12
13 Proceedings before the HONORABLE JOHN L. KANE, JR.,
14 Judge, United States District Court for the District of
15 Colorado, commencing at 10:00 p.m., on the 8th day of
16 September, 1995, in Courtroom C401, United States Courthouse,
17 Denver, Colorado.
18
19
20
21
22
DEBORAH A. STAFFORD, Official Reporter
23 P.O. Box 3592
Denver, Colorado, 80294
24 (303) 5710530
25 Proceedings Reported by Mechanical Stenography
Transcription Produced via Computer
149
1
2
3
4 (Richard K. Cleek was sworn.)
5 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: State your name for the
6 record. Please spell your last name.
7 THE WITNESS: Richard K. Cleek, CLEEK.
8 DIRECT EXAMINATION
9 BY MS. HANLONLEH:
10 Q Good afternoon, Professor Cleek. My name is, for the
11 record, Natalie HanlonLeh. I am also with the law firm of
12 Faegre & Benson, appearing here for the defendants.
13 Professor Cleek, where are you a professor?
14 A The University of Wisconsin Centers which is the site of
15 13 campuses within the University of Wisconsin system. I am
16 at Westbend, Wisconsin.
17 Q And what do you teach there?
18 A Geography and computer science.
19 Q How long have you been teaching?
20 A Since 1970.
21 Q What kind of education do you have?
22 A I have a master's in culture geography from the University
23 of Texas. A recertification in computer science back in the
24 early '80s at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee. Then an
25 ABD in geography from the University of WisconsinMilwaukee.
150
1 Q What kind of courses do you teach that are relevant to the
2 subject matter of this case?
3 A This semester I am teaching a course called Surfing the
4 Net.
5 Q What do you teach in Surfing the Net?
6 A I don't know for sure. We haven't finished it yet, but
7 the idea is to expose students to every basic type of
8 operation that's possible on the Net the Internet.
9 Q Have you taught this course before?
10 A No.
11 Q Is there quite a demand for this type of course?
12 A Oh, yes. When it closed, we had a waiting list of another
13 40.
14 Q How long have you been teaching computer science courses?
15 A Since about 1983.
16 Q Could you turn to Exhibit V, if you have it.
17 A I am not sure which book to look in. I'm sorry. Exhibit?
18 Q V as in Victor.
19 A Yes.
20 Q What is this?
21 A That's my curriculum vitae.
22 Q Is that up to date?
23 A Yes.
24 Q When did you start using the Internet?
25 A About 1984 or 1985. It wasn't called that then but the
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1 but the precursor
2 THE COURT: Let me interrupt for just a minute. You
3 indicate that you got an ABD degree?
4 THE WITNESS: ABD is all but dissertation
5 almost doing all the course work but not writing the
6 dissertation.
7 THE COURT: It's like a Ph.D. degree.
8 BY MS. HANLONLEH:
9 Q In what ways do you use the Internet?
10 A Professionally both as a geographer and computer scientist
11 I use it to make instantaneous communication with colleagues.
12 You can hook right into the research labs and look at results
13 months before they ever get published. In terms of teaching
14 materials, it's almost impossible to keep up with the amount
15 of material that's out there that would be of value to one
16 course or another. I can't take my students into the field,
17 but I can get them to talking with Malayse students on a
18 Malayse Newsgroup.
19 Q Have you seen the uses of the Internet change during your
20 experience over the last ten years?
21 A Absolutely. Because the Internet has changed so much,
22 some of the key things are there, Email, file transfer
23 protocol, the ability to get a file from someplace, that has
24 been there for all of these years. Telenet, the ability to
25 link into another computer and look say in an library catalog,
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1 that's always been there, but the new thing, the Web, the
2 Gofer
3 Q Explain, for example, what is the Gofer?
4 A Gofer can we do Web instead?
5 Q You can do Web instead, that's fine.
6 A The worldwide Web hypertext markup language situation.
7 Basically, what that means, you can put a document out there,
8 a piece of paper with text on it, but some of that text are
9 linked to other documents. A link to a photograph a link
10 to another computer somewhere in the world that has a
11 different set of information. So it's trivial to simply check
12 on any particular item in that document that interests you,
13 and suddenly you are somewhere else looking at whatever logic
14 lies behind that link. When I read a newspaper, modern news
15 readers, if the guy who wrote the article has a link in it to
16 a background site, I can go look at the raw documentation that
17 lies behind whatever the guy is talking about. We call it a
18 datarich environment.
19 Q Explain to the court what a newsgroup is.
20 A It's one of the hardest things to describe because there
21 is no good analogy about it. We could start with a newspaper
22 that has no publisher and no editor.
23 THE COURT: We have got one like that in Denver.
24 THE WITNESS: And on that newspaper then because
25 there is no editor or no publisher, nobody is responsible for
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1 what's published and nobody moderates or edits what is
2 published. But that analogy fails to some extent because a
3 newspaper usually has multiple topics and a newsgroup usually
4 has one topic. The news may illustrate all religion.
5 Scientology has the topic of Scientology. A newspaper comes
6 out once a day but a newsgroup is an ongoing continuous thing.
7 It never stops. You log in a day later or an hour later. You
8 will see whatever has come in since the last time that you
9 logged in. So there is a continuity to it that makes it quite
10 different from a newspaper and a news medium.
11 Q How many newsgroups are there out there?
12 A There are at least 4,000 worldwide newsgroups that are
13 distributed worldwide. That grows at about 10 percent per
14 month, which by the way is the growth way for most anything on
15 the Net. The number of users, number of Web sites which works
16 out for over 300 percent per year. So you have over 4,000 new
17 groups with new ones springing up every week. You have
18 another 4,000 or 5,000 newsgroups that are regional in scope.
19 They only reach the Boston or Atlanta area or Germany,
20 something like that.
21 Q You mentioned before that newsgroups have topics. What
22 kinds of topics are out there for newsgroups?
23 A Newsgroups are organized in hierarchies. Seven big ones.
24 For example, one hierarchy, the COMP hierarchy. To us a
25 newsgroup starts with COMP dot which is dealing with a
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1 computer newsgroup. There was a group called COMPDI which is
2 a newsgroups that dealt with articles internationally. COMP
3 DOS. SOOS dot MAC would be a newsgroup of people that have
4 MacIntosh systems, so there are hundreds of COMP newsgroups.
5 REC would be a recreational newsgroup. Thers' REC dot
6 Quilt I have never looked at it but I assume they talk
7 about quilting. And REC dot CATS, that one I have looked at,
8 and that's a lot about cats. Most are female on that group,
9 by the way. But so you see there are hundreds of REC SOC,
10 social groups, hundreds of groups talking about social things.
11 All of those well, and the other hierarchy is ALT. ALT
12 groups are more varied. It's not exactly a miscellaneous
13 category but almost that. ALT groups are easier to start than
14 the other hierarchies, and there are several hundred ALT
15 groups of various sorts.
16 Q What various sorts kinds of things would they be in?
17 A Well, sometimes they will be quite scientific. ALT dot
18 Fusion would be a group that where a physics 80 where
19 they talk about cold fusion, and they will do that ALT group
20 inside of a side group because it's easier and quick to get
21 the group up. On the other hand, there is ALT ALI Visitors,
22 started by one of the guys that got kicked off ALT UFOs.
23 There are a variety of groups that are really there to get
24 work done. Scientists or people who share an interest like
25 cats or quilting or whatever. Incredible variety.
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1 Q How many people would participate in one of these
2 newsgroups?
3 A Newsgroups the biggest one I have seen I think runs
4 probably about 44 440,000 readers. Some are small, I
5 suspect. Probably not more than 100 readers. Those are
6 readers. On the Net we called those lurkers because they read
7 it, but they don't post, so you never see them. I think your
8 question was how many people actually post material.
9 Q Why don't we back up a step and explain what it means to
10 post something on a newsgroup, what the distinction is?
11 A It's very much like Email for those of you who have
12 Email. Basically, you are typing in a message that you want
13 to send to everybody who reads that group. You type in a
14 header or subject line so people know what your message is
15 about and you postit. It goes to that group and shows up on
16 various peoples' computers at different times. The news
17 basically is propagated through the Internet or the part of
18 the Internet that does the news, so it may up show in a
19 Milwaukee news reader computer about a second after I post.
20 It may show up in Germany two minutes after I post it. It may
21 show up in southern California three hours after I post it,
22 depending upon traffic, but it will propagate around the
23 world. When somebody reads the news, there are all kinds of
24 news readers out there. Usually a news reader will log onto
25 the group, shows a screen, you will see the headers, the
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1 subject. You will see how big the message is in bytes, and
2 then you will see who sent it, so you have three pieces of
3 information on your screen along with a list of subjects. If
4 you cite one of those subjects that you want to actually read,
5 you simply move the cursor to it, click, and the message
6 appears in full.
7 Q Let's go back. When we were talking about the numbers of
8 users, there are a couple groups in particular in this case
9 that are at issue, ARS, ALT dot Religion Scientology.
10 Approximately, how many users are on that newsgroup?
11 A I haven't seen the figures for this past August. They
12 aren't out yet. In July the figures were about 28,000. In
13 May when things were sort of hot and heavy, ARS it was about
14 66,000. ALT Religion Scientology.
15 Q When you talk about giving the figures on this, who keeps
16 track of this information?
17 A Well, there is a fellow named Reed somebody who is let
18 me see. I think I wrote it down he is at the DEC Network
19 Systems Lab. He has been tracking the news and trying to find
20 ways to count the number of readers. It's obviously got to be
21 an estimate. He has discovered a program which he has
22 distributed to many of the main frame computers and the larger
23 computers that people will volunteer to run. If one person on
24 a computer system remembers anyone, that program, once a month
25 they will go out and look at a file called a news RC file. We
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1 are talking here a typical kind of university computer, large
2 company computer where many users, 1,200, whatever, are
3 basically using that computer to do disks which are either
4 computer terminals or PCs, personal computers, that are linked
5 to that computer, that the computer is in an operating system
6 like UNIX. In a system like they never ever use a news RC
7 file, you can then with this program that this fellow at this
8 DEC Lab has written basically scan through all of the users'
9 RCS files and it checks to see which newsgroups they have
10 actively opened within the last 14 days. Not every group
11 that's on their list but all the ones that have actually done
12 something, to go in and look.
13 This is probably a little Greek but a news RC file
14 is a list of all of the newsgroups that you have ever
15 subscribed to even if you are not actively looking at it any
16 more.
17 This program we are talking about goes and looks at
18 the one that you have looked at in the last 14 days, and it
19 then takes a sampling of sites around the world and simply
20 multiplies the figure out to reach an estimate like, for
21 example, in May of about 66,000. It's probably a very
22 conservative figure because it only measures new sites on big
23 UNIX type systems.
24 In the last two years the computer user isn't a guy
25 at a university or big company any more. It's a guy at home
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1 who has a computer that links directly to the Net through
2 something like a slip or PPP account, but that's what happens.
3 Nobody is going to be able to see his news RC files there, so
4 there is a whole group of users out there that are no longer
5 in these figures. That's why I say these figures are quite
6 conservative.
7 Q Do people on a newsgroup typically share the same
8 viewpoint?
9 A No.
10 Q What is the discussion like in a newsgroup?
11 A This is a general question about newsgroups that's hard to
12 generalize because there are so varied types, REC dot Cats.
13 They do fight, and there are debates about whether you should
14 declaw them. It can get quite vociferous. By the way, when
15 you are talking about ARS the debate is much more volatile.
16 Q What do you mean by volatile?
17 A I think Mr. McShane talked about the word scatological
18 attacks on the church. That certainly happens. There is
19 swearing, a curse word. That certainly happens. What you can
20 find on ARS is everything from a 15 year old type of cafeteria
21 behavior to some of the most cogent reasoned articles that you
22 have ever seen. It's the kind of thing that ought to occur in
23 a scientific journal. You find people who primarily
24 courtroom data, court transcripts. So there is just an
25 incredible variety of material that gets posted to ARS all
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1 dealing with the church Scientology.
2 Q How did you first land at ARS?
3 A In January. I heard on another newsgroup that some one
4 had attempted to remove a group by issuing an RM command, RM
5 group command. Groups occasionally split up, and you have got
6 to remove get rid of the parent group. But to remove a
7 group that's active and healthy and thriving was pretty
8 disgusting.
9 I also heard the word was going around in the Net
10 that a number of peoples' messages were being cancelled. You
11 can always cancel your own words on the Net. If you type a
12 message and you want to take it back, you can issue a
13 cancelled command that will hopefully take it back before the
14 message gets too far. There was an issue of cancellation of
15 some anonymous posters based on the words that they said. I
16 found that intriguing at least. I wanted to look into it to
17 see if it was true. I began to read ARS then in probably
18 February.
19 Q What did you discover when you started reading ARS?
20 A That it was true. I saw the original removed group
21 message that Ms. Kobrin issued for the group. And I saw the
22 cancels first hand.
23 Q What did you do at that point?
24 A I tried to see if you could determine who the canceller
25 was. In those early cancelled messages, they were done quite
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1 crudely by news area, the ComNet which is the Commercial
2 Internet service provider in northern California. In those
3 cases a number of people complained to NetCom and NetCom
4 ultimately cancelled those users' accounts. When I say we
5 know the name, I know the account name they posted under. I
6 don't know their real name behind that account name. We knew
7 those account names because those cancelled were done crudely.
8 NetCom cancelled their accounts. The cancels stopped for a
9 while and picked up again. Suddenly, we could tell they were
10 coming. The Internet service provider called Delta Net. We
11 complained to Delta Net about this unethical behavior. At
12 that time we were beginning to share that this is illegal and
13 it appears to violate Section 18 of the United States Code
14 which talks about unauthorized access to stored electronic
15 communications. So Delta cancelled their account and came
16 back with a story about how two guys had wandered in late at
17 night and had wanted an account, and we gave it to them. I
18 was sort of surprised. Here we got the guys account cancelled
19 or terminated rather. And then the cancels began to pick up,
20 but from an anonymous source where you couldn't tell where it
21 was coming from. And at that point that's when I began to get
22 out of my depth, that it was difficult to try to pin some of
23 these down. Since the message that cancels somebody else's
24 message is forged and anonymous, it's hard to disentangle the
25 origin. Do you want me to continue with that?
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1 Q Yes.
2 A That occurred in March or perhaps April and May. I was
3 out of the country for late March, early April, doing field
4 work in England, so I didn't keep track for a while. But when
5 I came back, the cancellation had appeared to stop pretty
6 much. So the truth is I didn't do much in the month of June.
7 I had talked to the FBI, trying to get them interested back in
8 the spring with what I perceived to be a violation of United
9 States law. They were interested and they were willing to
10 listen and willing to look at all the paper that I sent them.
11 Okay, it happened, and the agent and I were talking about it
12 and I lost touch and the cancellations weren't occurring any
13 more. In early July the cancellations picked up again. At
14 that point one of the first messages that got cancelled was
15 from Martin Poulter of Bristol University who had published
16 six lines, O.T. VII48 and O.T. VII49, as I recall, and
17 Poulter's message was cancelled. So I Emailed him. It was
18 cancelled from a computer in Dublin, appeared to come from a
19 Dublin college, so the FBI didn't seem to want to mess with
20 that because it seemed to be from out of the country. I wrote
21 to Martin that I wanted to repost your message and hopefully
22 they will cancel from here in the States and hopefully the FBI
23 will get their interest up. So I did that. I reposted
24 Mr. Poulter's message containing six lines of O.T. VII
25 material. I actually did that inadvertently. If I wanted to
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1 do it advertently, I would, but that was inadvertent. But
2 nonetheless nobody cancelled me, so that didn't work out.
3 Instead my university got a message, Email message from
4 Ms. Kobrin basically accusing me of violating copyright,
5 misappropriating trade secrets, and there was an interesting
6 line in their about how the fair use of unpublished material
7 has never been found to be true in the courts in the United
8 States or something like that.
9 Q I would like to know what ARS is like, how often during
10 this period did you read ARS?
11 A At least every morning after coffee or with coffee, so on
12 a regular basis. The truth is newsgroups are fairly
13 addictive. ARS is incredibly addictive. It's like a mystery
14 and it's like a soap opera and a number of other things.
15 Q Who comes to chat and have coffee on the ARS?
16 A Lots of different kinds of people, Scientologists some.
17 ExScientologists, several. If I had to guess, actually I am
18 almost certain that the bulk of the people that post to ARS
19 today are people just like me. The people who have got into
20 it because of the cancels and that kind of a behavior and
21 wanted to see what was really going on and stuck around for
22 the rest of it. I know that's probably true because ARS was a
23 group that although I didn't read it back in 1994, it was a
24 group in the bottom 50 it had very low readership, and now
25 it's in the top 10 of number of messages of traffic, at least
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1 it was during the late spring and early summer and that tells
2 you something.
3 Q How many messages a day are posted on ARS?
4 A 400 for the last several months.
5 Q You mentioned that Scientologists participated in ARS?
6 A There seem to be three types of Scientologists on ARS.
7 There is a guy who posted, Rick Sherwood, who for late spring
8 and most of the summer basically posted one line messages,
9 never answers questions and never brings up any new points.
10 His purpose appears to be to flood the group with so much
11 traffic that it becomes difficult to read. Especially people
12 with old news readers, they have to look at every message that
13 gets posted. With him posting 50 to 100 messages a day
14 MR. COOLEY: I object to this line of testimony, Your
15 Honor. I don't see its relevance to anything at this point.
16 We are getting pretty far afield, engaging in a great deal of
17 speculation on the part of this witness.
18 THE COURT: Overruled.
19 THE WITNESS: The second kind of Scientologists that
20 post commonly seem to be a rotating slot, that is, a user
21 for example, Vera Wallace would post. That was virtually a
22 character assassination of most Scientologists on the Net.
23 When she would stop posting, another one would pick up. We
24 assume that those people who talk about this kind of thing on
25 ARS, that was an assignment that gets rotated through.
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1 The third kind of posting from a Scientologist,
2 Mr. Andrew Milne, who releases the official church press
3 releases, for example, for the Wollersheim raid. From some
4 church documents that we have seen apparently writes dead
5 agent material for the church.
6 Q What do you mean "dead agent" material?
7 A When you read ARS enough, you pick up the terms. Dead
8 agent is character assassination material. The Wollersheim
9 press release, for example, had a fair amount of that in it.
10 Q Let's turn to that right now. Can you turn to Defendants'
11 Exhibit W.
12 A Okay.
13 Q Can you identify this document?
14 A Yes, this is the press release or a copy of it put out by
15 Mr. Milne after the Wollersheim raid.
16 Q Where did this come from?
17 A It was originally posted to ARS. I actually got this copy
18 and mailed it to you off of a Web page. That is a number of
19 postings on ARS are posted Web pages, so they are easily
20 available, so you can go look at them and you find what you
21 want, and I found this.
22 Q Can you explain to the court what a header is?
23 A Senatorbedfellow.mit. This is a header which is this
24 long string of what's called a path. I won't read it to you,
25 but it's senatorbedfellow.mit. It tells me it's stored on a
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1 computer at mit. It refers to the path that let's see
2 that in this case I got this message from the message as
3 you can see from Milne at crl.com which is Mr. Milne tells
4 you which newsgroups it was posted at. This case ALT Religion
5 Scientology. Sometimes you will see more than one newsgroup,
6 and we call it crossposting. There is a subject as you can
7 see. Date, organization. That top part is the subject line
8 and the name is what would show up when you would read a
9 newsgroup, that whole thing is what would show up if you
10 decided to read this article.
11 Q Is this what you would see in terms of what you would say
12 a posting looks like when we are talking about postings?
13 A Absolutely, this is the posting.
14 Q When you talk about downloading, what does it mean if you
15 download a posting?
16 A It can mean that you are simply reading the news on
17 another computer. I read my news at UWM about 45 miles away.
18 It comes down to my computer, Westbend, Wisconsin. You can
19 call that downloading. We use the word downloading referring
20 to a file from one place and putting it someplace else.
21 Q Can you turn to Exhibit X? Can you identify this
22 document?
23 A This was a document that was purportedly linked to ARS.
24 It occurred before as I recall, before I began reading it.
25 It's up on a number of Web pages whose subject is Scientology.
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1 That is collections of material and Scientology, the church
2 itself, has one. And there are about 10 or 15 that are
3 maintained by critics of the church. And this was a letter
4 which was proposed by the master plan for handling the problem
5 way back in January of all of this scurrilous attack on the
6 church, on the ALT Religion Scientology group. And this plan
7 basically says that they were going to do it by putting
8 entheta or good news.
9 The truth is when I first started reading ARS, it was
10 full of two kinds of material and chuck full of two kinds of
11 material, hundreds of messages posted repeatedly on wins which
12 apparently is like I saw my dentist studied Scientology.
13 Now, his practice is up 50 percent. Others are called
14 expertises, and those tend to be like testimony, like they
15 have had a Mormon apply which was a Morman Deacon write and
16 say he saw no problem with Scientology's compatibility with
17 the religion of Morman.
18 I have a problem with all of those good nice
19 articles. Every time critics would ask a question, can you
20 cite an authority? It would never be answered.
21 Q Can we turn to Exhibit Y? Can you identify this?
22 A This is an example of a posting. This is one of the
23 Scientology posters, a number of critics think is in that
24 rotating slot, Robert Marcus. It was what many, many people
25 considered to be a death threat. The thing that I think
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1 bothered people so much, not simply did it appear to be a
2 death threat, it was a death threat against Diane Richardson
3 who is one of the people who writes on the Net who posts court
4 cases. That's her big contribution. That's not the kind of
5 person who attacks Scientology.
6 Q When you say this is an example of a posting, that might
7 have been made by someone claiming to be a Scientologist?
8 A Yes.
9 Q What do people talk about on the ARS?
10 A They talk about lots of things. Let me they discuss
11 the court documents that are out there, Wollersheim and
12 Fishman, and they discuss the transcripts action of the
13 courts in terms of raids that occur.
14 There are common things that you see on any newsgroup
15 IANAL which is an acronym for I am not a lawyer, so there is a
16 lot of legal discussion that is not very legal.
17 There are discussions of history of church. L. Ron
18 Hubbard's war orders. I heard a comment earlier today in
19 testimony that Mr. Rub Hubbard was widely decorated in I
20 think in fact Mr. Hubbard had four ribbons. That's what the
21 war department files show. There is discussion of
22 Mr. Cooley, for example, had an interview in 1985 on the
23 60 Minutes show in which he argued that there were two sets of
24 war records for Mr. Hubbard. So we discussed things like that
25 likely to be true or not.
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1 There are discussions of this curious use of the term
2 donation. If you don't get to take O.T. III without a
3 donation, then how can you call it a donation. There is that
4 kind of argument about what is or isn't or what should be.
5 There are affidavits by exScientologists, what it
6 was like for them. One of the things a lot of critics like me
7 don't understand is how could you get into this in the first
8 place. And a number of Scientologists have written in, ex
9 Scientologists with their stories. So people understand what
10 it was like and how they got involved and how they got out.
11 Q Do people ever discuss any of the secret materials of the
12 church which have been mentioned here today?
13 A Yes.
14 Q How do they discuss those kinds of materials?
15 A Most of the secret materials that have been posted have
16 been performed anonymously. Not always. That is full
17 documents. A number of people me inadvertently have
18 posted partial famous six lines, for example. In fact, the
19 cancelled whoever was doing these cancellings would cancel
20 each of those partial posts and somebody would post it about
21 three more times to show there was that sense of anger at
22 having your postings cancelled. Partial message. At some
23 point they were canceling messages which told where you could
24 find Fishman documents. There was a point during July when as
25 all of these cancels were occurring somebody I think it was
169
1 a Mr. Peter Esquez who is a mathematician at Carney Mellon
2 actually posted the Fishman documents on Web page. You go and
3 look at them. His site got closed down after two days
4 apparently on account of a complaint from the church. So at
5 that point a number of other sites began carrying the whole
6 Fishman series from O.T. I through VII. There are at least
7 two German sites that I know about, one Finnish site. As
8 those would be begin to go off line and get closed down, a
9 site in Beijing began carrying the Fishman series, so there
10 was a period of four hours when we relied upon the Chinese for
11 this material. This material is still available on the
12 Internet. I just found it two days ago.
13 Q Where did you find it on the Internet? Was it in the ARS
14 newsgroup or another newsgroup?
15 A No, not in a newsgroup at all. Actually I was trying to
16 prepare for my course and I was showing I was looking for
17 some of these there were a couple new programs that have
18 been written that allow you to go search old news articles,
19 and so I was just searching key words, trying one out, and I
20 tried the key word SCAMIZDAT and, Bingo, I found check all of
21 the old SCAMIZDATs with the exception of number one. And not
22 just references to them and the whole things are there.
23 Q What's the SCAMIZDAT?
24 A SCAMIZDAT. Combination of SCAM and IZDAT postings
25 that came out during the recent revolution. I didn't name it
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1 that. I think somebody else did, but they are postings which
2 are compilations of secret church materials. There have been
3 ten of them. Nine of them have come out before the
4 Wollersheim raid. They contain all as far as I can tell of
5 the O.T. series, I through VII and VII. I know VIII is under
6 contention but it's there too. The SCAMIZDAT materials, they
7 are bundled up, a bunch of church materials, and usually
8 posted to a particular group. They are not usually posted to
9 ARS. In the early days they were posted anonymously, so we
10 don't know who is posting them, but they were posted to
11 numerous groups like amount 2600 which is a bunch hackers, as
12 near as I can tell they were. But posted to game groups kinds
13 of things.
14 However, for the last six or seven they have been
15 posted to com.eff.talk, a group set up by the Electronic
16 Freedom Foundation to talk about electronic freedom issues.
17 This is the poster that has been posting these SCAMIZDATs to
18 this group and from their people repost them to other
19 bases. Again, they contain multiple files on the O.T. series
20 as well as the line drill which is the church's contains
21 the R245 document, lists of suppressive persons that you can
22 apparently apply this R245 document one of the discussions
23 on ARS is what does that really mean. According to
24 exScientologists that is a license to kill those suppressive
25 persons applying 245 to them.
171
1 MR. COOLEY: I object and move to strike.
2 THE COURT: Overruled.
3 BY MS. HANLONLEH:
4 Q Why don't we jump to Exhibit D can you identify this
5 E?
6 A This is SCAMIZDAT No. 2.
7 Q And explain the header on this one?
8 A The following files part?
9 Q Actually what does this show where the SCAMIZDAT came
10 from?
11 A It was posted from a user called anonymous. Purportedly
12 at a site University of CaliforniaSan Diego. Dot EDU that
13 jogs with the university. I don't know if that's true, if
14 this was forged all of the way to the level of that header.
15 It was posted on 24 March 1995.
16 Q Can you turn to Exhibit AA? It's going to be in another
17 book.
18 A Okay.
19 Q Can you identify this document?
20 A SCAMIZDAT 3.
21 Q What information do you have from there as to when this
22 document was posted?
23 A 4/28/95.
24 Q Can you turn to Exhibit AB?
25 A SCAMIZDAT 4 posted on 5/6/95.
172
1 Q And is this a copy of the SCAMIZDAT as it would have
2 appeared when it was posted on line?
3 A It looks that way to me. I remember seeing it when it was
4 originally posted. I think this is I am not sure if this
5 one or not, but it looks like the ones I have seen, yes.
6 Q Can you turn to CC.
7 A SCAMIZDAT 5 posted on May 18.
8 Q The next one DD?
9 A SCAMIZDAT 7.
10 Q Where does this say that this would have been posted?
11 A There is the Netherlands, a Dutch anonymous mailer.
12 Q To what newsgroup is that posted?
13 A It's comp the newsgroup here says comp.org.eff.talk.
14 Q And what date does this indicate that the SCAMIZDAT 7 was
15 posted?
16 A June 14.
17 Q Turn to number EE, Exhibit EE.
18 A SCAMIZDAT 8.
19 Q What is this all of this stuff that's in the middle of
20 the page?
21 A This was saved from a Web page. That HTML code, this
22 document was sitting on a Web page somewhere and when it was
23 saved, it saved it with the there are two ways to save it
24 and whoever saved it forgot.
25 Q Does this indicate when this SCAMIZDAT was posted on the
173
1 Internet?
2 A It was posted to comp.org.eff.talk, usually there is a
3 date right in here of 6/14/95.
4 Q Do you want to turn to Exhibit FF.
5 A SCAMIZDAT 9.
6 Q When was this posted?
7 A 12 July.
8 Q And where was this posted?
9 A Again to comp.org.eff.talk.
10 Q When something is posted, again, what does that mean if
11 all of these documents were posted, what would that mean?
12 A It means that they appeared to that newsgroup. It could
13 be read just like any other article by anybody who subscribed
14 to that newsgroup and the readership of comp.org.eff.talk was
15 about 38,000 for May.
16 Q Did you see these postings at any time prior to seeing
17 them now?
18 A Yes.
19 Q Did you see them prior to August 1, 1995?
20 A Yes.
21 Q You have characterized ARS as a newsgroup, as somewhat of
22 a newspaper. Do they also tend to be a public forum?
23 A Absolutely. In fact more of a public forum. I said
24 newspaper, and it wasn't a good one. It was a place to start.
25 But the right direction to go from that I guess would be
174
1 towards a public forum. Because that's what it is, people
2 talking fairly unrestrainedly.
3 Q Have you been retained today as an expert in this case?
4 A I don't know.
5 Q Okay.
6 A I am not sure. You all asked me to come testify.
7 Q And have you gotten access to these documents in the
8 course of your providing assistance to us in this case?
9 A I hope so. Can I make a point? Is there a question
10 there? I'm sorry.
11 Q Are you a Scientologist or have you ever been a
12 Scientologist?
13 A No, I have not.
14 MS. HANLONLEH: I have no further questions at this
15 time.
16 CROSSEXAMINATION
17 BY MR. COOLEY:
18 Q How do you arrive at your numbers of your readership
19 numbers?
20 A The readership numbers come from come from the come
21 from the DEC Corporations Research let me get the correct
22 title Network Systems Lab. They are attempting to measure
23 certain kinds of traffic on various parts of the Internet.
24 Q And you gave a number for May of some 30 some odd thousand
25 reading that group that the reporter had a little trouble
175
1 handling?
2 A Yes, sir.
3 Q How do they conclude that there are 35,000 readers?
4 A Any main frame large computer in which users are reading
5 the news on that computer directly has a time called dot news
6 RC for each user. That news RC file is a list of the
7 newsgroups that have subscribed to it. It also keeps track of
8 the most current article, so the next time they go in to read
9 that newsgroup, they don't have to read stuff they have
10 already seen. So this program that this DEC Lab is using runs
11 on each computer where somebody agrees to do checks all
12 those news RC files and counts the number of people who have
13 looked at that newsgroup within the last 14 days.
14 Q That does not suggest in any way, however, that each of
15 those people has read everything on that group, does it?
16 A No, sir.
17 Q It doesn't even come close to suggesting that?
18 A Absolutely.
19 Q Because one of the common practices if you run the threats
20 that appear and you don't have any interest in it is to mark
21 them all as read, so you can go back to zero again and you
22 haven't read them at all; is that a fact?
23 A Absolutely, true.
24 Q You may get if you post to ARS, ALT Religon Scientology
25 A Yes, sir.
176
1 Q Is that okay. There may be 2000 messages up there, and
2 you find two that you have an interest in and read the two and
3 mark all the others read and go home for the day; that's not
4 an uncommon practice on the newsgroup, is it?
5 A No, sir.
6 Q So those numbers that you give us doesn't tell anything
7 about what's being read, the scope of the readership; it
8 doesn't even tell us that that many people have read it, does
9 it?
10 A Certainly not absolutely, no.
11 Q You could have one person read a message three or four
12 times if or she had a great interest in it and would that show
13 up as three or four people or one person?
14 A One time.
15 Q Now, with respect to all of these discussions you
16 adopted the phrase that I think that I was the one that
17 used the word scatological, that there is much discussion on
18 ARS that is of that quality; isn't that right?
19 A Yes, sir.
20 Q There are from time to time and more often than just from
21 time to time some very obscene and disgusting exchanges on
22 that group, are there not?
23 A Yes, sir.
24 Q As a matter of fact, you have seen my colleague, Helena
25 Kobrin, referred to in the filthiest of terms, have you not
177
1 sir?
2 A I know her nickname.
3 Q That isn't the only name that has been applied to her
4 either, is it?
5 A No.
6 Q That is not something of which you approved?
7 A I do not.
8 Q But by the same token it's not anything that has ever
9 gotten cancelled or the subject of suit or anything other than
10 contradebate, isn't that correct?
11 A That's correct.
12 Q So there are thousands upon thousands of messages on ARS
13 that refer to Scientology and in the most demeaning of terms
14 and those messages are there and continue to be there. Nobody
15 ever asked for judicial intervention on them, isn't that a
16 fact?
17 A As far as I know, that's true.
18 Q You didn't get into that cancellation problem that you are
19 talking about, did you?
20 A I'm sorry.
21 Q This cancellation problem that captured your imagination
22 didn't rear its ugly head on any of that material?
23 A No, not that I know of.
24 Q And so despite the rage on ARS you got on it in January;
25 is that it?
178
1 A Yes, sir.
2 Q You came over to take a look because you heard of some
3 cancellation activity going on?
4 A Yes.
5 Q But is it fair to say that the overwhelming number of
6 messages on ARS which are antagonistic and opposed to
7 Scientology have never resulted in litigation or cancellation
8 of any kind, isn't that a fair statement?
9 A I think that's a fair statement.
10 Q You indicated that you indicated that you saw a message
11 from Ms. Kobrin attempting to cancel the group?
12 A The remove group command, yes.
13 Q Tell me what remove group command is, as far as you know.
14 A The remove group command is a command that is sent just
15 like you would send any other message to the control group or
16 you could simply send it to Net administrators but usually it
17 goes to the control group, and it's a request like all
18 commands are, they are not absolute, to cancel a particular
19 group.
20 Q That request went from a lawyer or Religious Technology
21 Center to a command center saying, cancel that group because
22 they are infringing on copyright, did it not?
23 A That's exactly what it did all right. Yes, sir.
24 Q And that was a formal legal notice that she sent to get
25 persons that were allowing those infringing materials to be
179
1 posted to cancel the group that was offending them; isn't that
2 a fair statement?
3 A It is except on the Net we use the word allegedly a lot.
4 Q I understand that, but parties are contesting over
5 something and you give a notice to cease and desist. One side
6 is saying this is my position. The other side certainly can
7 say this is my position, but the request is made and somebody
8 has to make a decision whether they are going to obey the
9 cease and desist; is that a fair statement?
10 A That's correct.
11 Q As a matter of fact, a number of access providers decided
12 to take the stuff down because of the infringement notice,
13 didn't they?
14 A As far as I know, nobody took it down.
15 Q Are you saying that no access provider ever took down a
16 posting in response to a notice from the church or from
17 Religious Technology Center?
18 A I am saying that no remove group command was honored on
19 any major university or ISP that I know of. The remove group
20 command that was not honored.
21 Q Let's go to individual access providers dealing with
22 individual notices on individual postings. Are you aware of
23 how many of those were taken down?
24 A If I understand your question I guess I don't
25 understand your question. A newsgroup posting?
180
1 Q A newsgroup posting.
2 A I think maybe I know of one or two cases where the actual
3 poster of a message actually sent his or her own cancelled
4 followup on his own message as a result of pressure from the
5 church. I think I only saw one or two of those, but I think
6 for the thousands of messages that I saw no I saw no
7 cancellations on those from the poster.
8 Q You are not aware I am not saying from the poster. I
9 am saying from the access provider taking a message down?
10 A I know of no case of an access provider canceling, and I
11 would know that because the cancellings occur any
12 cancellation that occurs show up in ARS as a Lazarath
13 announcement.
14 Q Are you sure of that? They all may get in there as a
15 Lazarath announcement because haven't you seen a notice
16 message where is so an so? He is not on the word. We are not
17 getting a Lazarath announcement?
18 A I know Lazarath was down from late June through mid July.
19 Q So that is no reliable indicator of what messages are up
20 or down in response to an infringement notice?
21 A Actually, it works beautifully except for June through
22 July.
23 Q Was that the whole month from June?
24 A At some date in June through about mid July if I
25 understand Lazarath was down.
181
1 Q You have mentioned FTP sites disappearing, and are you
2 aware that FTP sites disappeared in response to infringement
3 notices that went to those FTP sites and they decided that
4 they were going to honor the infringement notice rather than
5 allow the posting of the infringing material or as you put it
6 allegedly infringing material.
7 A I don't know that but I certainly think we all suspected
8 that was what was happening, yes.
9 Q You find something wrong with that?
10 A With what part?
11 Q You find that there is nothing unlawful about that, giving
12 notice to somebody that there is an infringment here and the
13 person decides to honor the notice of the infringement? There
14 is nothing wrong with that, is there?
15 A I might have questions about some of the way some of
16 this was handled. But if an ISP is asked by a party, an
17 Internet service provider is asked to do something about a
18 user, I have no problems with that, provided they follow their
19 own policies with regard to that user. To my knowledge, they
20 usually have in most cases it's a user itself who takes it
21 down after the ISP has look we have a complaint about your
22 stuff. You work it out with whatever.
23 Q Your gripe there is with the ISP not with the person who
24 complained about the use of the site; that is that right?
25 A I think so.
182
1 Q Now, you are aware, are you not, that big access providers
2 such as America On Line and Compuserve, Prodigy, Netcom I
3 haven't seen Gates new one yet but virtually every one of the
4 big access providers in terms of service under which they
5 agree to render service to people who want to access the Net,
6 have a rule against copyright infringement; you are aware of
7 that, aren't you?
8 A No, I am not aware of that.
9 Q You have not ever seen those terms of service?
10 A I have seen hundreds of them.
11 Q Have you ever seen them on America on Line? How many
12 subscribers do you think they have?
13 A I don't know much about AOL or Compuserve, those are only
14 recently attached to the Internet.
15 Q And you go way back to '84 before they came around. But
16 are you aware of how many people have access to the Internet
17 through those services?
18 A No, sir.
19 Q How many people do you say are out there on the Internet
20 all together?
21 A Between 30 and 60 million.
22 Q Who makes that estimate?
23 A I have seen that 30 number comes from the DEC Research
24 Lab. The 60 number actually I saw from another source but I
25 don't recall where. Somewhere on one of the newsgroups that
183
1 talk about the details of the Net.
2 Q Do you know how many come on through these large
3 commercial services?
4 A No, sir.
5 Q In they event, do you find it unusual for an access
6 provider upon notice from an owner of copyright to cancel a
7 posting that's alleged to fringe?
8 A I know of no access providers who have cancelled postings.
9 I think we have a semantic problem here.
10 Q I am trying my best not to. You don't know much about
11 America On Line, Netcom, or any of these people?
12 A I know about Netcom.
13 MS. HANLONLEH: Objection, he has said that he
14 doesn't know the details of relationships between on line
15 providers and their subscribers.
16 THE COURT: He just said he knows one. So we'll go
17 ahead with that.
18 Q Netcom, are you familiar with their terms of service?
19 A I have seen it but a long time ago.
20 Q They have a rule against copyright infringement, don't
21 they?
22 A I don't recall. If they are like most of the ones I
23 have seen several hundreds, by the way the rule is
24 generally stated as you shall refrain from illegal activity.
25 They use the word pirating a lot.
184
1 Q Would you view copyright infringement and pirating as
2 illegal activity?
3 A Yes, sir.
4 Q You are one of these professors that does some publishing?
5 A Yes.
6 Q As an alternative to perishing.
7 A A teach at an institution but I have a book out this year.
8 Q It's a copyrighted book, I would imagine?
9 A That is right.
10 Q What does it deal with? I might want to run right out and
11 buy it.
12 A Probably not. It's an old barn book, A Field Guide to
13 North America Barns.
14 Q Probably not. I may develop a passion for old barns. In
15 any event, that's sold that book, is it, and for a price?
16 A Yes, sir.
17 Q If somebody were it wouldn't take much effort, would
18 it, to how many pages is that book?
19 A Probably about 300.
20 Q Wouldn't take much effort to scan that into a hard drive
21 and on the push of a button send that soaring around the world
22 for nothing, would it?
23 A Absolutely not.
24 Q And you would not consider that appropriate activity,
25 would you?
185
1 A I would not.
2 Q If somebody said we wanted to debate about barns and we
3 have a right to debate about barns, we can take Cleek's book
4 away and post it out there, so we can have a nice intelligent
5 debate about barns; you would call your lawyer, wouldn't you?
6 A Absolutely.
7 Q So you are not opposed to copyright law?
8 A Not the law, no, sir.
9 Q You are not opposed to copyright being protected, are you?
10 A No, sir.
11 Q You are aware of the fact that copyright is rooted in the
12 constitution before the first amendment, are you not?
13 MS. HANLONLEH: Object to the extent he is asking
14 the witness about the law and legal issues.
15 THE COURT: Sustained.
16 BY MR. COOLEY:
17 Q You think that have you read the copyright paper that's
18 come out of the copyright office recently?
19 A No, sir. I did after I received Mr. Cochran's
20 letter read the actual law.
21 Q Did you do that?
22 A I did. Yes, sir, it has a Section No. 4 that talks about
23 unpublished material not being in fact different from
24 published.
25 Q It says that there is no difference between publish and
186
1 unpublished material?
2 A It says that fair use shall not be excluded because it is
3 unpublished.
4 MS. HANLONLEH: Object to this line of questioning,
5 that it's irrelevant.
6 THE COURT: Sustained.
7 BY MR. COOLEY:
8 Q Well, sir, when you came in here to testify to tell about
9 these cancellations, you don't have any idea as to how these
10 cancellations came about, do you?
11 A Yes, sir, we have now solved the problem.
12 Q Where did they come?
13 A From they come from Taiwan which is an international
14 service provider in Southern California and Directness,
15 another Southern California service provider.
16 Q But you have no indication that the Religious Technology
17 Center ran that, do you?
18 A Let me think about this question. Do I have could you
19 rephrase it please?
20 Q Do you know that the Religious Technology Center was
21 involved in that operation?
22 A No, I do not know that.
23 Q You have gone to the FBI and you have made your complaints
24 there and no prosecution of anybody has resulted, has it?
25 A As far as I know no prosecution has resulted.
187
1 Q You are continuing to press with the FBI?
2 A No, sir, I am not.
3 Q You are of the view that there is civil liability for this
4 cancellation, are you not?
5 A I don't understand that.
6 Q Haven't you expressed on the Internet on ARS of your
7 opinion there is both civilian criminal liability for those
8 cancellations?
9 A If I did, I probably phrased it differently because I
10 don't recognize my words.
11 Q Do you view it as that?
12 A Do I believe that the person doing the cancellation has
13 criminal liability?
14 Q Yes.
15 A Yes, sir, I believe it's a violation of Section 18.
16 Q Do you believe there is also civil liability?
17 A I believe that a person whose message was cancelled
18 probably I see what you are getting at exactly has the
19 right to sue whoever cancelled his message.
20 Q Have any of your messages been cancelled?
21 A Not that I know of.
22 Q Are you aware of any criminal or civil litigation
23 instituted as a result of those cancellations?
24 A No.
25 MS. HANLONLEH: Objection, there is no objection,
188
1 there is no evidence of any cancellations.
2 A I'm sorry.
3 Q Are you aware of any criminal or civil proceeding
4 instituted anywhere in the world based upon the cancellations
5 that you have testified in this courtroom?
6 A I know there were investigations at the FBI. I know that
7 those were forward to do the Department of Justice. I know
8 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police considered a case. That's
9 as much as I know.
10 Q And you were are you a member of a committee that
11 addresses this issue?
12 A I don't understand. A university committee? Do you mean
13 the Rabbit Hunters?
14 Q That's the one, the Rabbit Hunters. Are you a member of
15 that committee? Who is on that committee?
16 A I'm sorry, sir. I can't really answer that.
17 Q Why?
18 A The Rabbit Hunters is a group of people who tried to get
19 together to pool their technical expertise to find who was
20 canceling this material. When we finally tracked it down, we
21 released a press release basically laying out our techniques
22 and what we had found and made contact with the service
23 providers and notified them of the problem.
24 We had good help from the university along the way
25 where the cancels were being routed. We provided all this to
189
1 the FBI. It was also a bunch of people who basically worked
2 on it anonymously.
3 Q That's one of the great problems on the Internet, isn't
4 it, sir, anonymity?
5 A And it can be.
6 Q Do you?
7 A Tom Payne didn't. I don't think it always is, no, sir.
8 Q Do you think it oftentimes is a method for evading
9 responsibility for unlawful acts?
10 A It can be that.
11 Q Incidentally, do you ever use remailers?
12 A No, sir, I do not.
13 Q The SCAMIZDAT that you have gone into here has been done
14 through remailers, has it not?
15 A Yes, sir, it has.
16 Q Remailers are people who are places that take the headers
17 off and redistribute so nobody can tell where it came from;
18 isn't that right?
19 A Yes, sir, that is right.
20 Q Anonymity is a very very common thing on ARS, is it not?
21 A It is.
22 Q For example, you say you don't know who publishes
23 SCAMIZDAT.
24 A No, sir, I don't.
25 Q Because he or she preserves their anonymity. What
190
1 majority of postings on ARS would you say were anonymous?
2 A It would be a guess. 20, 30 percent maybe.
3 Q And what percentage of the postings on ARS that you have
4 seen of O.T. material of the Religious Technology Center is
5 anonymous?
6 A Almost all.
7 Q You haven't seen one person stand up and take
8 responsibility for that posting, have you?
9 A Which posting is that?
10 Q The posting of O.T. materials of the Church of
11 Scientology, the Religious Technology Center?
12 A I have seen a couple that weren't anonymous.
13 Q Who were they?
14 A Certainly Arnie Lerma stood up.
15 Q He certainly did and he took his responsibility and that
16 matter is being litigated. And who else?
17 A I don't remember it's name. Like a kid. A student who
18 probably got into something. They didn't understand what he
19 was doing. But no it was rare for people to actually post
20 full materials with their name. Partial materials wasn't
21 rare.
22 Q Arnie Lerma was posting the FishmanGeertz affidavit with
23 the attached O.T. exhibits?
24 A Yes, sir. Yes, sir, it was a posting of the complete
25 material as I understand it for the entire case and that case
191
1 came from that framework or discussion about that case.
2 Q A framework discussion originated by whom?
3 A The framework discussion has been going on on ARS for
4 several months now.
5 Q This material was posted on August 1 and 2 without
6 comment, was it not?
7 A In a data rich environment without comment makes little
8 sense.
9 Q When you talk about data rich environment, you are talking
10 about a history of discussion and then you are talking about a
11 posting of wholesale posting of copyrighted material but
12 the fact is it had no comment attached to it?
13 A There was no comment directly attached to any single one
14 of the multiple O.T. materials that I saw, no.
15 Q You have been critical of Scientology on the ARS, have you
16 not?
17 A Yes, sir, I have.
18 Q You have been critical of what they believe in and you
19 have been critical of what they do and you have been critical
20 of L. Ron Hubbard and nobody has ever sued?
21 A No, sir, not yet.
22 Q Nobody has ever sent you a letter in the context of six
23 lines of O.T. VII that you sent?
24 A No one has sent one directly to me.
25 Q Nobody has sent a letter to your university except in
192
1 connection with copyrighted material?
2 A Except for the six line of text that is right.
3 Q There was never any libel suits or any other kind of
4 litigation or any kind of mail to you criticizing you in any
5 way for criticizing Scientology?
6 A No, sir. So far, no, sir.
7 Q Have you read the church O.T. materials?
8 A Yes, sir, I have.
9 Q And how do you know that what you have seen is in fact the
10 O.T. materials?
11 A I have no idea.
12 Q How do you know that what you saw in SCAMIZDAT was in fact
13 the O.T. materials?
14 A Again, I have no idea.
15 Q You take it on faith that's what it is, correct?
16 A Somebody kept trying to cancel it. I assume that probably
17 meant it was probably authentic, but I don't know for sure,
18 no.
19 Q You know, for example, that O.T. VIII, that's debated, has
20 been stated to be totally phony, don't you?
21 A I have seen the church's position on that, yes.
22 Q You know that most people on ARS know that it's phony but
23 continue to tie it to the church?
24 A There has been debate whether the language is consistent
25 Hubbard's language. There has been lots of argument about
193
1 parts of that document such that the church would disown it
2 even if it was truly O.T. VIII, yes, sir.
3 Q You know there is in fact an O.T. VIII of the church that
4 didn't come out until '88; do you know that?
5 A No, sir, I don't.
6 Q And that that document is dated 1980. That's the phony
7 one; do you know that, don't you?
8 MS. HANLONLEH: Objection, this witness is not an
9 expert in Scientology and a document of the church.
10 THE COURT: Sustained.
11 BY MR. COOLEY:
12 Q Have you a bias against Scientology as you sit here?
13 A Yes, sir. Bias as a result of reading ARS for eight
14 months?
15 Q Yes, sir.
16 A Yes, sir.
17 Q However you have acquired
18 A I certainly have, yes, sir.
19 Q You are a strong supporter of the socalled Antis on the
20 ARS, are you not?
21 A No, sir that would be too gross a statement, I think.
22 Q It's enough to be antiScientology. Are you not you are
23 not pro ARS antis?
24 A Confusing terms. It's more complex than that, surely.
25 Q Do you know if any reader of a new group ever saw the
194
1 SCAMIZDAT posting. Do you have any evidence of that?
2 A I certainly have no evidence. But if I was to look at a
3 group I would look at the star. And it's the secret stuff
4 that has been the star.
5 Q You don't know as you sit there who read it?
6 A No, sir.
7 Q How many people read it?
8 A No, sir.
9 Q What breadth of dissemination it received?
10 A I know how many newsgroups it was posted to.
11 Q But you don't know how many people read it, do you?
12 A Other than the estimate in the Arbitron ratings, no, sir.
13 Q You certainly have no idea of how many people downloaded?
14 A Certainly, I have a minimum number. But certainly not a
15 maximum.
16 Q What is your minimum number of downloads. Tell me where
17 you derive it from.
18 A Simply looking at FTP sites where the material existed.
19 As it was system like, expanded from one and went to another,
20 I think I counted 23 or 25, somewhere in there.
21 Q 23 or 25 downloads from place to place it was posting?
22 A Where the material was available.
23 Q These FTP sites kept getting closed down as a result of
24 infringement notices, correct?
25 A I don't know why they were closed down. That's probably
195
1 why.
2 Q Do you know how many of these FTP sites closed down
3 against this infringement all told?
4 A No. I checked four or five the other day and they were
5 down. The material was no longer.
6 Q China closed down, didn't it?
7 A It did. They only had six. They only had China has a
8 very small pipeline into their Network, 64 kilobytes. And
9 what was happening is there was so much downloading of
10 probably the O.T. material that they simply overloaded the
11 whole Network for China, so the network administrator said
12 they had to take it down for that reason. That's what he
13 said.
14 Q Would you like to see the Church of Scientology cease to
15 exist, sir?
16 A It's a tough question. I think it's too close Do I
17 think that they have practices that need to stop? Yes.
18 Q That wasn't my question. My question is: Would you like
19 to see the Church of Scientology cease to exist?
20 A That may be difficult for some of your younger members who
21 depend upon it.
22 Q I am asking you whether you would like to see the Church
23 of Scientology cease to exist? It's a simple question as to
24 your own opinion and
25 A I would never phrase my opinion in simplistic terms like
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1 that. I just wouldn't.
2 Q Would you like to see the Church of Scientology's upper
3 level materials in advanced technologies exposed to the world
4 for debate?
5 A Absolutely, yes, sir.
6 Q And having read what you believe you believe to be
7 those advanced technologies, would you ever consider joining
8 the Church of Scientology?
9 A Absolutely not, sir.
10 Q As a matter of fact, after being on this ARS group for
11 eight months, you wouldn't consider it either, would you, sir?
12 A I would not.
13 THE COURT: Redirect.
14 MS. HANLONLEH: Yes, just a few questions Your
15 Honor.
16 REDIRECT EXAMINATION
17 BY MS. HANLONLEH:
18 Q With regard to the SCAMIZDAT materials, were all of those
19 downloadable, if they would have been posted on a newsgroup?
20 A Do you mean could they have been saved to disk?
21 Q Yes.
22 A Absolutely anything that's on a newsgroup can be saved on
23 a disk.
24 Q When you mentioned they mentioned up going to 23 FTP,
25 could you explain what that means in terms of download ability
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1 from the FTP sites?
2 A Once the disk is at a publicly accessible FTP site, which
3 all of these were, anybody who knows about that site can link
4 it to a program called FTP and get any files that are on it.
5 That's what the sign is, full information file transfer
6 protocol.
7 Q You had mentioned when you were talking about cancellation
8 notices with the access providers a program. That term got
9 thrown in here without any explanation. Could you describe
10 what Lazarath is?
11 A Yes, apparently, there had been some users of ARS early on
12 in the spring or perhaps in late '94 I am not sure who
13 were complaining that messages were cancelled that's how you
14 can detect something that's not there. So finally a guy named
15 Homer Wilson Smith wrote the Lazarath program whose purpose is
16 to monitor the control group there which all cancels go and
17 check for any wording for posting to ALT posting to a
18 newsgroup ALT Religion Scientology. Lazarath put a
19 notification on ARS any time a message is posting, you don't
20 know what was in the message, but you will know the date and
21 sender and the subject line for the message, again, as long as
22 Lazarath was working and working through most of the spring it
23 was. It was off from somewhere in June through mid July. But
24 I know it worked again in July. It lets everybody know
25 exactly what's being cancelled.
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1 Q There was some discussion about different kinds of
2 cancels. I ask you to distinguish between a cancel message, a
3 cancel group. Are those the same thing or two different
4 things?
5 A Those are two different things. An RM group command says
6 to the various system administrators out there, please, take
7 this group off. A cancel message basically goes on and
8 eliminates this posting, this particular posting to a
9 particular group.
10 MS. HANLONLEH: I have no further questions, Your
11 Honor.
12 THE COURT: All right. Thank you. You may stand
13 down. Thank you. We'll be in recess on this case. I have a
14 nine o'clock matter that's not going to take that long. Let's
15 start at 9:30 on Monday morning, and we have these files which
16 have been submitted to the court and are confidential which
17 will be locked up back here. The courtroom will be locked up.
18 But I can't tell you anything more than that.
19 MR. COOLEY: Will that include all the exhibit books,
20 Your Honor?
21 THE COURT: We are taking the exhibit books and
22 locking them up. These that we have. I don't know what you
23 have in those boxes. This courtroom will be locked up over
24 the weekend. Are you going to put, "Do not clean signs?"
25 THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: Yes.
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1 THE COURT: It's the only place in the government
2 where you have to put up a sign that says do not clean. The
3 other places you have to put up a sign saying, please clean.
4 We'll do that in that hopes that somebody reads it.
5 MR. COOLEY: We are taking our stuff out, Your Honor.
6 THE COURT: All right, you can. Have a nice weekend.
7 (Recess at 6:00 p.m.)