WE HAVE WON !!!
a.r.s., March 12, 1996

Today, March 12, at 14:00 CET, the judge ruled on my homepage and on the matter whether homepages are the user's responsibility or those of the providers.

My homepage contains the Fishman Affidavit - something Scientology protests against. I put up this Affidavit because Scientology chose to raid my provider, xs4all, on Sept. 5, 1995. Scientology did so because Fonss had a Fishman homepage. After the raid, more and more Fishman homepages went up. At this moment, there are about a hundred of them.

Scientology sued some 15 providers, and one individual: me.

Scientology had refused to prove their claimed copyrights until only a week before the court session; once a notary had stated on Feb. 18 that OT 2, OT 3 and 'Ability' (i.e. Exhibit G) were indeed copyrighted by Scientology, I immediately changed these parts of the Fishman Affidavit and put up an adapted version, making fair use of quotes from the originals. Scientology was not at all satisfied with this change and simply continued the lawsuit, wanting me to remove *all* materials - i.e. not only the quotes from OT 2 and OT 3, but also OT 1, OT 4, OT 5, OT 6 and OT 7. that is: to material they had not proved their copyrights upon.

Today the judge announced his verdict. My homepage is *quite* ok, and I am hereby acquitted on *all* counts. I am *not* infringing upon Scientology's copyright and I have the the right to quote from OT 2 and OT 3. My homepage has, in short, been legally approved.

The judge considers the parts from the OT's that were used in the Fishman Affidavit to have been legally made public, precisely because they were part from an open court file; hence, they can not be regarded as unpublished material, as Scientology has always claimed.

The judge has also ruled that the Internet Service Providers have done all that could have been expected from them and that Scientology has simply not provided them with any arguments to undertake more actions towards their users then they have done.

Scientology - in this lawsuit: in their personae of RTC, CST and New Era Publications - has been ordered to pay the costs of the lawsuit, i.e, fl 2830.- per defendant.

Both the verdict and a translation will soon be on my homepage, at http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink.

We had a small party afterwards.

Copyright Karin Spaink.
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