Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
The website contained hard-to-find documents, pictures, audio, and video of Werner Erhard and the est Training. For those of you who don't know, Werner Erhard was an enigmatic cult leader from San Francisco. He started an organization called est which became the Forum and Landmark Education. In 1991, Werner was accused on "60 Minutes" of some horrible acts. In response, he sold his company, fled the country, and hasn't been heard of since.
I didn't promote the website, nor did I try to make any money from it, but I must have ruffled some feathers because an attorney contacted my host and asked them to remove the site for copyright reasons, which they did.
I don't feel I was infringing on any copyright.
I am thinking about finding an alternative way to host.
What would you do?
Another thing I would check was who the attorney was representing. If it was a Government agency, then copyright may not have been the real issue.
Having said that, I am leery of putting up anything that could be considered contentious on the web. Before the invasion of Iraq I had an innocent picture of a location in Southern Iraq, let's say XXX. A week or so before the invasion my stats for that page went through the roof, and all the traffic was from US military domain names. My guess is that people were coming out of briefings thinking "Attack XXX? Where's that? Duh..." and then looking it up on the internet and getting my page. A big security leak, and I was not surprised when the attack did start at XXX.
No problem with that as such, but a couple of days later someone was trying to drop spyware on my site. I traced it back to a site for a defunct US automobile agency. In the small print it said it was supported by the CIA. Made me feel quite paranoid!
Frankly I am disappointed that anyone would advise on how to get around US copyright laws by hosting in another country. But alas this is the real world.
Furthermore part of the question was 'should I find a bullet proof host?'
Regarding copyright and free speech, I believe my situtation falls under the Fair use exception of the U. S. Copyright Act.
U.S. COPYRIGHT ACT § 108. Limitations on exclusive rights states that it is ok to reproduce libraries and archives as long as the intent is non-commercial and is for private study scholarship, and research. For more information, Google "108. Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives"
All my website contained was some old photos, letters, and press clippings from the 1970's. It's was my dad's archive that he collected for the past 30 years.
To avoid the IRS and many law suites, Werner Erhard's orgaization (est) changed names and ownership many times. It was owned by a mulitude of off shore companies, and there are documents showing a complicated money laundering scheme.
So, in dealing with a out-of-business cult with a controversial past, who's to say who owns a copyright to what.
The attorney never contacted me. He just sent a threatening letter to my host demanding the site be removed. I think I'll contact him and see what their beef is.
Ask the attorney if he thinks 60 Minutes would be interested in a follow-up story based on this correspondence.
