[WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

Fri Jun 30 15:05:21 UTC 2006

On 6/30/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I want to start at the outside and work back.  So: first, see if the
> case is verifiable and significant, and if not prune and merge back,
> then see if the Foundation is, and so on.  There are rather a lot of
> articles with a great deal of verbiage on what is, from the
> perspective of an outsider, a very small movement of no verifiable
> significance.

Well, the case is real: "Penguin Books U.S.A., Inc. v. New Christian
Church of Full Endeavor, Ltd."  One of the decisions along the way
cited at "262 F. Supp. 2d 251" another at "288 F. Supp. 2d 544". So
there is no doubt the case is legit.  As to it's importance...

As far as I can tell, it has been used as a note for a few technical
things. See:

http://www.abcny.org/Publications/reports/show_html.php?rid=35 (A
technical proposal to change some NY court rules regarding attorneys.)

www.law.fsu.edu/faculty/2001-2002workshops/cotter.pdf  (pdf... if you
couldn't tell. See page 11. Basically just a listing of the case as
one relating to adaptation of a religious work as a copyvio... nothing
substantive.)

And seemingly one court case about awarding legal fees.

But the case has apparently been used in a few other things relating
to the real copyright issue...

www.oiprc.ox.ac.uk/EJWP0903.pdf (pdf on deprivatising copyrights...
see page 76 for relevent cite. Basically she uses it to show the court
held "For example, in analyzing authorship questions involving
religious texts, courts have rejected the argument that since the
source of the text is God, there is no human author and therefore the
text is not subject to copyright.")

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20040827214309785
("holding that copyrighted work entered public domain where it was
'published without notice of copyright prior to copyright
registration'")

So it looks like it has been used, but to what extent required for
notability, I am not sure. The case is verifiable. Does any of this
even help... I wrote this email in bits and pieces, so it may be
choppy or rambling, my apologies.  Let me know if you need more info.
Thanks. --LV