On 6/30/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@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