Re: [DMCA-Activists] Pre-emptive comment on "NY Fair Use" dispute

[Ruben Safir]

Really

I had no idea that happened with Michal Sims.

In any event, NY Fair Use was began by me as early as August 2000
after NYLUG protested the sec 1201 of the DMCA.  It's first effort was to help
NYLUG with the DeCSS case.  It floundered, and I was broke.  I asked a friend,
Brett Wynkoop to register NYFAIRUSE.org.  He did so at my request.  I
wrote all the material and the site design for NY Fair Use.

I tried to appoint officers, and meeting broke down because the organization
was unfocused and without funding.  So I started NYLXS to act as an umbrela for
NY Fair Use, by giving it a stable funding system and rational government.

This worked.

NY Fair Use then pulled it's members from NYLXS, and we took our first trip
to Washington to Lobby.  We did the door to door petitioning.  And we
then did the DRM is theft campaign with the Department of Commerce.  We
delayed in folding NY Fair Use into NYLXS until we passed it through
New York State to assure that it would not threaten the NYLXS non-profit status.

The last campaign was such a success that Brett and Jay made a conscious
decision to steal NY Fair Use. They badgered the NYLXS board, held the NYLX.org
domain hostage for over a year, incorperated under our trademark in February of 
2003
and verbally abused me in my home, as Jay was living with me at the time.  

Then they made a mirror of NYLXS and tried to run an alternate mailing list.
They came to NY Fair Use meetings and disrupted them, and they've intefered with
our public relations.

They've been sent a certified letter from us demanding the return of 
NYFAIRUSE.org to NYLXS.  They refused acceptence.  We tried to settle
the matter with them, they've refused.

All the primary documentation of these events are on the fairuse.nylxs.com
mailing list archive and on the site, including the settlement offers.

NYLXS has repeatedly told Brett and Jay to remove our members from their
list of people who support them.  It is lible to suggest NYLXS or myself
ever worked with any organization they lead,, or co-operates in any way with 
any with Jay or Brett.

Brett and Jay are in violation of our copyrights, and our trademarks.

Anyone who work with Jay and Brett are collaberating with grevious
copyright violators, and trademark violators.


Ruben Saifr
Sole Founder of NY Fair Use and NYLXS
Secretary of NYLXS
Chairman of NY Fair Use






On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 10:35:20AM -0400, Seth Finkelstein wrote:
>       Uh-oh ... as this list has another round of the dispute
> over who is NY Fair Use, I'd like to request the participants make
> their prospective cases in a clearer manner. Again not taking a
> position, I repost below what I wrote earlier regarding this issue.
> I still haven't figured out the right here.
> 
>       Note I have a great deal of sympathy for the *attacked*
> party in any rebuttal which states they are simply a madman.
> People subjected to injustice tend to be very mad(angry), and
> that's very understandable, nowhere near the same as mad(insane).
> 
>  Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 08:30:50 -0500
>  From: Seth Finkelstein <address@hidden>
>  To: address@hidden
>  Subject: Re: [DMCA-Activists] Statement of New Yorkers For Fair Use
> 
>       Apologies for the off-topic post, but can someone please fill
> me in, either privately or publicly, as to what *evidence* establishes
> the truth of which party? While the obvious reaction would be to
> denounce the dispute _per se_, I don't agree with such an attitude.
> That allows the wronging party to perpetuate injustice, based on
> others' apathy and indifference to the wronged party.
> 
>       I speak from some experience here. Just this month, 
> Censorware Project attorney Jonathan Wallace has published an essay
> describing how Michael Sims (yes, of Slashdot notoriety) attempted to
> destroy, and then hijacked, the *former* website of Censorware Project.
> 
> "Michael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral Equivalency"
> http://www.spectacle.org/0203/sims.html
> 
>       I found this part of the essay particularly affecting:
> 
>   "... we got a number of "We don't want to get in the middle of this"
>    type messages from various other participants.
> 
>    I was naively astonished by these. If the ACLU's webmaster had trashed
>    the organization's site, I think everyone would pretty well recognize
>    he was a Bad Character and Not To Be Trusted. As much more minor
>    players, despite the significant contributions we had made in
>    revealing what censorware actually blocked, no-one could be bothered
>    to take a stand for us. There was nothing to be gained."
> 
>       N.b.: The way to determine who is telling the truth right there
> is simple, Michael Sims outright admits he trashed the site, he now just
> rants and raves about the other members - unfortunately, that's turned
> out to be pretty effective in distracting people from the fact that he
> did everything from holding the site hostage to hijacking it later (and
> yes, he calls me many names too, because I write messages like this one!)
> 
>       Anyway, I go into that at length to underscore the reason I'm
> writing this message - one should take a stand against wrongs - and
> that descriptions such as "He's insane! He's a kook! He's a nut!"
> aren't meaningful. Both a dishonest and honest person might make the
> exact same accusations (after all, that's exactly what a liar would
> say, because he would have nothing to lose, so might as well smear the
> other person for whatever gain there'd be in it).
> 
>       Note, I have not taken a position on "NYfairuse.org" here.
> 
>       The area of dispute seems to be who has the right to domains
> and group names. And that's a serious matter.
> 
> -- 
> Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  address@hidden  http://sethf.com
> Anticensorware Investigations - http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
> Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> DMCA-Activists mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca-activists

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