Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:38:51 +0200
Dear Mr Barber
Failing to find a contact e-mail address on the icr.org
website, I am writing to you as the administrative contact
of the domain with the request to forward this message to
the legal department and/or the board of ICR, or whoever
else you can find within ICR.
Thank you for your co-operation.
Regards,
======
To the ICR
L.S.
I am the ISP of www.skepticfiles.org . The webmaster of
that domain, Mr. Fredric Rice, contacted me a few days
ago with the request that I remove certain files from
his own website, which he couldn't reach due to technical
problems on our side. Through this request I learned that
the ICR has demanded the removal of the files in question
and threatened Mr Rice with lawsuits in case of his
non-compliance.
I removed the files from Mr Rice's website as requested
and took a good look at them. As far as I can see, there
is no material whatsover in the pages in question that
could even remotely constitute the foundation of a valid
complaint. As far as I can see, the ICR has used threats
of legal action in order to curtail Mr Rice's freedom of
speech and suppress information that it dislikes, while
conscious of the fact that a lawsuit with the same claims
would have no merits.
As an individual, as well as in my capacity of ISP, I
support freedom of speech solidly and squarely. In the
light of the fact that I, as an ISP, offer Mr Rice's site
and every other site hosted on my systems full protection
against unfounded removal demands, I find the fact that
the ICR could intimidate Mr Rice to censor his own site
particularly disturbing. As a result of this, I decided
to host the removed pages myself.
The pages in question are now hosted at
http://icr.provocation.net (yes, it is indeed a very suitable
domain for the purpose). The site is also accessible on IPv6
at http://icr6.provocation.net.
The site belongs to the Swedish non-profit association Net
Theatre, is administrated by me and is hosted on my systems
in the Netherlands. Dutch law applies to the content of the
site. I am the ISP of provocation.net, so there is very
little point in complaining to the ISP of the site.
As far as it is within my power, the material that the ICR
forced Mr Rice to remove will remain available on the Internet
until kingdom come, with or against the will of the ICR and
with or against the will of Mr Rice himself, unless either
For your information: I believe that it would be possible
under US procedural law to sue me and/or Net Theatre in the
US according to US law. A US ruling in ICR's favour is however
not enforceable in the Netherlands without the ratification
of a Dutch court, and would thus be meaningless.
Mr Rice is CC-ed on this by way of courtesy, but I will
ignore any requests from him to remove the new site.
The ball, gentlemen, is in your court. If you are convinced
that your claims are legally valid and founded, you are
expected to act accordingly. If you abstain, you will be
proving to yourselves and to others that you were wrong
in the first place.
Zenon Panoussis
Any text written by the creationist cult which may be quoted within this
criticial examination of the creationist cult is provided according to
U. S. Code Title 17 "Fair Use" dictates which may be reviewed at
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
"You can lie about ICR all you want." --
Jason Daniel Henderson
"Thank you for your permission however there's never any need
to. Creationist propaganda is already self-debunking." --
Fredric L. Rice
From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
To: Donald Barber <icr@cts.com>
CC: frice@raids.org
Subject: ICR on skepticfiles.org
ZP
This web site is not affiliated or associated with any creationist cult in any way and neither the web site host, the web site owner, or any of the authors which assisted in debunking creationist nonsense are in any way connected with any creationist cult.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank