Path: sn.no!uninett.no!news.maxwell.syr.edu!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!news From: grady@promisecreepers.org (Grady Ward) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,misc.legal,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship,misc.invest Subject: Progress of lawsuit against TIDEPOOL.COM and INTERNET VENTURES, INC. Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 13:38:20 GMT Organization: +1 707 826 7712 Lines: 102 Message-ID: <3449b08f.2129357@news.supernews.com> Reply-To: grady@promisecreepers.org NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.155.177.179 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 Xref: sn.no alt.religion.scientology:385551 misc.legal:161812 comp.org.eff.talk:73550 alt.censorship:170457 Hello, As you may know, on October 16, 1997 at about 12 noon, my account grady@tidepool.com was terminated without warning. The supposed reason supplied by Eric Wright, the admin for tidepool.com and northcoast.com of Arcata and Eureka, California at the time was that "I was making tidepool.com look bad" by posting my rants about certain criminal scientologists on alt.religion.scientology. My copy of the Terms of Service, effective May 12, 1997 and effective at the time of the suspension of my account, made no mention of "making tidepool.com look bad". Eric Wright also made allegations that I had "slandered" (sic) someone on the Internet by posting my rants. I noticed that a day *after* I complained about the wrongful termination, the staff at tidepool *changed* the terms of service available at http://www.tidepool.com/html/terms___conditions.htm Besides article 22. they added article 18. which in part says no "sexually explicit" material may be posted. Tidepool customers cannot now talk about contraception, abortion, alt.sex, or anything else. Talk about codifying the worst features of the struck-down Computer Decenty Act! But in any event, they post *this* version of the TOS a day *after* they terminated me, and I can prove it. I may have to sue Internet Ventures, Inc., tidepool.com, Eric Wright, Carol Serve (Eric Wright's supervisor, who reports directly to President Don(ald Jenke of Internet Ventures, Inc. of Los Angeles, et al. to protect my reputation and to remedy their breach of contract with me. Suing will also permit me to obtain all documents the scientologists sent to tidepool, all published libels and permit me to examine the tidepool staff under oath to prove that they *changed* the terms and conditions *after* my account was terminated in order to pretend no breach of contract occurred. Talk smoking gun malice. However I need two kinds of help. (1) One, if you spoke or otherwise communicated with any person such as Eric Wright or Tim McGrath of tidepool.com or Internet Ventures, Inc., please e-mail a summary of what was said. Try to remember as clearly as you can exactly what they said, such as claiming I had "slandered" or "libeled" someone or that I was terminated for "making Tidepool look bad." Some of these statements I can probably use as exhibits on my complaint to show how Internet Ventures, Inc. (who is conducting a DPO right here on the net) acted in egregious bad faith in terminating my account contrary to the TOS in effect at the time. (2) I do need some money: $80 file a complaint in municipal court $100-150 each to serve summons on the above parties $200 for an attorney to look over my complaint to make sure it passes muster. (I otherwise intend to pursue this suit pro se, naturally, but I do want to make sure it will withstand a motion to dismiss based upon some California filing technicality.) A few hundred more dollars to perhaps get a babysitter for my two boys and for gasoline and so on. Later I may ask for a small amount to pay for a deposition room. I will use a plaintiff's questionnaire, an accelerated discovery device under California law, which permits me to, essentially, serve a set of interrogatories at the same time as the complaint. What I will seek is all the underlying documents, phone conversations and other communications with the "outraged citizenry" (i.e., scientolgists) for the purpose of obtaining a fully documented account of their harassment. If lies were told using the telephone or the mails, then of course another RICO predicate may exist involving the criminal cult of scientology. My goal in the lawsuit is to obtain reinstatement, a full apology, and damages resulting from their breach of contract and subsequent pathetic attempts to cover-up their (tidepool's and Internet Venture's) error. A more global objective also is to discourage the criminal cult of scientology from making these kinds of attacks on free speech in the future on other critics who are simply using legal free speech to criticize their criminal *acts* such as their admitted stealing photographs of my children from their grandmother or lying to my wife's bank in order to get details of her account. If you would like to see this action move forward (my current plan is to file this coming week), please send help to: Grady Ward 3449 Martha Ct. Arcata, CA 95521-4884 (707 826-7712) While I hope not to sound like a "whiner," the criminal cult's tactic of intimidating little ISP's has got to be taken to task as some point. Might as well be me since I have the time and experience, thanks to the criminal cult itself. Admittedly I don't have the financial resources, but that is an area in which the net can help me in a distributed way. Thanks. -- Grady Ward grady@promisecreepers.org +1 707 826 7712 http://209.66.96.19/g/r/grady/ C168 0477 7302 C208 F3AC B8D2 33C5 7FCC 0D52 F028