SLU tries to flush out naysayers with copyright suit

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Feb 11, 2005 by Dickinson, Casey J

CANTON - St. Lawrence University (SLU) has turned to federal copyright law in the school's ongoing battle against online dissenters. Late last month, SLU filed a copyright-infringement suit against "John Does 1-4," regarding the online use of four photographs allegedly taken from the www.stlawu.edu Web site without permission.

The university filed a copyright application for the photographs with the U.S. Copyright Office on Jan. 18. Attorneys George R. McGuire and Robert J. Sinnema of the Syracuse-based law firm Bond, Schoeneck, & King, PLLC filed the federal-court complaint for SLU Jan. 27.

The unknown persons named in the suit are accused of posting the copyrighted photographs on a Web site called "Take Back Our Campus!" (TBOC). Filed in the Northern District of New York, the complaint describes the TBOC site as a place that publishes "crude pseudonymous critiques of St. Lawrence University, its faculty, staff, and students."

Filing the copyright-infringement suit will allow St. Lawrence University to team who runs the TBOC site, according to the complaint.

"Plaintiff believes that information obtained in discovery will lead to the identification of Defendants' true names," the complaint says.

St. Lawrence University President Daniel Sullivan declined to comment on the suit.

Unlike patents, which are issued by the Patent and Trademark Office, copyright "flows from the pen of the author" and need not be registered. Registering a copyrighted work with the Copyright Office allows the holder to take advantage of broader legal protections than those of unfiled works. Owners of registered works can receive statutory damages and legal fees upon proof of infringement.

Critical across the board

The Take Back Our Campus! site can be found at tboclives.blogspot.com. The "crude critiques" include a parody naming one student-athlete as a drug user and thief, while suggesting that cable television channel VH1 devote an episode of "Behind the Music" to chronicling his alleged substance abuse. Another posting criticizes a St. Lawrence University faculty member's alleged targeting of Jewish students for conversion to Christianity. The posting quotes the Web site of a Canadian official of "Jews for Jesus" who credits an SLU faculty member with his conversion.

The university's elimination of the "Upward Bound" education program is a hot topic for criticism on TBOC. The program provided tutoring and assistance for low-income, high-school students in the North Country. Sexual assault and campus substance-abuse issues are other common topics. An underage St. Lawrence University student drowned in the Grasse River last fall after an evening of drinking.

The TBOC site also features an extensive collection of SLU internal memos, meeting minutes, and other university documents.

"In addition, you need to know that I have asked that access be blocked to the Take Back Our Campus (TBOC) Web site from workstations connected to the University's network," reads a Dec. 22, 2004, memo allegedly from St. Lawrence University President Daniel Sullivan to department heads, posted on the TBOC site, "We have the right to deny access to the campus to those influences that, in a persistent way, harass, intimidate or threaten individuals who study, teach, and administer programs here."

The people running the TBOC site bypassed the blocking by distributing "anonymizer" Internet links. Internet users in China and restrictive countries in the Arab world often use anonymizer sites to bypass government censorship of banned sites by allowing them to reach the site under a different Web address. TBOC also began e-mail distribution of its content to get around the university network blockage.

Blogspot, which hosts TBOC, is a free Web site where members post personal thoughts. The TBOC site is titled "Take Back Our Campus! Hurting People's Feelings since 3/21/04." A descriptive box says TBOC is "dedicated to fighting the rightwing assault on our students, faculty, and campus."

The four unidentified defendants are apparently only two "posters." A poster known by the pseudonym "collars_down" is named in court papers as both John Doe #1 and John Doe #3. "Christian Evangelist" is named as both John Doe #2 and John Doe #4.

The suit charges that a Jan. 5, 2005 posting by Christian Evangelist uses an altered version of SLU president Daniel Sullivan's protected photograph without permission. In the posting, Sullivan's photograph is altered to include a bottle of Beefeater gin and two bare-breasted women. The posting notes that while SLU has blocked access to TBOC, students are still able to access sites such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) and Stormfront.org, home of "White Pride World Wide."

The court complaint also lists a Nov. 26 posting by collars_down that allegedly used the photograph of Professor Margaret Bass without permission. A Dec. 18 posting by collars_down uses a photo of Dean of Student Life Marcia L. "Cissy" Petty without permission, according to the complaint. The section also says the poster made "'disparaging statements about Dr. Petty." A photo of professor Steven Horwitz is at issue in a Dec. 15, 2004, posting listed in the suit. The Horwitz allegation also adds "disparging comments," to the description of the alleged infringement.