Thursday, March 7, 2002

Colleges Are Unconcerned by Online Author's $2.6-Billion Copyright Lawsuit By DAN CARNEVALE Colleges and universities say they are not worried about a $2.6-billion copyright lawsuit filed by an author who alleges that the institutions should not have allowed people to use their Web servers to post versions of his controversial book on income-tax laws. Twenty higher-education institutions are named in the suit as defendants, along with such media companies as AOL-Time Warner. The defendants say the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects the operators of Web servers from responsibility for the online behavior of individual users. The defendants also argue that the appearance of the book online did not violate copyright law. The suit was tossed out of federal district court in January for lack of evidence. The author, Paul A. Mitchell, has since appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Mitchell released the book, The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue, in 1992, publishing it himself. The book argues that the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows the federal government to collect income taxes, was ratified illegally. The book maintains that the Internal Revenue Service has no authority to force anyone in the 50 states to pay income taxes -- only those people in federal territories have to pay, he says. Despite its extreme claims, the book has found an underground following and has been circulated widely, Mr. Mitchell says. Unfortunately, he says, much of that circulation has been through improper postings on Web sites, including sites hosted on servers owned by AOL-Time Warner and Pennsylvania State University at University Park. Tysen Kendig, a spokesman for Penn State, says that university officials do not consider this case to be a serious threat, and that they will fight it through the appeals process if necessary. Mr. Mitchell hasn't provided enough evidence that he owns the copyright of the versions published online, Mr. Kendig says. In addition, he says, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects Internet service providers from being sued because of what others post on their servers, as long as the providers respond in a timely manner to complaints. "The fact that this lawsuit was thrown out at the earliest possible level shows that this is a frivolous lawsuit," Mr. Kendig says. Mr. Mitchell allows just about anyone to obtain an electronic copy of the book and post it online as long as it is republished in full, with no changes, and proper credit is given. But he says he has often found the book posted online without citation and with numerous changes. The unauthorized copies have been viewed by six million people, he says. And the perpetrators who are posting the copies are using different pseudonyms, he says, making it difficult to track them down. Whenever Mr. Mitchell persuades a server operator to remove an improper posting, he says, he finds the posting is moved to another Web site. In his attempt to chase down whoever keeps finding new Internet sites to post the book, he has racked up a list of 129 entities, including 20 institutions, that are now on the receiving end of his lawsuit. He has reserved the right to add up to 2,500 additional names to the lawsuit. Besides Penn State, the higher education institutions involved include the California Institute of Technology, Indiana University, Princeton University, and Stanford University. Mr. Mitchell contends that the 129 defendants did not remove the improper postings fast enough and falsely reported that they had taken the postings down when in fact they had not. "There seems to be all this underground traffic that is happening on the Internet," Mr. Mitchell says. "And legitimate institutions are kind of turning a blind eye to all this traffic. My beef with them is that they're not policing the Internet, and it's not my job to be a cop. I'm just the author." Along with the allegations of copyright violation, Mr. Mitchell's lawsuit also claims that the district court's action was invalid because of a 1948 act of Congress, which, he says, invalidated all subsequent federal district court rulings. If he were to succeed with that argument, he says, most criminal convictions that took place in district courts would be overturned. "If I prevail on this point, maybe the jails are going to be emptied out," he says. Mr. Mitchell plans to continue arguing his case against the judicial system and the copyright complaints together. "I've made a decision to do them both at the same time," he says. "Whether that's a bad decision or not remains to be seen." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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