| Triennial Council Meeting Vancouver, British Columbia July 1997 To: Members of the General Council Purpose: A review of evolutionary antecedents to the present situation. Implications for Action: The Fellowship has a variety of outreach programs in place -- Expos, Website, publications, and the activities of Societies, Study Groups and individuals. While legal proceedings in the copyright matter continue, the Fellowship needs to seek qualified legal counsel to establish reasonable, defensible fair use boundaries within which outreach efforts may safely continue. The Fellowship should assist the Societies along with their associated study groups and readers in understanding these boundaries and be willing to fully defend them if necessary. Attachments: Dear Fellow Councilors and Executive Committee Members: I feel it is highly probable that in the coming months actions will be taken by Officers of both the Fellowship and Urantia Foundation which will be formative in shaping the long-term relationship between the two organizations. If this is the case, it will be important for us to enter into this period of experience and action with the best long-term interests of the revelation and the readership in mind. We must also enter this period with a clear understanding of the evolutionary factors which have resulted in the present state of affairs. The purpose of this document is to review those evolutionary factors and to consider some of their implications for immediate Fellowship action. A number of readers as well as some of our Fellows have expressed the feeling that a new day has dawned in the relationship between Urantia Foundation Trustees and the Fellowship, that desires for genuine dialog and cooperative interaction are heavy in the air. These expressions appear to reflect purposes based on the hopes and ideals of those expressing them. While these expressed values, in and of themselves, are commendable, it should be borne in mind that successful undertakings related to the actualization of universe reality require the integration of values with facts and meanings. Note the comment at 86:2.3 -- "Mankind has been slow to learn that there is not necessarily any relationship between purposes and results. Human beings are only just beginning to realize that the reactions of existence appear between acts and their consequences." Also the comment at 88:4.3 -- "Man is gradually backing into the truth, beginning in error, progressing in error, and finally attaining the threshold of truth. Only with the arrival of the scientific method has he faced forward." It is critical that we make a distinction between spiritual values and material facts and understand the interdependence created between them when we actualize reality through decision making. The scientific method requires us to gather material facts, use logical, rational analysis in an attempt to assess their meaning, and only then can we wisely implement spiritual values in an effort to sort and order the meanings preparatory to determining a course of action relative to the observed material facts. The attached documents are material artifacts which have precipitated out of the processes operating within Urantia Foundation. To gain some insight into how the processes at work within Urantia Foundation might impact the purposes of the Fellowship, it is instructive to review their "Guidelines for Holding a Urantia Conference," which was originally published in 1976 and their "Copyright Permission Guidelines," which was originally published in 1982. These documents should be taken as background for a reading of "International Urantia Association Charter" which was written in 1989. This, in turn, should then be taken as background for evaluating the videotape released earlier this year and the present state of their Website. These few documents provide an overview of Urantia Foundation positions which span more than two decades. An examination of these material artifacts should tell us something about the processes which produced them. If we understand these processes we might be better equipped to predict future material events repercussing in the reader environment as a result. Artifacts currently precipitating out of Urantia Foundation process -- the videotape produced this spring, the current state of the Foundation Website, statements made in legal briefs, and the current issue of their newsletter -- indicate that the process in operation has become increasingly aggressive in its assertions of proprietary interest in the revelation. What emerges from a study of these documents, as far as I can see, is the following: Urantia Foundation continues whole-hearted pursuit of the policies which led to the disaffection of Urantia Brotherhood -- the unrelenting use of copyright law to control the expression of reader responses to the revelation. The IUA charter is a significant document because it represents the codification of Urantia Foundation's image of the perfect readership social organization. The so-called "leadership" -- the Coordinating Committee -- is appointed by the Trustees. Its members serve terms determined by the Trustees. The IUA Charter can only be amended by action of the Trustees. In short, the Foundation reveals to us, in this document, its hopes and dreams for a totally subservient, passive, compliant readership. I'm concerned that "cooperation with the Trustees" simply means being willing to submit to such misguided and poorly informed mechanisms of social control. The videotape contains thirteen minutes of promotion of the Trustees, the Foundation, and the Declaration of Trust, including closeups of the text of the Declaration of Trust with key words highlighted in azure blue. This is more than twice the amount of time actually allocated to showing the delivery of the first Russian books. The time devoted to the Russian translation is used to create an emotional response which is then redirected toward the Trustees in the last three minutes of the program. What does this presumptuous artifact tell us about the relative psycho/social enlightenment of processes operating within Urantia Foundation? It is impossible for The Fellowship to not be involved. The Fellowship, as well as every individual reader wishing to facilitate the spread of the revelation, is being forced to work under the constant threat of Foundation legal assaults and this will likely continue to be the case until the copyright, name and marks are free to be used by the growing readership. Unless we are willing to quietly submit to the repressive strictures contained in "Guidelines for Holding a Urantia Conference" and "The Urantia Book: Copyright Permission Guidelines," I feel it is essential that the Fellowship immediately seek competent legal counsel to establish an aggressive and broad interpretation of fair use. Societies and their associated study groups should then be informed as to the nature of these interpretations and the Fellowship should be willing, as an organization, to defend these boundaries to the greatest extent possible. Regardless of the outcome of any litigation related to copyright, it would seem prudent for us to seek this counsel that we might wisely establish a position relative to our legal rights and responsibilities. If we are to seek some sort of agreement with Urantia Foundation whereby we can continue publishing the Uversa Press edition of the text, we will need to be very conversant with copyright fair use principles in order to maintain access to the widest possible range of service potentials. If no reasonable agreement can be reached, we will need to be prepared to defend ourselves on some solid legal grounds. If the Fellowship refuses to take such action, it leaves individual readers adrift on a sea of legal ambiguity wherein every document Xeroxed for a study group becomes a potential basis for claims of copyright infringement. Now is the time to be placing our affairs in order relative to fair use. We will thus be able to show due diligence in attempting to avoid willful infringement and we will create a secure environment within which the work of the revelation can proceed. Please take time to peruse the attached three documents. |
| New Councilors especially should take some time to peruse the timeline
on the Fellowship Website as well as its supporting documents in order
to familiarize themselves with the antecedents to the present situation.
The website also contains some excellent papers written over the years
by movement leaders which should help you reflect constructively on the
matters at hand. These include:
"The Urantian Religionist," by Paul Snider "Suggestions Regarding a Guiding Philosophy of Membership in Urantia Brotherhood," -- private correspondence from Paul Snider to David Elders "Overview of the 1989 Separation of Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood," by David Elders "Memo to Trustees of Urantia Foundation," by Bill Sadler, 1958 "The Urantia Movement in the 1990's: Major Achievements and Emerging Challenges," by Meredith Sprunger "Insights Related to Historic Religious Conflict," by Meredith Sprunger "Cooperation with the Supreme: The Role of Conscious Choice in Value Development," by Dan Massey In the continuing adventure, David Kantor |