Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. Press Release, 4 Jun 1996
UNIVERSITY IN INTERNET GAG ATTEMPT
The University of Western Australia has made legal threats against individuals and publications who have published the location of an Internet Web site. The site in question contains information about the University's treatment of whistleblower Dr Rindos - currently the subject of an inquiry in the West Australian Upper House. The University alleges that material on the site is defamatory.
"Threatening people for publishing the address of a Web page is like threatening people for publishing the Dewey Decimal number of a book." said Electronic Frontiers Australia's Sydney spokesperson Danny Yee. "If the site is found to be defamatory then it will be removed and any links to it will be useless. Given that the Web page in question is only _allegedly_ defamatory, this looks like a blatant attempt to gag open discussion of the case. This sort of intimidation is likely to prove counterproductive, however - the page in question is now being popularised by free speech advocates around the world."
The address (URL) of the page in question, which is maintained by a student at Buffalo University in New York, is
The internationally respected Justice on Campus project at MIT now carries a full copy of the site at
An ironic twist is that an earlier suit for defamation by Dr Rindos himself set a precedent for defamation on the Internet.
LINK to appended letter.