THE FOUNDATION CONTINUES TO ACT AS
THE CHURCH OF THE TRUE COPYRIGHT

by Philip Eversoul

There is another angle to the Maaherra case that has not yet been sufficiently remarked upon. In the recent Admissions, the Foundation has been at great pains to attempt a tortured explanation that, on the one hand, the Urantia Book was indeed authored by superhumans or non-humans, but on the other, the Urantia Book was also authored by humans. The humans for whom the Foundation claims co- authorship include the contact personality, the Contact Commission, the members of the Forum, and the many humans throughout the history of our planet whose wisdom was incorporated into the Urantia Book.

The main strategy of the Foundation, we now see, is to add human co-authorship to the Urantia Book while at the same time admitting the superhuman authorship as stated in the Book itself. Why is it doing this? It is because it knows that if it admits, plainly and simply, that the Urantia Book is of superhuman or non-human authorship, it loses the copyright. It also may realize that if it had continued to deny superhuman authorship, as it had done up to the point of giving its legally binding admissions, it would lose much of any remaining respect and good will that anyone still holds for it. If the court agrees that the Urantia Book does have human co-authorship, which is unlikely, then the Foundation might maintain its claim to authorship by means of the "work for hire" category.

[Update--12/2/98 by Phil Eversoul: In the original decision in Arizona, Judge Urbom found that the Foundation had not proved its "work for hire" argument, there being no evidence that the Contact Commission hired superhumans to write a revelation, whatever the legal definition of "work for hire" might include. As far as Judge Urbom was concerned, the case turned on the validity or invalidity of the Foundation's own argument about a "work for hire." Remarkably, as it turned out when the case went to the Appeals Court, this line of reasoning was rudely derailed by the justices. On their own initiative, these justices dismissed the "work for hire" argument, which doubtless they saw to be of no merit, and replaced it with what they considered to be the proper argument, namely, a compilation copyright based on their own presumption that humans HAD to have made a contribution (no divine acts were to be allowed in THEIR court). On that basis, a copyright was granted. The Appeals Court decision did not make clear what portions of the Fifth Epochal Revelation were the underlying text, uncopyrightable, and which portions were arranged by human hands, hence copyrightable. This lack of clarity is the current state of affairs, although it may be settled by an upcoming hearing before Judge Urbom.

Seldom, if ever, do the supposedly neutral justices hearing a case set aside, on their own initiative, the arguments of one of the parties and replace them with what they consider to be the proper arguments, so that one of parties thus favored will be assured of winning the case. The bias involved in such an action on behalf of one of the parties is staggering. In effect, the justices made themselves the advocates of the cause of one of the parties.

These same justices did more. Using the arguments for compilation copyright that they had provided for the Foundation, they wrote a summary judgment in favor of the Foundation even though the parties to the suit did not agree on the facts. The facts that Maaherra brought forth indicated no human authorship whatsoever, while the facts that the Foundation brought forth alleged the opposite. Summary judgment is supposed to be allowable only when both parties agree on the facts. In view of the disagreement on the facts, the Appeals Court should have remanded the case to Urbom for a trial in Arizona. Instead, it apparently could not tolerate the idea, supported by Maaherra, that a divine revelation could appear on earth without any human authorship, and refused to take the idea seriously. The Foundation encouraged the Court in this common presumption of our materialistic and secular age. The Court simply wanted to dismiss this "nonsense," and the Foundation agreed.

Not only did the Appeals Court favor one of the parties with a winning argument and not only did this Court write an improper summary judgment for that party, but it also forbade the losing party, Maaherra, from presenting counter-arguments to the validity of a compilation copyright, even though the Court, by its own arbitrary decision, changed the entire grounds of the case. Maaherra was not allowed to present arguments based on these new grounds. The case was over].

Now let's go back to the Bob Burton case of 1975. No verdict was ever rendered because he died at the age of 93 before a ruling on the facts of the case could be given. At the very beginning of the Admissions, filed September 3, 1975, we read:

"PLAINTIFFS [URANTIA FOUNDATION'S] ANSWERS TO DEFENDANT'S [BOB BURTON'S] REQUEST FOR ADMISSIONS

REQUEST NO. 1

That no natural person was the originator of the text of 'THE URANTIA BOOK!

1 ANSWER

Plaintiff admits."

(Request for Admissions, p. 1 )

At the very end of the Admissions, we read:

"REQUEST NO. 15

That the person who wrote the original manuscript of THE URANTIA BOOK faithfully and without adding any style, arrangement, manner of expression, or any subject matter of his or her own, reduced to written form only that which was transmitted to such person by superhuman beings and such is the copyrighted text of THE URANTIA BOOK.'

ANSWER

It is the Plaintiffs belief that the statement made in request No. 15 is true and on this basis admits."

(Request for Admissions, p.5)

So there it is: a completely different-and contradictory-statement about the amount of human authorship of the Urantia Book: none. At this time, in 1975, the Foundation obviously did not want to establish the existence of any human contribution to authorship and instead denied, in the official record of the court proceedings, that human authorship had anything to do with the text of the Urantia Book. Thomas Kendall, President of the Foundation, submitted this testimony. What argument, then, was the Foundation relying on? It was relying on an argument that the law of the United States does provide for copyright by superhuman beings. The Foundation's lawyer said:

"Finally, Defendant has referred to the copyright Laws, -Title 17 U.S.C. Section 1 and Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Defendant has taken these provision to mean that the laws and the Constitution protect only natural and corporate persons and not spirits and non-human entities. The clear language of the Statute and of the Constitution does not support this conclusion, and Defendant has failed to cite any authority by way of court decisions or otherwise which would establish this interpretation. Defendants construction of the Constitution and the Copyright Statute would require that no copyright, either Common Law or statutory, could ever exist in any writing if the subject matter thereof was communicated to one who did the actual writing by an unknown author, be he human or superhuman." (index of Authorities, p.6)

The Foundation presumably would have lost if a verdict had been given on such a line of argument. The Copyright Office routinely denies requests for copyrights when the author is asserted to be superhuman or non-human. And the Foundation is not currently using any argument about the validity of non-human or superhuman authorship as a way to hold its copyright. It seeks to have its claim to copyright upheld on the basis of human co-authorship. But in the Burton case, it officially and clearly denied any human contribution to authorship. This was probably because at the time of that case, the Foundation was determined not to reveal the identity of the "sleeping subject" or the "contact personality," and it would have had to do so if it was claiming copyright on the basis of a series of oral transfers of title starting with the human who first wrote down the words of the Urantia Book.

Still, it was a very strange argument. It maintained that since the authorship was superhuman, it didn't matter who originally wrote down the text, and since the copyright was by common law and not by statute, it didn't matter exactly how the title was orally transferred from human to human. It didn't even matter how the superhumans gave title to the humans. The only facts that mattered, by the Foundation's reckoning, were that it possessed the text, that no one in the alleged chain of title transfer had ever protested the its ownership, and that the common-law copyright's title could be inferred to have been orally transferred by noting the arrangements that were made for the text's ownership. The alleged line of descent in this case was an implied, indirect, and oral transference of an assumed common- law copyright beginning with the "sleeping subject" and Dr. Sadler, continuing with the Contact Commission and the Forum, and then proceeding to the Foundation via the Declaration of Trust. It was a very ragged line of descent (or "'chain of title"), and it was challengeable at many points.

By asserting human co-authorship in the Maaherra case, the Foundation is obligated to show how, where, and when humans produced the content of the Urantia Book. In the Burton case, the Foundation stated that it was an assignee of the copyright through a "chain of title," but it argued that it was irrelevant to name and identify the human originator of the chain, the "contact personality," because it admitted that the authorship was entirely superhuman. But in the Maaherra case, the Foundation cannot use the "assignee" argument because the copyright law denies assignees the right to renew a copyright. Consequently, the Foundation's only possible argument is that it is the author by reason of a work-for-hire contract.

[Update--12/2/98 by Phil Eversoul: As it turned out, there was another possibility: the compilation copyright, which the Foundation did not use but which was thrust on them by the Appeals Court. It is interesting to speculate on why the Foundation did not think of this themselves. It might be because compilation copyrights are supposed to be granted only to previously existing works which had, or could have had, their own copyrights prior to being assembled and arranged for the purpose of compilation copyright. But the Urantia Papers did not have a separate and previous existence as copyrightable materials prior to their original copyright in 1955. In other words, the Papers were never treated as, or considered to be, separate copyrightable works prior to the first copyright of all of them as a whole in 1955. This situation fails to meet the test, or one of the tests, for what can be granted a compilation copyright. Perhaps this is why the Foundation did not make a claim to such a copyright].

To the extent that the Foundation applies this argument (work for hire), it denies the purely superhuman authorship of the Urantia Book simply because superhumans do not engage in work-for-hire contracts with humans. The Foundation has demonstrated that it stands ready to deny the Revelation to whatever extent necessary to keep its copyright. It has no regard for the truth that any believer in the Book holds.

When the trustees met a few months ago at Will Sherman's house, they admitted that they believed in the superhuman authorship of the Urantia Book instead of in the lies they were giving in court about how William Sadler, Jr. wrote the Urantia Book as a work for hire. As far as I know, none of them added, "Oh, yes, and I also believe in the human co-authorship of the book." Why was this, do you suppose? Did they have to keep their legal tactics secret? Maybe, but do you suppose it was really because none of them actually believes in the human co-authorship story? Do you suppose if they had openly stated any belief in human co-authorship at Will's house, they would have been laughed at or scorned? In court, the Foundation will tell any lie it thinks is necessary to maintain its dirty copyright-and its dirty trademark. The irony is that in the Burton case, the Foundation told the truth about the authorship and in all likelihood would have lost if Burton hadn't died.

Kurt Cira called the trustees to full admission of their lies and full repentance for their evil deeds. It may be the last mission of mercy the Foundation will ever receive. The Foundation is in default and at some point the divine ax will fall on it. But it's nothing to grieve over. The Foundation is not indispensable, and God will use another way.

26 July 1994

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