Church and State blog: DACS's attempt last week to retrieve a fee from us for copyright infringement reminds us of the last time Declan took the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's to court (UPDATED 11/12/2019)

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

DACS's attempt last week to retrieve a fee from us for copyright infringement reminds us of the last time Declan took the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's to court (UPDATED 11/12/2019)

Our Church and State website has no less than 57 Nobel Laureates on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms formulates what is the core of free speech. "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression." In an important interpretation of this article, the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v. UK (1976) indicated that this "freedom of expression" should be construed as follows. It "is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favourably received, or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population". Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no "democratic society" (see Cliteur, 2010).

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

This quote is in reference to the prospect of a pro bono lawyer to take on DACS (see update below):

9/20/19

Really good news for you and for all concerned about use of public info.

Donald A. Collins
Founder, International Services Assistance Fund

The Design and Artists Copyright Society is the UK's premier rights management organisation for visual artists.

Update to my DACS post

In DACS's attempt last week to retrieve a fee from us for my use of an image that I had no way of knowing was copyright protected, we are reminded of the last time Declan took the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's to court.

UPDATE 24 September (11.25am): We believe that defending this case is in the public interest. On 19 January, Declan wrote a strongly worded email to DACS to this effect [see below]. The next day he was advised by a top copyright lawyer here in London that if DACS is so aggressive that they actually take proceedings against us, then he should "dig in", contact the Law Society pro bono unit, and at the first opportunity have this case transferred to the small claims part of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court to limit our liability. The lawyer Declan finally spoke to was a referral from another firm of solicitors. Twice that day copyright lawyers sincerely wished him the very best of luck. Don Collins, Founder of the Washington DC-based International Services Assistance Fund, responded to the prospect of a pro bono lawyer to take on DACS: "Really good news for you and for all concerned about use of public info." This situation reminds me of the last time Declan took St Mungo's to court. On that occasion, two working days before the trial, we were informed by Newham Council that they had suspended our housing benefit. It was reinstated the day after the trial. According to the Council, they had been informed by the Department for Work and Pensions that we had vacated. We had absolutely no dealings whatsoever with the DWP for over three years before that. This in fact will be the second time Declan has taken proceedings against St Mungo's in three years.

18 September: DACS: Will Declan be sued for my use of an image that I had no way of knowing was copyright protected and is currently being used in dozens of websites and on social media without permission? (WITH UPDATE 24/9/2019)

This post was later updated on 24 September for the final time.

Ciara Dowling
Legal and Copyright Executive
DACS
33 Old Bethnal Green Road
London
E2 6AA

19 September 2019

Use of work by Emile Loreaux IREN19-132402

Dear Ms Dowling,

Thank you for your email.

I have discussed this matter with my wife and she is quite satisfied that she could not have possibly known that the image was copyright protected. She also confirmed that the image was removed.

We do not understand why your member would feel that he must receive a fee from me for the duration of use and we must state that any proceedings which he intends to issue will be strenuously defended.

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&sxsrf=ACYBGNS8vmnRXeUq6SF_sxWh-RAi2u67Kg:1568733320810&q=national+science+fiction+day+2019&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSkwEJdR0idxBHzOAahwELEKjU2AQaAAwLELCMpwgaYgpgCAMSKLcOlheUC7gOlxe-DpUEsAzpFZkX4iimN_1EjqzfhKPMjqCSlN6Q3hycaMCSDS8H03HgITfCmoZzNS_1WLzAKeUFJJwUNd-eCF9y1uCYhs-LO3g0LbrP77zOJEPyAEDAsQjq7-CBoKCggIARIE0G3Urww&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-6NWCk9jkAhXcSxUIHYzYBN0Q2A4ILygB

6/13/19

This obscene disregard for your rights seems to continue unresolved!

Donald A. Collins
Founder, International Services Assistance Fund

St Mungo's is funded by the Mayor of London to run a number of his rough sleepers initiatives.

Claimant: Declan Heavey
Defendant: St Mungo's

Update to my pleadings post

Declan and I are housed in a flat that is part of the Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative. It is clear from this update that there is serious intent behind the ongoing threat to the roof over our heads posed by this taxpayer-funded charity.

UPDATE 24 September (11.35am): Declan's claim against St Mungo's is strengthening by the day. On 23 August, St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson got back to Declan; however, he made no mention of Declan's letter before action but wrote he would talk to his colleagues in the quality team the following week. This was and continues as no more than a delaying tactic, which would explain why Williamson hasn't responded to the claim letter. Declan's original complaint was not only not upheld by the quality team, but it was superseded during the complaints process by his complaint against the tenancy sustainment team (TST) for creating an immediate threat to our tenancy. Last month Declan informed Williamson that he found his complaints process to be ineffective, unfair and biased; and that he will not engage further with the complaints investigation on the specific issue raised in his original complaint, and nor will he refer his superseding complaint to the quality team now or at any time in the future. Declan also informed Williamson that it is his TST team that needs to come to a reasonable agreement with him, not his quality team. But Williamson seems to have no intention of talking to his TST team for resolution, at least not until Declan has taken proceedings against St Mungo's for the second time in three years.

11 December: St Mungo's: Declan has filed in court his reply to an outrageous witness statement from this Mayor of London-commissioned charity. We are threatened with insurmountable debt just to get them to vouch over the phone that we are clients of theirs

This is a newer St Mungo's link containing Declan's reply to an outrageous witness statement from them.

3/16/17

How you manage to do what you do is simply amazing!! And with the pressure on to adjudicate what seems more and more like attacks from a personality from 1984!

Donald A. Collins
Founder, International Services Assistance Fund

County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice

Heavey v St Mungo's (2016)

Trial held in the Central London County Court, Royal Courts of Justice on 20 February 2017.

On 23 August 2018, Declan complained to the Information Commissioner's Office about case notes St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson assured the Court at trial in February 2017 had been rectified by him but were in fact being held under my name. It took the scheduling of a preliminary hearing in October 2016 to have case notes from two meetings so-called rectified by Williamson as Declan had requested all along; and that rectification only took place after a failed attempt by an international firm of solicitors, Osborne Clarke, to have Declan's claim struck out on the papers. The judge at the preliminary hearing dismissed St Mungo's application to strike out Declan's claim for compensation. DJ Avent's order dated 11 March 2017 does not state why he dismissed the claim at trial. Williamson: "The court case concerned your complaint about the notes on your record. My understanding is that following the court case it became apparent that the note in contention was mirrored on your wife's record - which I don't recall being aware of at the time - and this was subsequently amended to reflect the change we had made to yours. The court was therefore not misled." We strongly disagree that the court was not misled.

20 February 2017: Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

The suspension of our Housing Benefit by Newham Council revealed in this post.

EU freedom for rough sleepers infringed - shock horror. https://t.co/RuJKrSEiTm
— Andrew Martin (@devonprof) May 14, 2018

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

DACS's attempt last week to retrieve a fee from us for copyright infringement reminds us of the last time Declan took the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's to court (UPDATED 11/12/2019)

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