Unjust and Illegal Slander and Censorship efforts by Constitution Society

1. Record of Abuses and Usurpations

Date Source Destination Description
20250626 Constitution Society Constitution Research Cease and Desist-Unauthorized Mirror Website, Intellectual Property Infringement, and Defamantory Content
20250627 Constitution Research Constitution Society DMCA takedown notice and rebuttal to 20250626 Society letter.
20250628 Constitution Research   Updated the What's New page to document changes to the site resulting from this page.

2. Copyright Law on Derivative Works and Compilations

  1. Can I Use Someone Else's Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine?, USPTO
    https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html?loclr=blogpoe
  2. Copyright in Derivative Works and Compilations, USPTO
    https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

3. Standing

"But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless."
[Titus 3:9, Bible, NKJV]

The basis for standing to pursue this action by Constitution Society is as follows:

3.1. Copyright violation

  1. We identitied the criteria for posting items on this website on our About Us Page. None of these criteria violate the legitimate copyright of any affected party.
  2. What Constitution Society SAYS is copyrighted and what is ACTUALLY COPYRIGHTABLE are two completeely different things. This disconnect between reality and belief is why we say they are "playing a game of poker not justice".
  3. Although they essentially admitted reading the above page in their notice, they failed to prove why the criteria for posting was inadequate to protect whatever intellectual property they claim to own.
  4. As we identified in the About Us page, 97% of the content from third parties fits in the unprotected category.
  5. The main type of content they focused on was LISTS that can't be copyrighted. Out of desperation they tried to incorrectly invoke the Lantham Act to protect those lists, but as you learn in section 3.3 below, that act doesn't apply to this scenario.
  6. Even if it DOES apply, they failed to identify an objective criteria for us to help them in locating and removing offending lists. For instance:
    6.1. What is about the list that makes it intellectual property?
    6.2. Does the ordering of the list change the nature of IP protections and if so HOW?
    6.3. None of the lists either in original or current form were ever expressly copyrighted. What is the objective basis to establish IP ownership at that point?
    6.4. Does adding or deleting items from the list change the nature of IP protections and if so HOW?
    6.5. Where is the "trade mark" or "service" mark used in the offending content that would even allow the Lantham Act to be applied.
  7. We submitted several questions to them in our response to try to resolve the above issues and provided default answers. Crickets so far.
  8. To simply claim "its mine" as an ipse dixit statement without supporting evidence and then threaten to destroy or censore our website if we don't do what they say is not far removed from terrorism and extortion itself.
  9. It appears to us that copyright violation accusations are really just a way to censor healthy competition. And it looks like they are relying on our legal ignorance or fear for the success of their malicious, false, presumptuous, or ambiguous accusations.
  10. Collections of the works of others could conceivably be copyrighted, but only based on the curation, grouping, or organization added to the works.
    10.1. There was no curation of the works of others or commentary added to those works published on this site.
    10.2. The grouping of items in lists is not unique and in fact is dysfunctional, because there are so many broken links that users will quickly become frustrated and leave.
    10.3. The menus on this site don't even approximate the Constitution Society's website at the time of death of Jon Roland. You can see that by examining the Archive.org archived version of constitution.org. Thus, to argue that they have a right to use our menu design instead of Jon's original actually constitutes an admission that they are rejecting and not preserving Jon's legacy in violation of the trust indenture.
    10.4. The Society is copying our organization and grouping of materials, which is unique, and claiming it is there property without ever actually requesting, authorizing, or paying for the collection and grouping on this site.
  11. The organization and footers of each page are different and missing items links on the original. The coloring and organization of individual pages is also different.
  12. The organization of this site much more closely resembles that of Family Guardian than Jon's work, in keeping with our own conventions for organization.

3.2. Breach of fiduciary duty

Elements that must be proven to have standing are:

1. Existence of a Fiduciary Relationship

There must be a recognized fiduciary relationship between the parties. This arises when one party (the fiduciary) is entrusted to act for the benefit of another (the principal) in matters within the scope of the relationship. Common examples include:

2. Breach of Fiduciary Duty

The fiduciary must have failed to act in accordance with their obligations, such as:

3. Causation

There must be a causal link between the breach and the harm suffered. The plaintiff must show that the fiduciary’s misconduct was a substantial contributing factor to the injury .

4. Damages

The plaintiff must have suffered actual harm—financial, reputational, or otherwise—as a result of the breach. In some cases, courts may also award:

In this case:

  1. In order for any contract to be enforceable, there must be consideration. A trust and the trustee position within it is a contract.
  2. Consideration was promised by Jon Roland before his death and that consideration was the ONLY reason we even got involved. It was committed by email and it essentially made the best interest of the trust and our best interests synonymous. To revoke the consideration after the death of Jon by disallowing a reuse of their unprotected materials made our self interest and mutual interest incompatible.
  3. The ONLY reason we got involved as a trustee was BECAUSE of that consideration.
  4. Since the consideration was withdrawn, there can be no duty resulting from it. Any work done on the website up to this point became private property as equitable reimbursement for services rendered.
  5. Even IF there had been an actual duty as a so-called "Webmaster", that duty was never even defined at any time.
  6. Whatever tasks performed to modify site content would have to be itemized, preapproved, paid for, and ordered in a minute order within the confines of a DEFINED duty, and it never was. Thus, it will be impossible to prove that the Society had any ownership of work that was actually implemented MAINLY to improve this site and later LOANED to the society on their website. That work is now posted on their site in an unaturhorized fashion and is the target of a DMCA take-down notice just like theirs provided to us.
  7. No proprietary information was misused as a so-called webmaster. The entire site can literally be downloaded the website sucking tools such as HTTrack. In fact, that is how we saved the site from extinction the first time BEFORE it disappeared after Jon Roland ended up in the Veterans Hospital on his death bed in San Antonio, TX.

3.3. Lantham Act Trademark Infringement

The reason they have to go down this track is because they apparently agree with us that 97% of the content on this site was created and owned by OTHER than them. They also seem to agree with us that lists can't be copyrighted, which is most of what appears on this site. So they have to go down the Lantham Act route to get some traction on standing to protect the lists. Unfortunately, that act requires that the list be authoritative, that those posting it copy the service mark of someone else, and use it in commerce. So they are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

The elements that must be proven to have standing under the Lantham Act are:

1. Ownership of a Valid and Protectable Mark

The plaintiff must show that:

2. Use by the Defendant in Commerce

The defendant must have:

3. Likelihood of Consumer Confusion

This is the heart of most Lanham Act claims. The plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant’s use of the mark is likely to cause confusion among consumers as to:

Courts apply multi-factor tests (like the Polaroid or Sleekcraft factors) to assess confusion, considering:

Common Defenses

In this case:

  1. Plaintiff is a 501c3 privileged nonprofit entity that can't operate for profit.
  2. It will be impossible for the Plaintiff to prove damages without admitting that they are operating for profit and thus violating their charter.
  3. They refuse to identify exactly what Trade mark or service mark is being misused. We didn't even know they had one.
  4. It will be impossible for them to prove we are using a non-existing mark to benefit ourselves commercially, because we don't sell anything or receive donations or engage in any kind of commerce.
  5. Consumer confusion is impossible because we state in our About Us page that we are NOT affiliated with anyone else and do not seek to cash in on anyone's good will.
  6. We don't market anything and benefit in NO WAY from this website. We don't solicit or accept donations. It is and always has been a free public service, even before we became involved with the Constitution Society.
  7. This is an educational only website with no registered commercial identity or commerce involved. Educational use, religious and political use, and public discourse are perfectly acceptable exceptions to the Copyright Act.

3.4. Lantham Act Unfair Competition

Elements of a False Advertising Claim under the Lanham Act

  1. False or Misleading Statement of Fact
    • The defendant made a statement that is either literally false or literally true but misleading.
    • Puffery (e.g., “best in the world”) is generally not actionable unless it implies a verifiable fact.
  2. Use in Commercial Advertising or Promotion
    • The statement was made in a commercial context, such as advertising, labeling, or promotional materials.
    • It must be directed at consumers or potential customers, not just internal communications.
  3. Material Deception
    • The deception must be material, meaning it is likely to influence the purchasing decision of consumers.
    • Courts presume materiality for literally false statements; otherwise, extrinsic evidence (like consumer surveys) may be required.
  4. Interstate Commerce
    • The statement must have been made in the course of interstate commerce, which is broadly interpreted (e.g., online sales, national advertising).
  5. Competitive or Commercial Injury
    • The plaintiff must show actual or likely harm to their business reputation or sales as a result of the false statement.
    • Injunctive relief may be granted on a showing of likely harm; damages require proof of actual injury.

Additional Notes

Unfair competition claims therefore are unfounded because:

  1. Nothing on this website can be characterized as factual, actionable, or admissible as evidence per the Disclaimer/License protecting it.
  2. No money or commerce is solicited in connection with anything on this site.
  3. The content of this website therefore cannot be truthfully charactized as factual or actionable commercial speech.
  4. Interstate commerce is not involved because the Disclaimer/License requires those using the website to waive civil statutory protections such as those provided by the Lantham Act.

3.5. Falsely Alleged Defamation

“To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism.”
[ G. Edward Griffin]

The Constitution Society alleges that our Resignation Latter and Farewell Message defamed them. To make that accusation, they would have to FALSELY proceed upon the presumption that everything on this site is factual, actionable, and admissible as evidence in a court proceeding. In fact, the site Disclaimer/License Agreement says the complete opposite. The First Amendment guarantees that the SPEAKER is the only one who can define or characterize his or her own words. Onwership and responsiblity ALWAYS go together, and ownership implies the right to define. Any attempt to change the meaning, character, or context of our own words without out consent is a Pharisee and sophist hijacking of our words for commercial gain and thus constitutes an unauthorized commercial use of our speech or actions in violation of the License Agreement protecting this site.

Their own behavior and actions speak for themselves. If those actions are defamatory, that's their problem, not ours. The abuse of legal process to censor information about the behavior of the Society or its Trustees under the guise of copyright litigation is unconscionable. The public deserves to know our NON-FACTUAL opinions on this subject so they can judge for themselves. The public will never hear the truth from the cadre of lawyer trustees running the Society whose prime directive is risk management, revenue optimization, and protecting their license to practice from angry judges dealing with accusations of public corruption. That's for sure.

It may very well be that they are receiving calls and questions about the PORTION of the content of this site that deals with citizenship or the corruption of their own profession. They may feel uncomfortbale about dealing with such subjects. Our goal is encourage prosecution of public corruption, not protect the Society's desire to avoid prosecuting it or worst yet protecting it. They clearly don't want to be associated with our efforts and have requested a disclaimer to that effect. They may be proceeding under the FALSE presumption that we are "sovereign citizens" or anti-government. The only way they could reach that conclusion is to not actually read what we teach. In fact, we are not anti-government or "sovereign citizens" as documented below:

  1. Government Corruption Opposition Movement (aka Sovereign Citizen Movement in government circles), Form #08.033
    https://sedm.org/Forms/08-PolicyDocs/SovereignCitizenMovement.pdf
  2. Rebutted False Arguments about Sovereignty, Form #08.018
    https://sedm.org/Forms/08-PolicyDocs/RebFalseArgSovereignty.pdf

The term "sovereign citizen" has never even been legally defined. It's just a propaganda tool to use the Dunnin-Kruger effect to close minds and prejudice the public against learning the law, expositing government corruption, and proscuting it. It appears they might be a prisoner of this mental illness that closes people's minds to the truth. This is not surprising, because members of the legal profession and public servants risk their livelihood and security to look at the facts and evidence on government corrruption we expose, all of which are Third Rail Issues for good reason. See, for instance:

Petition for Admission to Practice, Family Guardian Fellowship
https://famguardian.org/Subjects/LawAndGovt/LegalEthics/PetForAdmToPractice-USDC.pdf

No, we don't think we are "elitists" or above REAL law, above the CRIMINAL or COMMON law, or above anyone else. REAL law requires ALL be be treated equally. The CIVIL statutory law actually DESTROYS that equality and creates a dulocracy and human trafficking that we oppose. Expecting to be treated EQUAL to the government in court instead of a PRESUMED employee or officer called a civil statutory "person", "taxpayer", "citizen", or "resident" without pay or real "benefit" is not unreasonable. To conclude otherwise is statism and idolatry. See:

Socialism: The New American Civil Religion, Form #05.016
https://sedm.org/Forms/05-MemLaw/SocialismCivilReligion.pdf

Don't shoot the messenger like the Pharisees did with Jesus. Address the facts and law IN the message, which are OVERWHELMING in this case. Otherwise, you only discredit yourself and look like a lazy, presumptuous fool who defames HIMSELF.

"A wise man fears and departs from evil, But a fool rages and is self-confident."
[Prov. 14:16, Bible, NKJV]

4. Proposed Remedy

We have made every reasonable effort to protect the intellectual property of the Constitution Soceity. If we might have missed anything you think is still copyrighted, please let us know and we will fix it immediately. But please format your request as follows:

# URL Category Explanation
       

NOTES:

1. The category field is the # from the following list:

  1. Items written by Jon Roland.
  2. Public domain content outside the current copyright window of 75 years.
  3. Content from third party sources that either:
    3.1 Does not indicate that is is copyrighted.
    3.2 Gives permission to repost either with or without attribution.
    3.3 Does not indicate the author or have a copyright notice.
  4. Governmental sources that cannot be copyrighted under the Copyright Act.
  5. Lists of links to content on and off this site that cannot be copyrighted.
  6. None of the above.

2. The Reason column should explain in detail why you think the item is still copyrighted if it falls in items 2 through 6 above. If the item category in 6 above, provide a DETAILED explanation of why you think it should be removed anyway, keeping in mind that defamatory content cannot be censored because NOTTHING on this site is authoritative, factual, actionable, or admissible as evidence per the owner of this website.

3. Include in your feedback an answer to ALL of the questions posted in our 20250627 correspondence or it will be ignored.

There is nothing posted on this site written by the founder Jon Roland as they requested. The fact that they would even pursue such an end betrays that they actually intend to do the opposite of what Jon intended by founding the society to begin with: The preservation of his writings and memory. But that is their problem.

The writings of others and lists are not within the realm of property the Society can enforce an ownership interest in. If they believe otherwise, they have the burden of proving it BEFORE they decide to litigate and not after. And we will post the proof here if we receive it. But filing a legal action without administraively satisfying that burden of proof is not only irresponsible, but a malicious abuse of the courts and a form of vexatious litigation. This sort of vexatious litigation is not new to Larry Becraft. He had a tiff with Bob Schulz of the We the People Foundation as well, in which he claimed Bob was selling his materials without authorization. In this case, we aren't selling anything, so this kind of dispute is malicious.

We are willing to agree to leave them alone and drop everything if they will leave us alone. And by leave alone, we mean restroring the constitution.org site to its condition before we got invovned and agree to waive any future copyright, defamation, or any other future claim. Send us a proposed agreement and we will consider it. If we are able to negotiate something, we will even agree to remove this page. All of this strife is a huge waste of time. It is not in the best interest of the Society and could actually destroy the society because of the consquences of violating the license agreement protecting the content of this site.

We know it's tempting to blame us for a loss of user base, but there are bigger things at play. AI is canibalizing site traffic of everyone because people are going to AI instead of using search engines. Every website currently has this problem. It's not our fault. We aren't competitors, but we shouldn't be blamed or punished for doing the job better without any revenue to do the job. Constitution Society is a losing war for those who want to prevent the spread of what is on this site, because this site is being using to train AI bots to create generative ai content for people who want to fight for freedom in court. There is nothing in the Constitution.org site that would be useful for that, which is why we had to create this site to begin with.

5. Conclusions

Constitution Society is clearly playing a game of poker, not of true justice. They want to win, but they don't want to deserve or earn the win. If they really wanted justice they would have:

  1. Dispassionately explained their standing, the facts and law to back it up,
  2. Provided court admissible proof of ownership.
  3. Provided an explicit list of files that either need to be corrected and how rather than censoring the whole site.
  4. Responded by answering our questions to facilitate closer cooperation.
  5. Cc'd us on everything they do that affects the opponent as we have done.

The fact that they are remaining silent and even sent a take-down notice to Archive.org without cc'ing us is proof they are operating in BAD FAITH. Of all the people in the freedom community, they as leaders should be most concerned about justice and equity but with this case, they are the worst offenders of it. Their behavior explains why we still need and probably always will need a nanny socialist state: We as the freedom community are incapable of self-government. We can't even run our own families: The divorce rate is the highest it's ever been and getting worse, and this evolution is akin to a legal divorce. The remedy is God's law and Christianity, but atheists in an atheist society aren't allowed to pursue a REAL remedy, even though some of the trustees claim to be Christian. Instead, they would rather play the Pharisee game to subvert Gods' law in this case.

It's no wonder the freedom community never gets anywhere. Atheist society money grubbers seeking filthy lucre under the guise 501c3 status destroy every decent remaining source of information and do their best to censor it. The community is its own worst enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, unless he doesn't like competition. Then he's my enemy too by no choice of mine. Beam me up scotty: There's no intelligent life here. That is wht Star Trek version of what Jesus said on the Cross.

Larry Becraft is prosecuting this malicious effort. According to former IRS Agent Sherry Jackson, he threw her under the bus and landed her in jail for a malicious government prosecution. By going after us, Larry is now biting the hand that feeds him, which is the freedom community he claims to cater to, by DESTROYING it. Way to go, Larry! The largest freedom website in the world will no longer be recommending your services. Canibals are not welcome here. Did Uncle Sam put you up to this? You can see her story at:

Former IRS Agent Alleges Income Tax Misapplied To Americans and Admits that SHE is reading this site and using its methods!, FTSIG
https://ftsig.org/former-irs-agent-alleges-income-tax-misapplied-to-americans-and-admits-that-she-is-reading-this-site-and-using-its-methods/

This is a LOUSY way for the Constitution Society to improve its reputation. This is the best form of self-inflicted negative publicity possible. Anyone consideraing volunteering as a future trustee is now forewarned by the malicious ungrateful treatment I received.

  1. We were blamed for every possible thing that went wrong.
  2. It was anathema to talk at any Trustee meeting about the main reason for the existence of this website: The corruption of the legal profession and the government. A majority of trustees were involved in both professions. It was always the elephant in the room. Any kind of Third Rail Government issue being posted on the website was completely off limits, because that would be looking the government gift horse in the mouth. These kind of issues are the main thing we had to THIS website as a result because they were completely missing. Anything that might involve risk or moral obligation could not be posted on the society so the trustee meetings were about rearranging deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.
  3. They use Phariseeical legalism to turn the Society trust indenture into a way to control and enslave trustees and users, rather than respect, empower, appreciate, and liberate them and the community of the Society website as Jesus did. The society had three attorneys on it but they disregarded the most important real law: God's law. You weren't even allowed to discuss God's law at the trustee meetings: It was irrelevant and to be avoided almost like light is to cockroaches.
  4. We were consistently viewed as more of a competitor than a team member because of our vast work product. Our vast work in the freedom community was perceived more as a threat, not a powerful FREE tool to improve site content and reach a larger audience.
  5. Our job as webmaster was never even defined and every effort to define it or impose configuration control over site content was disregarded or ignored. The title of Trustee was little more than an ambigious neuce around our neck.
  6. Nothing meaningful we did to improve the site was ever requested, authorized, compensated or even appreciated beyond rescuing the original site content from permanent loss. Every effort such as this to recover consideration was met with RIDICULE and threats or malicious prosecution.
  7. What we did do to improve the website was used to beat us over the head and threaten us with our own unauthorized work as if they owned it. They use your own stolen work product to manipulate, threaten, and RIDICULE you almost like Jesus carrying the cross he was forced to make at legal gun point.
  8. There was constant bickering about the declining revenue of the soceity even though the society claimed to be nonprofit and not care about money. You can't have it both ways: Serving God and Mammon. Choose which side you are on and of you pick the money side, quit claiming to be a nonprofit but acting like a for-profit.
  9. The website contained links to every important freedom personality, but none to ours because it was an atheist society that wanted no spiritual content. This was true from its founding. It is quite fitting that they should then ORDER us to do EXACTLY the same censorship of information about the founder that they did to us. They asked us to remove everything written by Jon Roland. We also removed everything ABOUT Jon Roland from this website. Divine justice.
  10. Any effort to add links to our vast work was ridiculed as a conflict of interest, even though all the materials linked to were FREE.
  11. Consideration promised of being able to republish content the society didn't even own as the only inducement for me to become a trustee was stolen or witdrawn, leaving me with nothing but blame and obligation and zero reward.

It looks like your trustee retention improvement program is working. Keep up the great work.

But why should we be surprised from an atheist and therefore state worshipping entity seeking the privilege of Caesar's corrupt CIVIL protection for their own sin and tax exempt status? That protection wouldn't even be necessary if the trustees would behave respectfully and love one another as God's law demands. As long as we are fighting with each OTHER, we can never be a threat to the REAL enemy.

Please see our DMCA page.

Any use of the COPYTIGHTED/LICENSED information on this ENTIRE site by any third party for a factual, actionable, legal, or evidentiary basis in any litigation involving the webmaster or Family Guardian shall be governed by:

Injury Defense Franchise and Agreement, Form #06.027
https://sedm.org/Forms/06-AvoidingFranch/InjuryDefenseFranchise.pdf