In response to official attempts to quash online publication of a report critical of a Nottingham child-abuse investigation, Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) on Monday called for Web sites worldwide to mirror the disputed document.
"[T]he genie is out of the bottle," Yaman Akdeniz, head of the group, said in a statement. "The issue [now at stake] is public interest and freedom of information."
The 1990 JET report by police and social-service officials, on a sensational case allegedly involving satanic rituals and baby killings, was published on the Web last month without government authorization.
The Nottinghamshire County Council, which holds the copyright on the report, has threatened legal action against sites in Britain, Canada, and the United States unless they remove links to the report and its copies. One site in Canada complied with the order, but Peter Junger, a law professor at Case Western Reserve in Ohio, has refused to comply.
"[This] is an important historical document," Junger wrote in a letter Monday rebuking the Nottingham County Solicitor for his handling of the incident.
"[Y]our efforts to suppress the truth about what happened ... have not had quite the effect you and your client desired," Junger continued. "After all, no one would have mirrored the Broxtowe report ... had you not sought to enjoin its original publication."
Including Junger's, 18 mirror sites have been established since the initial injunction.
