One longtime lurker's emsailed response:

Dear Mr. Wright,

The following [with my comments in brackets] was found on the newsgroup
alt.religion.scientology and if true may do your reputation in the Sysadmin
community irreparable harm unless you immediately make good to Mr. Ward.

---------begin quoted post

Due to the help of Deana (mir...@xmission.com),
I now have a new home on the net.

The older I get the less I can do without my friends.
I am amazed at what the net will do to help a relative stranger.
Thank you.

[Take that Clifford Stoll!]

This is an account of what happened today between me and tidepool.com.

tidepool.com is a small ISP that has, as most of the small ISPs in my rural
neck of northern California, been purchased by a group of investors called
Internet Ventures, Inc. of Los Angeles. The president of that company is
Don(ald) Jenky, the head of investor relations is Tim McGrath at (800)
701-7020.

In fact that company is planning an Initial Public Offering in November and
reportedly have just received permission from the SEC to go into their
"quiet period."

[Eric, picked a stupid way to be quiet - sucking up to $cientologists]

The first inkling I had of a problem was at noon today, October 16, 1997
when I attempted to log on as usual but got a message that my password
was incorrect. I called Jim at tidepool in Arcata. He told me that "he had
been trying to reach me" (I guess at someone else's phone number.) but
I had had my account terminated because "an administrator at Supernews"
had complain about my apparently "slanderous" posting to
alt.religion.scientology. He said that a "wg...@ritchie.loop.com" was
the complaining administrator. (Jim had been a co-owner of tidepool before
it was bought out by Internet Ventures, Inc..) Jim said that one Eric
Wright was the person at Internet Ventures, Inc. who made the decision to
terminate.

[If Gertie is a sysadmin, I am the queen of England. Eric, you had best
learn to investigate better. One possibility discussed by those of us who
know their modus is that the scum $cientologists have somehow gotten to you
or someone else in the investor pool. If this is so, do the Net a favor -
and make yourself(ves) (a) hero(es) - and bring it out into the light of
day. The scam of $cientology is dying. Evidence of any coercion on their
part could only contribute to the exposure of this vile organization.]

Eric Wright is the administrator both at tidepool.com and for
northcoast.com.

Jim did not disclose to me which term of service I violated, nor did he
offer to repay my prepaid 6 month contract, nor did he quote from the
supposed communication that I had made which was "slanderous" (sic). As I
was finishing up with Jim, Eric Wright apparently came in the door at
tidepool.com and I spoke with him. He said specifically that I was
terminated because "I made the company (tidepool.com) look bad."

[If you think Grady's a.r.s. attacks on the "Cult of Greed & Power" (TIME
Magazine) make tidepool/northcoast/et alia look bad, by censoring Grady you
have leapt wallet first from the pan into the fire.]

I responded that "looking bad" was not a term of service that I had agreed
to and that tidepool's TOS supposedly has specific guarantees of no content
censorship, but just the general AUP guidelines so as no spam, illegal
acts, etc. I also told him that I did not post through tidepool anyway but
through Supernews, a Usenet provider located in San Jose.

Eric was adamant that what I had allegedly posted was "slanderous" and
"disgusting." (Although he still was not sharing with me what the alleged
posting was..)

[Are you a lawyer, Eric? Do you actually know what slander is? If I say
that it is my opinion that tidepool.com is comprised solely of Net-ignorant
morons who are only interested in making money off people and treating them
like scum while simultaneously sucking up to PROVEN criminal cults and
toadying to their every whine & cry, is that slander? Check out last weeks
Inter@ctive print copy & read the editorial on customer treatment by ISP's.
Would you care to have tidepool.com linked to the phrase 'treats you like
shit'?]

I next spoke with Eric Wright's supervisor, one Carol Servé at 707 443
8696. She apparently directly reports to Don Jenky, president of Internet
Ventures.

She was surprised to learn that I only posted through Supernews -- never
through tidepool but reiterated that I had "slandered" someone. Although
again she did not mention *who* nor the content of the alleged "slander".

[More evidence of Net stupidity.]

I tried to fill her in on the scientology tactic and what I was doing, and,
more importantly that I had NOT violated the terms of service that I had
signed up under. She responded that this was changing as we spoke and
that *new* terms of service were being uploaded to the tidepool and
northcoast web site that made posts of explicit sexual nature against the
TOS.

I told her that it was fine that they changed the TOS to whatever they
wanted to but that I had signed up under the older less restrictive TOS and
those were in effect when my account was terminated. I asked her to
reinstate my account immediately and to write a letter of apology for
breach of contract.

She hung up on me.

[This behavior is inexcusable. Treat your customers like this, Eric, and no
one will NEED to make you look like idiots. Absolutely inexcusable behavior
on her part. What a professional! Eric, feel free to pass this on to your
super and be sure she knows she can pass it up the chain, too. Carol, dear,
I hear the State of Iowa is desparate for workers in all fields. This
information may be helpful, later.]

I then called up Tim McGrath who is the chief of Investor Relations of
Internet Ventures in Los Angeles at 800 701 7020. While Don tried to make
me happy by agreeing that scientologists were detestable and so on, he just
did not have the facts. But he agreed that if the facts were as I stated
them that there might have been a contract breach by tidepool.com.  In any
event it seemed to me that they could have at least sent me a "warning" or
let me know ahead of time of the change in TOS so I could make backups,
find another ISP, make alias files, etc.  He promised to "work down the
chain of command".

He promised to get back to me today. However at 5:20pm pdt my account was
still locked (although I asked Keith to relay the problem to a.r.s so that
people would not vainly send me e-mail I could not pick up). So I called
Tim McGrath once again. He returned the call on his cellphone about 5:30pm
and said that he had spoken to the president, Don Jenky and a subordinate
at Northcoast.com (likely to be Carol Servé). He still did not have "enough
facts" and said that he would contact me tomorrow.

I said that I thought it was odd that a company imminently going public
would cause such a storm. Investors might question the quality of
management and rethink investment plans. He agreed.

[Odd? Grady, it could be FATAL to an ISP to be seen as toadying to such
provable scum as the $cientologists. If *I* were Mr. VP of Investor
Relations, I would be shitting bricks about this flap right up until
tidepool DOES THE RIGHT THING and reinstates Grady Ward's account &
APOLOGIZES.]

However, at about 8pm pdt Ron Newman called me (thanks Ron) and told me
that my web site at http://www.tidepool.com/grady had just disappeared. So,
despite Tim McGrath's assurances that "it was being looked into" the
harassment and my exclusion from the internet for called Helena K. Kobrin a
shit-vagina and legal whore (among many other things) was continuing.

[Eric, how much of your foot was left after you shot at it ~this~ time? You
dropped his webpage? You have to be $cientologists to be so stupid.]

While through the grace of Deana Holmes and company I now have another ISP,
I am saddened that yet another ISP falls victim to the harassment of the
criminal cult of scientology and that their intimidation can even lead to
breaches of contract.  While I am *not* a litigious sort of person, it may
require the intervention of the court to make sure that my situation with
tidepool is clarified and that a clear message is sent to ISPs that they
ought to obey their contract responsibilities, as of course each customer
to the ISP ought to. I also plan to relate a concise account of this matter
to the appropriate investor newsgroups and mailing lists so that they have
more facts on a prospective investment.

[Tell the world, Grady - there's only about 5,000 of us there to help you.
Eric, you still reading this? I hope for your sake and any hopes of a
successful business that you are.]

Don't get me wrong. I think that an ISP can pretty much set up whatever
terms of service it wants to. There is enough competition that once can
simply look to another provider. But to get terminated for some ex post
facto TOS especially originating from a jerk like wgert (who wasn't even
the target of my rant), despite never having actually posting *from*
tidepool.com, was simply wrong. Of course the lie that scientology "fully
supports free speech and only sues when it had to protect its property
rights" and such baloney is once again clearly seen *as* a lie. As if the
original Helena K. Kobrin, shit-vagina 'ho's unlawful RMGROUP in Jan. 1995
was enough to convince any of us.

[Eric, are you aware of how many people on the Net *despise* those like you
who apparently feel free speech is fine UNTIL IT IS INCONVENIENT TO THEM?]

However, as you can see, wgert's BIG WIN was short-lived and I shall now
think of something appropriate to do to celebrate it.

Again, thanks to all my friends who have shown that, by supporting a person
despite whose methods they deeply disagree with, they have a million times
the real moral sense than any scientologist would ever hope to have while a
member of the criminal cult.

Thank you, Mirele and Joey.

Keep bending over and spreading them, criminal cult of scientologists,
MORE TO COME!

--
Grady Ward   gr...@tidepool.com    +1 707 826 7712
http://www.tidepool.com/grady
C168 0477 7302 C208 F3AC  B8D2 33C5 7FCC 0D52 F028

---------end quoted post

To clue yourselves in on just what you have done, I suggest you visit
Andreas Heldal-Lund's Web page on matter:
http://home.sol.no/~spirous/CoS/news/gw1.html

If you have trouble, get your secretary or any small child to show you how
to 'Surf the Web'.

Rest assured the BOFH & any other owner/operator/administrators will be
thoroughly clued in to my opinion of your behavior should you refuse to do
the right thing.