As I said a few days ago, this round, this case, draws to a close, I think, at least for now:

On June 12th, after sifting through a blizzard of paper and sitting through two hearings, U.S. Magistrate Judge Shaffer made his recommendations. The gist of it went like this: he granted both remaining Defendant's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, and he denied the Plaintiff's erroneously-named motion for "interlocutory injunction".

The magistrate's recommendation, archived at http://www.ind-movement.org/lawsuit/pdfs/020617_recommend_on_mtd.pdf noted that "It is difficult to believe that a reasonable Internet user would conclude that the disparaging remarks on Defendant's web sites regarding Plaintiff's churches and leaders were endorsed by Plaintiffs or that such remarks would likely cause confusion as to their source." (p. 18).

His recommendation went further to defend fair use and freedom of speech on the Internet: "Plaintiff's request for injunctive relief sweeps too broadly under the guise of protecting Plaintiff's alleged copyrights. Applied literally, Plaintiffs motion would prevent Defendants from using Plaintiffs' service mark even under circumstances that would not be commerical in nature, or would not be likely to cause confusion, or that might be protected under the fair use doctrine. ... Fair use is also a limitation on a copyright owner's exclusive right to reproduce copyrighted works. ... As a practical matter, it would be extremely difficult for this court to fashion an order that would be certain not to chill protected speech." (p. 20)

On June 24th, the Plaintiff's objected to the magistrate's findings. This objection is posted at http://www.ind-movement.org/lawsuit/pdfs/020620_pls_object_to_%20recom.pdf

Finally, on July 5th, U.S. District Judge Miller made his brief ruling. Rather than deal with the Plaintiff's June 24th objection, Miller granted Defendant Griffith-Mair's motion to dismiss for lack of venue -- which automatically covers all Defendants -- and he denied Plaintiff's request for "interlocutory injunction". Miller's ruling is posted at http://www.ind-movement.org/lawsuit/pdfs/020705_order_on_recommend.pdf

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One comment I wish to make on Magistrate Judge Shaffer's recommendation:

While some of the remarks on my website regarding the Plaintiff churches and leaders may seem "disparaging", I stand by them, because they are quite true.

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I'm glad Judge Shaffer expressly told the Plaintiffs during the two hearings that he would not entertain any further attempts to add ISPs and their upstream providers to this case. You see, the Plaintiffs not only tried to add as a new Defendant the upstream provider of my new ISP, but also harassed the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) itself since the owner of my new ISP has his day job with them.) It is unclear, though, to me what will happen regarding the defaulted-Defendant ISP "Direclynx".

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One last thing: The original Politechbot posting trigger some serious discussion on one of the Harvard Law School "OPENLAW" Discussion Lists, particularly about the Plaintiffs complaint that posting the Cease & Desist letters they sent violated their copyrights:

THE PARTIES ARE ORDERED TO APPEAR ON APRIL 23, 2002 AT 2:00 P.M. 
IN COURTROOM C-341 OF THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, DENVER AS
PREVIOUSLY ORDERED.