Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tl00199)

At 01:56 AM 2/21/1998 -0500, you wrote:
>Ken Malkin wrote:
>
>> Within a short time, Star Trek bore a sequel, it was our weekly
>> “Movies With A Theosophical Touch” presented to the members with the
>> public invited. The movie on Friday night usually had 20++ members and
>> public attendees. We rented a movie of common interest at a local
>> emporium, requested a free will donation, usually a dollar or two is
>> contributed and had a discussion of varying lengths after the
>> presentation. Some discussions were so intense they went past midnight.
>> While the list of movies is overlong, from the obvious ‘Ground Hog Day’
>> to the obscure ‘Dune’, we had great success. Unfortunately, Linda
>> married and moved to Chicago. It is planed to have the movie night begin
>> again soon.
>
>    One word of advice, if you are willing to listen. If you show rented
>videotapes to the general public, whether or not you charge admission, you
>are in violation of their copyright (at least according to the copyright
>lawyers at Matthew Bender). You can get permission by paying a fee ot the
>proper organization (whose name escapes me at the moment), but the fee, last
>time I looked (about 4 years ago) was $1200 a year. If you don't advertise
>the movies in a public brochure then it is unlikely that anything bad will
>happen. If you do, then you may get into trouble. Luckily, copyright owners
>have the option of not pursuing legal action against violators without losing
>copyright protection, as opposed to trademark owners, so they may ignore you
>anyway. In New York, we decided that it would be wrong to violate copyright
>that way. In any case check with Sy for verification, and to see if things
>have changed in the last 4 years.
>
>> Bart spoke to Sy Ginsburg having run for Southeast Director. I believe
>> he well and truly remembers the result of that stolen election.
>
>    I really and truly didn't. This is the first I am hearing about it.
>
>> All members who had the right to vote for the by-law changes were sent
>> ballots for the national office and BOD elections soon after. When the
>> votes were counted, once again not audited, those members with less than
>> two years active membership had their votes voided. Sy lost the election
>> by fewer than 50 votes. 78 ballots were thrown out from our lodge alone.
>
>    Two points. One is that a rule that is generally ignored should not be
>enforced on a situation by situation basis (it either should apply ot all, or
>to none). Now, speaking ON A STRICTLY TECHNICAL BASIS, according to the
>International rules, those who have been members for less than 2 years do not
>have the right to vote in TS elections, even at the Lodge level (there's a
>copy of the TS by-laws on Dr. Bain's web page). Was this standard applied
>nationwide? Was there prior announcement that it would be? If the answer to
>either of these is "no", then you definitely have cause to complain.
>
>    Bart Lidofsky

The issue on the voting rights was that those who had voting rights at the
time of the amendment of the bylaws lost it when the bylaws were passed.
There were a lot of msgs here and exchange of correspondence with Wheaton
on this.

mkr