Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories From: nobody@nately.ucsd.edu (Anonymous) Subject: Baker Pleads 'Not Guilty' Comments: This message did not originate from the above address. It was automatically remailed by an anonymous mail service. Please report inappropriate use to X-Posting-Host: ucsd.edu Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 13:49:25 +0000 Message-ID: <9502181350.AA29101@nately.UCSD.EDU> Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk Lines: 91 FANTASY WRITER PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO THREAT CHARGE By Arthur Bridgeforth Jr The Ann Arbor NEWS 2/18/95 Jake Baker pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court on Friday to transmitting a threat of rape, kidnapping and torture against a fellow University of Michigan student on the Internet, a worldwide computer network. Douglas R. Mullkoff, Baker's Ann Arbor attorney, also appealed to a higher court to get Baker released on bond. If convicted on a charge of interstate transmission of a threat, Baker faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Baker, a 20-year-old U-M sophomore from Boardman, Ohio, was arrested last week by FBI agents in Ann Arbor and U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas A. Carlson revoked a bond release. Carlson said Baker was a potential threat to the U-M woman, who is referred to as "Jane Doe" by the court to protect her identity. Baker is accused of writing a sexually explicit, violent story that uses the woman's name for the the Internet's Alternative Sex Stories. The FBI also says Baker exchanged e-mail messages with an Ontario man that involved alledged plans to abduct the U-M woman and girls. Baker had been housed in the Wayne County Jail, but has been moved to the Milan Federal Prison in Washtenaw County. In the detention appeal Mullkoff maintains that Baker doesn't have a criminal record, never had contact with the U-M woman, nor did he ever communicate with her. Baker and the student, whose name has not been publically released, attended a class together but never met. Mullkoff filed the motion with the 6th U.S, Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal district judge's order last week that Baker be held without bail pending trial. Mullkoff said he expects to hear from the appeals court by the end of next week. The case, being closely watched by those who use the Internet and other computer networks, is a cyberspace clash between free speech and privacy rights. Mullkoff said authorities have overreacted to what was nothing more than a fantasy. He noted Baker has no criminal record and was a good student. "He's no danger to the community. He never threatened anyone. He's a person who sat at his computer and wrote fiction." Mullkoff added the stories were fiction, had disclaimers and he believes his client was exercising his First Amendment right. Moreover, Mullkoff asserts in his appeal that it isn't clear that cyberspace falls under the court's jurisdiction. The Internet story file Baker used "is in reality nothing more than words floating in space," Mullkoff wrote. "Absent a showing of a tangible threat to another person, these words cannot form the basis of a legitimate prosecution." "There is a question whether the government should be meddling in cyberspace," Mullkoff said. University of Michigan officials suspended Baker Feb. 2 after they were alerted by a Michigan alumnus in Moscow who spotted the Internet story in December. Bake has appealed the suspension. Meanwhile, authorities in the United States and Canada were looking for the man with whom Baker corresponded about the stories. The FBI says the two talked via e-mail about getting together to carry out Baker's fantasy. "We haven't been able to identify him," Ontario Provincial Police Staff Sgt. Bob Matthews told a Detroit newspaper. "It's a fictitous name." Another newspaper reported this week that Bake had corresponded via computer with a man in Virginia, and that Baker described his fantasies to him as "harmless diversions." Phil Watson told The Michigan Daily of Ann Arbor, the university's student newspaper, that Baker wrote to him Jan. 13. He quoted one Baker message as saying, "I have never hurt anybody, and never plan on hurting anybody." Watson said Baker told him he used the stories "to rid myself of the overwhelming anger I feel."