Global Community Communications Alliance has issued a response to my posts and the Dateline video: “An Open Letter To Those Who Have Been Influenced By NBC Dateline”. Gabriel has also produced a video which responds to some of the mischaracterizations and tactics used by the Dateline NBC producers: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

I do not know who the current copyright holder is (NBCUniversal?). In any case, they don’t seem interested in the video any longer, and the file here is a low-resolution copy of the original. If the rightful copyright owner finds this page and has any concerns, please contact me at <[email protected]>.

As far as I can tell, the copyright claims made by Global Family Legal Services refer to a photograph of Gabriel and a mostly unreadable image of a page from one of Gabriel’s books which appear in the video. In my opinion, the reproduction of those images are clearly protected under the fair use doctrine.

Gabriel’s teachings, especially those espoused by his Spiritualution movement, call for resistance including civil disobedience to corporate greed. Corporations use intellectual property as a means of generating counterfeit wealth. Adopting the same tool to disingenuously suppress embarrassing information is incongruous to the values claimed by his movement.

While I think it will be to clear to anyone who watches the video or reads the transcript that Gabriel’s position as a community leader is based on lies and unsubstantiated claims (though he may mean well despite exhibiting something of a prophet complex), that doesn’t imply there is no value in any of his projects. For example I mentioned in my first post that I appreciate the livestreaming services of the Spiritualution folks, and I like the idea of EcoVillages such as the Avalon Gardens the group operates in Arizona.

The video was produced in 1998 when the Heaven’s Gate incident recalled to the public’s imagination Jonestown and the phenomenon of self-destructive cults (especially with the approaching millennium). As such (and simply by virtue of being a TV show competing for viewers) it is somewhat sensationalistic or capitalizes on the sensation of those earlier headlines. By way of my correspondence with members of the community it has been made clear to me that Gabriel and his neighbors are not violently self-destructive or dangerous in any way. In fact, many of their projects seem quite worthwhile.

The show relies heavily on the negative testimony of two ex-members of the group (the Spragues). Every community has its discontents, and it would not be fair to judge the entire community on that testimony alone. In particular, Regina’s fears that Gabriel is dangerous and on his way to creating a doomsday cult have apparently not been born out by history.