William Grady Ward (born April 4, 1951) is an American software engineer, lexicographer, and Internet activist who has been prominent in the

Scientology versus the Internet There are a number of disputes concerning the Church of Scientology's attempts to suppress material critical of Scientology on the Internet, utilizing various methods primarily lawsuits and legal threats, as well as front organizations. In ...

controversy.

Biography

Grady Ward created the

Moby Project The Moby Project is a collection of public-domain lexical resources created by Grady Ward. The resources were dedicated to the public domain, and are now mirrored at Project Gutenberg. , it contains the largest free phonetic database, with 177,267 ...

, an extensive compilation of English language lexical resources, and in 1996 released it to the public domain. One of its components, Moby Thesaurus, has more than 2.5 million synonyms and related words, making it the largest thesaurus in the English language as of early 2006. Previously, Ward was known for compiling and distributing a public domain version of the complete works of William Shakespeare, ''Moby Shakespeare'', which has been credited as being the most widely distributed works of Shakespeare in the world. In 1993, his publisher, the Austin Code Works, was investigated for the export of strong cryptography; the US government at the time treated cryptographic software above a certain strength as the legal equivalent of munitions and restricted them accordingly. Ward spent time developing source code fragments collectively titled Moby Crypto to encourage the pervasive development of programs containing state-of-the-art cryptography. He also promoted the idea of creating secure, memorable pass-phrases through "shocking nonsense." On 30 March 1995 he aided in the distribution of an

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

employee handbook when it was leaked by the on-line magazine ''

Phrack ''Phrack'' is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkabl ...

'' arguing that, if the government could not keep safe its own materials, then there was no reason for anyone to trust them to maintain a secure key escrow scheme the NSA had proposed. In 1996 the

Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...

sued Ward, alleging that he was responsible for anonymous postings of material to which the Church claimed copyright. After several years of litigation in which Ward defended '' pro per'' ''

in forma pauperis ''In forma pauperis'' (; IFP or i.f.p.) is a Latin legal term meaning "in the character or manner of a pauper". It refers to the ability of an indigent person to proceed in court without payment of the usual fees associated with a lawsuit or appea ...

'' and responded to more than 1000 docket items in the Northern District of California, San Jose, the lawsuit was eventually settled on 12 May 1998. Ward prevailed on the Church's trade secret claim resulting in a dismissal with prejudice, but agreed to a stipulated judgement on its copyright claim. Without a finding of liability by Ward, he agreed to pay the Church $200 a month for life. Unusually for legal settlements with the Church of Scientology, the settlement was not secret, and contained no restrictions on what Ward could say about Scientology. The settlement itself became a source of ongoing legal dispute with two appeals to the

Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...

Court of Appeals A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

, but to date it has not been violated by either party. On February 16, 2012, Grady Ward published a novel, ''The Celestial Instructi0n'', detailing a fictional attack on the United States information infrastructure.

Notes

References

Potty-Mouth FAQ
* D. J. Leonie Brinkema (E.D. Va.) Order, October 4, 1996 in RTC v. Lerma Civil Action No 95-1107-A.

External links

* * *
Grady Ward's Amazon Author Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Grady Critics of Scientology Scientology and the Internet Scientology and law American software engineers American lexicographers American activists Free speech activists 1951 births Living people American male non-fiction writers

Biography

See also

Notes

References

External links