From: Roy Cooper <cooper@earthlink.net>
To: greenie@darktech.org <greenie@darktech.org>
Subject: COCA
Date: Friday, April 09, 1999 10:38 PM

Greenie,

I noticed your post in the newsgroups announcing the newest issue of BBS
World Magazine. I ran right over to pick it up.  It is my first time
reading it and wanted to let you know that I thought it showed the hard
work you must have put into it.  Well thought out and full of info.  I read
it all the way through and wanted to shake your hand when I was done.

It was great to see some names mentioned in it that I know.  Just for
example, Gary aka N3VSN.

There were some mentions of COCA in the there and one in particular caught
my attention.  "If you love bbs's read on" by Mike Frater mentions COCA but
he does not recall the URL for it.

You can skip the next couple of paragraphs if you know the first part of
the COCA story. ;)  

I was member #3 of COCA, along with Bruce Pruedhomme and Richard Young. We
(read that as ME) had a falling out as Bruce wanted to design COCA's
By-Laws in such a way as to make sure that he and I would always maintain
control.  I wanted open elections. Bruce wanted COCA to become the "BBS
Police" and make sure that all bbs members adhered to a strict code.
"Family Friendly".  I just wanted to "Keep BBSing Alive!"

He later formed ICON with some of the members that agreed with him.  I tend
to feel that they more disagreed with me and my personality.

To make a long story short, this was only one small part of COCA's very
troublesome history.  3 sets of Board of Directors attempted to serve a
very unruly and lazy membership.

OK, now for the best part and how the URL question fits in.

The COCA membership voted to suspend the By-Laws and re-form COCA with no
Board of Directors.  I was not in agreement with this, but was happy to see
some activity by the membership.  The membership had dropped from over 100
members to aprx. 10-15 by this time.

This made an opportunity for a current member, Tony Campbell aka Pate
(psycho-quasi-attorney-wannabe), and a disgruntled former member, Daryl
Hunt, to hijack COCA.  One day we are discussing the members business and
the next Pate has started his own COCA website and announced that he has
trademarked the name COCA.  We are to stop using the name or be sued.

The interesting thing about this is that Pate claims that "someone" forged
MY name and trademarked COCA and then offered to sell it to him.  He went
ahead and bought it. He claims that through his attorney friends he was
able to pull a copy of my drivers liscense and that is when he realized
that the signature was not mine.  He even has this DL thing posted on HIS
COCA website.  All behind my back with no consent from me.

The REAL COCA website is still on my server:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cooper/bbs/bbs.htm

There is a link there to the COCA listserve along with membership info, etc.
