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I still remember the days of small, local ISPs. . . before they all got plowed under by Charter/Comcast/Cox/TimeWarner. Ah, for the the old days of Digital Gateway Systems (before the Church of Scientology took it down to silence Arnie Lerma) and Huskynet (an ISP so long gone that there's no trace I can find, 25 years later. . . .)

Don't think the Church of Scientology won't do this to books exposing them. They have before.

You can legally obtain the Operating Thetan documents, too

Might need an interpreter, though, to make sense of it all - and that's where the brainwashing will begin...

Personally I don't particularly like the gang that published the magazine 'Radikal' but I'm more worried about the ways it was prosecuted here in The Netherlands.

Yet I can see reasons for incidental filtering, it needs to be transparent yet when you for obvious reasons can't publicise the list of blocked IP's there needs to be a system in place to oversee this list.
One option acceptable to me would be like the Dutch Parliamentary commission 'Stiekem' (Sneaky) that oversees the secret services.
And there needs to be an address to contact for quick remedying in case of errors.

Scientology might own the copyright to their works, but the Dutch supreme court ruled that copyright infringement can be acceptable if it is of interest of the general public. Of course, they have no jurisdiction in the US, but if the copyrighted material can be hosted in the Netherlands, it can be made accesible to anyone.

They should lay off of Hubbard, especially after his valient two day battle against a magnetic deposit! Delusions of grandeur through this whole guy's life.

Scientology is so bizarre that I can't tell if you're being facetious or not.

Don't be ridiculous. Hate speechs laws in (some) EU countries might be harsher than in the US, but these laws are not in the same league as what Turkey is pulling off here. And when critisizing free speech in Europe, you might want to keep in mind cases like The Fishman Affidavit, in which the Dutch supreme court ruled that the right of the public to know about the practises of Scientology superceded the intellectual property of Scientology of their teachings.

They have lots of followers but that is only because they have been brainwashed. Scientology is a way of making money for the high ups. Another source of information about the crap that the scientologists peddle is the fishman affidavit .

If there was any sense in what they were on about they would argue it out in the open, rather than using underhand legalities to silence those who show them to be the charlatans that they are.

The Dutch ISP XS4All has a very long history of both active and pro-active defense of their customer rights. It is currently leading an international petition against the EU plans for data retention, for example. It also started case against the Dutch government over wiretapping.

In the past it has on a regular bases stood up to defend their customer rights, including a long running spat against the Church of Scientology and a case of freedom of expression even if it is about derailing German trains.

Last but not least XS4All actively sues spammers (sorry, Dutch only).

Namely, here. The website has survived three rulings that supported its legality....in Holland ? Denmark ? (Wherever Dutch people are from.)

I don't know what the legal ramifications are for posting a link to something legal elsewhere...but screw it. You're also free to just search for "Fishman Documents".


--LordPixie

Simply because copyrighted material is introduced in court does NOT make it public domain for copying.

The court disagrees with you. From the original ruling:
"That she [Karin Spaink] now violates the copyright of any of the plaintiffs has not been made plausible. Insofar as she still is quoting literally from protected works, these passages are nothing more than quotes that, considering the context in which they are being used, fall under the exempt ruling of art. 15A of the Copyright Law." (Section 3, part 2)

The 1999 apeal court ruling states that
"...on the basis of art. 15a paragraph 1 of the Copyright Act Spaink is free to quote from OT I and OT II and from Ability in her home pages. That quoted by Spaink from the works concerned - only a relatively small part of the works to illustrate its argument, without it being a case of exploiting the works - stays within the bounds set by the law in this respect. She is thus not infringing the copyright of CST at present. " (emphasis mine.)

There isn't a translation of Thursday's ruling available yet, so i can't tell you what it says (since i don't speak Dutch) but, given that the court upheald the previous rulings, I would imagine it's something fairly similar.

These rulings are, of course, refering to Dutch copyright law, and Spaink gives this translation of article 15 of the Dutch law:
"Publication or duplication of scientific or literary material, as well as works of art, by the Court or following a court order, is not considered to be a copyright infringement, unless this copyright is claimed explicitly by law in general, by decision or court order, or in particular cases as indicated on the work itself or at the publication of the material. However, the creator of the material continues to have the exclusive right to publish a compilation of his material, published by the Court or following a court order, even when such a proviso isn't made."

Scientology seems to think so..

http://www.spaink.net/fishman/home.html

For those able to read Dutch, read Karin Spaink's(famous for her Church of Scientology clashes) story on how she got sued in Belgium for an article she wrote in a Dutch newspaper.

Karin Spaink
I write, therefore I am:

There are plenty of copies around on the net. BFM is available from my site.

(But better not try today. Since my reports about Zenon's court case were just slashdotted, the server is currently a bit slow ;-)

Karin Spaink
also sued by Scientology over their so-called secret scriptures. But since the Dutch courts have ruled differently, I won: the pages are still available.

I write, therefore I am:

There are plenty of copies around on the net. BFM is available from my site.

(But better not try today. Since my reports about Zenon's court case were just slashdotted, the server is currently a bit slow ;-)

Karin Spaink
also sued by Scientology over their so-called secret scriptures. But since the Dutch courts have ruled differently, I won: the pages are still available.

I write, therefore I am: