Slashdot Mirror

Lord Xenu writes "When Pandit Surender Sharma, a famous Indian guru, made a boast about being able to kill people with his mind on live TV, someone actually took him up on the offer and asked him to prove it by killing him. After doing all kinds of things like chanting mantras and waving a knife around for hours, the guru was forced to admit defeat when his victim somehow avoided dying from laughter. It's not subtitled, but you can see the video on YouTube (part 2 | part 3) if you want to see it for yourself."

Xemu writes "Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), the company that plans to purchase Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has encountered an additional setback. Last week trading in GGF stock were suspended due to suspected insider trading. On Friday, Magnus Bergman, GGF chairman, submitted his resignation to the Swedish Companies Registration Office. Bergman's resignation is the latest in a series after the previous departures of board member Johan Sällström and adviser Wayne Rosso. The CEO of GGF, Hans Pandeya, is being pursued by the Swedish enforcement service for mounting unpaid debts. In an interview with the Swedish business daily 'di.se' today, CEO Hans Pandeya says that the deal is still on."

Xemu writes "Having fat friends makes you fat, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California says after after examining 12,067 individuals and 38,611 of their relatives and friends. In same-sex friendships, people were 71 per cent more likely to put on weight if a friend of theirs became obese. "It's not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with. Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship," says Harvard professor Nicholas Christakis."

Xemu writes "Inspired by Negroponte's laptop for children, the Swedish company Medison is now taking orders for their US$150 Linux laptop, the Medison Celebrity. The laptop is a 1.5 GHz Celeron M 370 with 14 inch screen, wireless network and it comes with Fedora Red Hat pre-installed." Update 2035 GMT by SM: As many readers have pointed out, the more you dig into the details of this company the more fishy it starts to seem. I would suggest any potential buyers be wary on this one.

Xemu writes "Researchers at University College of London's Institute of Neurology have discovered that taxi drivers grow more brain cells in the area associated with memory. Dr Eleanor Maguire says, 'We believe the brain increased in gray matter volume because of the huge amount of data memorized.' She warns against the use of GPS and says it will possibly affect the brain changes seen in this study. This research is the first to show that the brains of adults can grow in response to specialist use." London cabbies, unlike their American counterparts, have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a license.

Xemu writes "French scientists have linked obesity to lower IQ reports the Telegraph. In a new five-year study of more than 2,200 adults, people with a low body mass index (BMI) could recall 30% more words in a vocabulary test than those who were obese. The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later. In the United States, 30% of the population is obese according to OECD. That's the highest rate of obesity anywhere. Do these high obesity rates affect the average IQ of the population?" (Of course, this sidesteps discussion of whether IQ tests measure anything significant at all.)

www-xenu-dot-net writes "To stimulate the online music business in Europe, EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy is recommending the elimination of territorial restrictions on the licensing and copyright enforcement of online music. Until now, so called licensing collection societies have enjoyed monopolies within their countries. (For online sales, the collecting societies typically charge 12 percent of the retail price today, compared to 9 percent on CDs.) EU Socialist Group leader Martin Schulz has called Mr McCreevy a "loose cannon whose arrogant opinions have provoked anti-EU feeling across Europe." That impression might not change with the new recommendation, as collecting societies in smaller European countries fear that they will lose out to larger rivals, potentially restricting the development of new music."

carpe_noctem writes "Linuxsecurity.com has a link to a rather interesting story regarding Google's use of localized censorship. While not much information is given from the political side of why Google might be censoring information likely to annoy certain governments, it certainly isn't the first time Google has come under fire for censoring results on account of external pressures. Makes one wonder how many pages get filtered out around the world."

muldrake writes "The Wayback Machine, an archive of websites as they appeared in their past incarnations, is reported by CNET in this story as having censored the Scientology-critical Xenu.net, in a repeat of the heavy-handed tactics used against Google as reported in this previous Slashdot thread."

DarkZero writes: "After almost every tech site and individual geek banded together to either carry the story about Google's delisting of Operation Clambake or flat-out protest it, Google has apparently relisted Xenu.net. Searches for 'xenu' and 'scientology' list Operation Clambake as the first and fourth results, respectively. The search for "scientology" also lists a story from C|Net about Google delisting Operation Clambake, as well as a protest ad from a Kuro5hin reader (oc3)." Update: 03/22 12:52 GMT by M : We jumped the gun. Google only relisted Xenu.net's homepage (where the copyright claims by Scientology were clearly bogus), not the rest of the pages listed in Scientology's DMCA complaint. Some Google sysadmin is getting aggravated because every 20 minutes, another memo from management is coming down telling him to alter the live database.

touretzky writes: "Scientology has used a DMCA threat to force removal of a large number of pages from xenu.net from the Google search engine. Some of the pages Scientology is objecting to contain no material owned by the cult; other pages are clearly covered under "fair use". Scientology's ongoing abuse of Google is documented here. Of course, the Norwegian owner of xenu.net could write a counternotification letter, but that would require him to agree to the jurisdiction of a US court in a district of Scientology's choosing." The posting by Heldal-Lund agrees with what we can observe at Google - the pages listed in the posting aren't in Google's database, though many others are. Update: 03/21 14:16 GMT by M : Paul Wouters of xtdnet.nl (which hosts xenu.net) submits this page documenting Scientology's attacks against the ISP for continuing to host xenu.net.

Keith Henson was arraigned on charges of "misdemeanor terrorism" last September. Last month the jury deadlocked on those charges, but convicted him of making threats to interfere with the constitutional privilege of enjoying religious freedom. He was not present at his sentencing hearing yesterday and is a fugitive from justice, apparently planning to claim asylum in Canada. If you've ever flamed anyone in an online forum, and think you have a right to carry a picket sign, you need to study this miscarriage of justice. Details below. Update by J : freehenson.tripod.com has been taken down, so I'm linking to a mirror.

"Religious bigotry will not be tolerated in Riverside County," was a Scientology spokesperson's reaction to the verdict.

That's basically the problem right there. The First Amendment gives me the right to be a bigot as long as I don't hurt or threaten anyone. You don't have to like my opinions, but you do have to tolerate them.

If you've ever hung out in an online forum, you'll probably get deja vu reading this Usenet thread. The first message posted is a description of cruising past some Scientology related buildings, complete with GPS coordinates for whatever reason. It's written as a self-mocking, satirical sendup of spy movies. The remainder of the thread is jokes in the same vein.

The question is whether this running gag about "Tom Cruise Missile Coordinates" (get it?) could be taken seriously enough to qualify as a threat under Section 11415 of the California Penal Code.

As I read the recently-passed law, if you go along with the jokes about the "handheld laser guidance system," you might be a terrorist:

Any person who knowingly threatens to use a weapon of mass destruction [including] by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out ...

The fact that the person who allegedly violated this section did not actually possess a biological agent, toxin, or chemical weapon does not constitute a defense to the crime specified in this section.

The victim of said terrorism must have been in "sustained fear" of the threat being carried out. And how does the law know your victim was in sustained fear? Because he or she evacuated the building -- or took "any other action."

Here's what Henson says. In this case, the Scientology organization's legal team managed to bar any evidence from being presented about why Henson was picketing the Scientology location (because of two unusual deaths within a month).

Nor was the context of the above thread, or context of Henson's other Usenet posts, allowed to be introduced. For example, the jury could not see the context of the above thread; they only saw Henson's contribution to the running gag:

Modern weapons are accurate to a matter of a few tens of yards. The terminal guidence ones are good to single digits.

Of the next quote, the jury was only allowed to see the first sentence, not the second:

The only way I can get clear of this scientology mess is to "destroy them utterly." So: This week I will be back picketing gold base.

And you can decide what you think his third quote means, but again you have the advantage of its context being just a click away:

PPS Killing the organization off entirely is the best way to change the future of Scientology.

Worse still, according to Henson's at-the-time lawyer, whether these statements caused fear in some Scientologists was decided not by the statements he actually made, but by hearsay versions they got from others. He points out that Scientology's censorware package ("Scienositter") would have blocked the original Usenet posts anyway:

...cult members, who are not allowed access to the Internet and are actively prevented (by the Church of Scientology "net nanny") from reading the newsgroups on which Henson posts, may have an unreasonable and irrational fear based on unreasonable and out of context statements of which they were informed selectively, but which they did not read.

So picture Keith Henson's situation. He feels strongly about his particular cause. He peacefully carries a picket sign. He exercises his First Amendment right to post on Usenet about what he's doing and why -- and in so doing he uses sentences and phrases which, in context, clearly are not threats, but out of context could be construed that way.

Dragged into court, all context is stripped away and -- while he narrowly escapes conviction as a domestic terrorist -- he is convicted of using the threat of force against people who may never have actually read what he wrote.

If you're smart, you'll take Henson's case as a warning. You'll think about what your own statements would look like, with their context totally removed, and in the harsh spotlight of a courtroom. Do you really need to post that joke, or wouldn't the judge find it funny?

You'll soften up your opinions just a little, trying not to change what you mean while trying to change what you could be twisted to mean.

Maybe it's not such a great loss for you or me; we're not great writers anyway, and if we censor ourselves before hitting Save, maybe that's not the end of the world. We weren't really going to use that First Amendment right anyway, you know?

But somewhere out there is a Mark Twain who's had it up to here and is poised to pen a caustic attack on a religion which will become an important classic. As of yesterday, Mark's a bit more likely to live in Canada.

Last Saturday a comment was posted here by an anonymous reader that contained text that was copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. They have since followed the DMCA and demanded that we remove the comment. While Slashdot is an open forum and we encourage free discussion and sharing of ideas, our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the details of this case, the comment should come down. Read on to understand what this means.

This is the first time since we instituted our moderation system that a comment has had to be removed because of its content, and believe me nobody is more broken hearted about it than me. It's a bad precedent, and a blow for the freedom of speech that we all share in this forum. But this simply doesn't look like a case we can win. Our lawyers tell us that it appears to be a violation of Copyright law, and under the terms of the DMCA, we must remove it. Else we risk legal action that would at best be expensive, and potentially cause Slashdot to go down temporarily or even permanently. At the worst, court orders could jeporadize your privacy, and we would be helpless to stop it.

We need to choose our battles and this isn't one we want to have. We want Slashdot to be a forum where you can say what's in your heart, but we simply can't defend an anonymous poster who violates copyright law. Keep that in mind when you post in both this discussion, and in others in the future. Post your ideas. Post your thoughts. And most of all, post your links. We need to play by the rules or it's game over.

Now there is the matter of this specific comment. It contained a text called "OT III", part of what is known as the Fishman Affidavit. This text is Copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. In compliance with the DMCA, we are removing it from Slashdot. In its place we are putting non-copyrighted text: Links to websites about the church of Scientology, as well as links to how you can contact your congressman about the DMCA. Thanks a lot to Jamie for putting this together.

First of all, we would like to point out that the text of OT III is available at many other places on the web. To many to list here in fact. Instead, try a Google search on "OT III" and "Fishman", which as of this writing (March 2001) returns over 250 pages. A broader search on AltaVista returns over 2,000 webpages.

Operating in the jurisdiction of the Dutch courts, Karin Spaink's Fishman Affidavit webpage has fended off two lawsuits from Scientology, one in 1996 and one in 1999. The latter suit, according to the page, is still being appealed. >From the link listed just above, you can click through to the Fishman Affidavit, which contains links to not only to an annotated copy of OT III, but to the documents on the other OT levels as well, number one through the disputed number eight.

If you would like a plain English explanation of OT III, see OT III Rewritten For Beginners, by Jon Atack. Its author is a former Scientologist who himself completed level OT III. The webpage contains nothing copyrighted by a Scientology organization. It is an explanation of what OT III says and what that means, along with commentary by the author. Jon Atack is also the author of A Piece of Blue Sky, which is a history of Scientology from before its founding to after L. Ron Hubbard's death. At the above link, you can either purchase it, or read it in its entirety online.

If you are interested in Scientology, you will want to visit Operation Clambake, at xenu.net. It seems to be the most important central resource for information on the organization.

You may also want to visit the Lisa McPherson Memorial Page, which claims that "Lisa died needlessly at the hands of Scientology." Her case is truly a tragic one and she deserves to be remembered. The site has a great deal of information on her death. Related is The Lisa McPherson Trust, which has not only information about Lisa, but a very large archive of interviews, court transcripts, news reports, testimonials, and videos about Scientology.

Here's a Slashdot story last year on eBay removing auctions for e-meters based on the Church of Scientology DMCA copyright allegations, which is odd because Copyright law doesn't cover a physical device.

If there's anything else about Scientology you want to know, you will want to see AltReligionScientology.org, which contains a huge list of links to all the sites I don't have room to list here.

The DMCA is actually five separate modifications to copyright law. Its Title I is known for providing legal protection for "technological measures" (typically encryption) which prevent copying; this is the part that empowered the MPAA to sue over DeCSS, to name the best-known example.

That's not the part that concerns us here; Title II is its other major modification of copyright law and that's what we're dealing with. Title II created 17 U.S.C. Section 512, and we're specifically looking at our liability under paragraphs (c)(1)(A), which says we have to act "expeditiously to remove or disable access to the [infringing] material." Here's the U.S. Copyright Office's 18-page summary of the DMCA as a whole. If 18 pages is too long for you, here's the American Library Association's much quicker summary

Here's a list of resources on the DMCA, including the DMCA itself in PDF format. The EFF page on the DCMA seems to relate mostly to Title I, the anti-encryption-circumvention portion, but it's too good not to mention anyway.

Don't know who your Congressperson or Senators are? That's OK, now's as good a time as any to learn. Finding your Senators is easy, just go to Senate.gov. To find your Representative, you just need your zip code. You can use the form on the website to write them if you're lazy, but if you want your message to have more impact, print it out and send it in a real envelope. Anything's better than nothing, though.

When you write, you'll want to write something they'll read. Here are the ACLU's tips for writing to your Congressperson or Senators.

xemu writes: "This 670 m small robot designed to manipulate single cells inside your body reminds me of the noocytes in Blood Music by Greg Bear. Both the complete article from Science and an abstract are available online; the first link xemu points out has Quicktime videos of the beast in action, for those so equipped. According to the article, "[t]his microrobotic arm can pick up, lift, move, and place micrometer-size objects within an area of about 250 micrometers by 100 micrometers." That's small.

Mirele writes "The owner of www.xenu.net, the most comprehensive anti-Scientology website on the Net, reported on alt.religion.scientology that the site was shut down after the ISP received a letter from Scientology's Religious Technology Center alleging trademark infringement. The heart of RTC's complaint is that xenu.net uses their trademarks, the words 'Scientology,' 'Dianetics,' and 'Hubbard,' in the metatags." A look at the legal history shows that all the cases that were won involved trademarked terms in meta tags that did not appear on the webpage; that does not appear to be the case here. When Playboy unsuccessfully sued a Playmate for metatagging the term "Playmate," she countersued; does anyone know what the result was? Update: 11/19 03:00: The site's back up.

Mirele writes "The owner of www.xenu.net, the most comprehensive anti-Scientology website on the Net, reported on alt.religion.scientology that the site was shut down after the ISP received a letter from Scientology's Religious Technology Center alleging trademark infringement. The heart of RTC's complaint is that xenu.net uses their trademarks, the words 'Scientology,' 'Dianetics,' and 'Hubbard,' in the metatags." A look at the legal history shows that all the cases that were won involved trademarked terms in meta tags that did not appear on the webpage; that does not appear to be the case here. When Playboy unsuccessfully sued a Playmate for metatagging the term "Playmate," she countersued; does anyone know what the result was? Update: 11/19 03:00: The site's back up.