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Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot
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.
and Scumsucking pinheads. Only in the US would you find some hazy non-thought induced cult pushing everyone around under the guise of religion. I hate to say it, but the Germans called this one right when they kicked the lying shits out of their country. Fuck 'em. I say burn them to the ground. It ain't religion, it's a pyramid scheme. Scooter Bugdrill, hater of cults.
"See, for instance, Demon, a UK ISP, who, on removing some Usenet posts for reasons of illegality, were held liable for every single post on their service, since they had become publishers in the eyes of tha law. "
This isnt true. This happened outside court, and did not set a precedent. It was a private agreement.
First off IANAL and IANAS (I am not a Scientologist). From the little I know about Scientology I think they believe there are 75 million year old souls trapped in our bodies. Suppose someone posts the text again with a username. Let the Scientologists go after the poster. The poster says it wasn't him, but one of the trapped souls who posted it. Let the courts decide on that! Scientology gets to make a choice over whether their beliefs are bunk or the text remains on Slashdot.
The only winners here are the lawyers (once again).
I know I'll get flamed for this, so I'm posting anonymously. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I feel I might.
First off, I'd like to congratulate Slashdot for providing thoughtful feedback to the community on this important issue. I'd also like to thank them for slagging Scientology as I agree with claims depicting it as dangerous and sinister. In my opinion it is all of that and more.
My reason, however, for saying that Scientology isn't so bad is based on comparison with other religions. Sure, you posted a link to a site about a girl who was killed by the Scientologists...but what if the Catholic church had been the ones using the DMCA to repress content here? I can't imagine where to begin to discuss the number of people who have died at their hands. How many hits do you get on google when you search for the crusades? How about the 100 years war?
And I don't just object to catholicism. All forms of Christianity have their body count. How many died at the Salem witch trials? How many died in the holocaust?
Christianity isn't the only culprit. How many have died in Israel in the past year alone?
Religion kills. Period. It is a sickness and the cause of more misery and murder committed by man against man than any other human intellectual construct in history.
So, if we're going to slag the Scientologists for being kooks, we might want to remember that the majority of America believes they can talk to an invisible man every Sunday. Pretty kooky if you ask me.
Again, if I have offended anyone, I apologize. Please appreciate, however, that if you support a forum of free speech (in the spirit of Slashdot), then you have to put up with opinions like mine too.
Common Carrier status is given to organisations that are not responsible for the data that they carry, such as telephone companies and postal companies. We have had good reason to believe that Slashdot falls into this categorie.
However, as sson as editors tamper with posts, the site no longer has common carrier status, and is therefore vulnerable to being sued by any organisation that does not like what we, the readers, post here.
They may already have done this by allowing Michael to tamper with posts, something he has done many times in the past, but even then they should have held sway and not deleted, IMO.
Now that they have deleted a post, how can they be said to have common carrier status? IMO, they cannot - editorial control has been exerted, for all to see. It is called a slippery slope.
I think that this is because the commercial bigwigs at VALinux care not for principles. I think Taco was leaned on by those above him.
Suppose this had happened at kuro5hin. Would the posts have been deleted? I don't think so.
This is just a symptom of slashdot having become a commercial institution. It no longer cares, when it comes down to the bottom line, about the principles upon which it was founded.
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Kuro5hin is only sponsored by VALinux. VALinux have no say over what happens there. As to the ownership, ambitious plans have been mooted to make it community owned, which would make it even more entitled to common carrier status. The fact that all the articles are written by the readers helps it in this regard also.
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Right and Ability to Control: Napster has the ability to control the infringing activity of its users because it retains the right to block a user
Nothe that Napster retained the right to tamper with what its users were doing, and to block them. Furthermore:
In order to prove a contributory infringement claim, a copyright owner must establish the following elements: (1) some act of direct infringement (by end-users, for example); (2) that the defendant knew or should have known of the defendant of the direct infringement; and (3) that the defendant materially contributed to the direct infringement.
1&2 are fair enough, but 3? I don't think so.Also:
In order to prove a vicarious infringement claim, a copyright owner must establish the following elements: (1) some act of direct infringement (by end-users, for example); (2) that the defendant had the right or ability to control the direct infringer; and (3) that the defendant derived a direct financial benefit from the direct infringement.
The crucial point is number 2, Slashdot is perfectly free to sign off any 'rights' over what the posters here say
The paper makes one thing shiningly clear: P2P Systems have 2 choices. They van choose between total anarchy, and total control. The problem for Napster is that it did not choose either, and retained some control, and more importantly the right to such control. If slashdot went down the anarchy route, and from reading the posts one would think it had, then it would have nothing to fear. This is about retaining the right, and also exercising it, to tamper with users posts.
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The above quote from the DMCA seems to suggest that places like Slashdot can't be common carriers anymore.
But the DMCA doesn't grant you the freedom to do that. That's the problem, and that's why you're going to see other discussion boards on the Internet get into real trouble.
Maybe the ACLU would be willing to run a discussion board with the side purpose of creating an incident that they could use as a test case for the DMCA. I would suggest the EFF, but I suspect they are already hemoraging cash over the DeCSS case. (You can, by the way, make a donation to the DeCSS defense fund if you want to help support them.)
The change now is that businesses (and CoS, whatever category you wish to put them in) now have the power to harass persons who wish to criticize them. The courts haven't stretched the First Amendment to cover that type of speech as fully as political speech. They've done something, but not enough, and that's why this is still legally shakey ground.
On the flip side, businesses inhabit this netherworld between public agency and private entity. How much should you be allow to publicize about a business in the name of public discourse and criticism. I don't think we should be able to publish the Windows source code or the details of Intel's chip manufacturing process in order to critically analyze it. I'll agree that the CoS is using the laws in ways that were never intended, but that doesn't necessarily mean we should chuck the laws.
BTW, was Wilson actually a minister of some sort, or do you call him Reverend as a sarcastic allusion to religious officials who seek to limit the freedoms of others?
You might still think Slashdot is chickening out, but not as bad as it first seems. VA Linux is already in a lawsuit with its stockholders. I don't think they want anymore legal trouble.
See post 750 for my explanation of the problems with this.
On the other end, speech that would present a "clear and present danger" (as I think the quote goes) is not protected. Classic example: shouting "fire" as a prank in a crowded area.
I think our current speech problems have to do with speech about businesses and IP, something which has not been given too much support in the past.
In the end, Slashdot got busted for copyright violation. Notice that we can still all sit here and say anything we want about the Church of Scientology, and they can't send Rob another cease-and-desist order. (They can picket our homes and places of business if we are really obnoxious, but that's a different story.)
This really isn't about free speech at all. Cut and paste has never been protected.
You claim that the DMCA protects ISPs from trouble when their users post copyrighted information. You do this right in the middle of a thread about how slashdot had to remove a user's post of copyrighted material to avoid trouble. Can you see the irony here? Sure, Slashdot isn't an ISP, technically, but it has all the same problems ISPs do in this regard, and it is just as unfair to hold Slashdot responsible for users' posts as it is to hold the ISP responsible.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
For the record Andover.Net *did* go to bat to defend the free speech of Slashdot forums (remeber the UNISYS-GIF flamefest anyone?) even the nuisance trolls, more than once. We stood our ground even when we were about to go public when risking a lawsuit would've sank us.
Andover.Net was the best company I ever worked for, and the executives cared. We were able to buy Slashdot not by making the biggest cash offer (others offered more) but by offering a unique arrangment of editorial freedom that other suitors would not offer.
Anyway today I can't say if Andover.Net would've survived this cold market and stood up to this lawsuit today. You have to pick your battles. Right now we have bigger fish to fry here.
Wow, went Microsoft tried this they were unsuccessful. This would seem to mean that clearly Scientology is the more powerful evil corporation when it comes to asserting proprietary control over their technology. Now only the question that remains is, Who is satan's right hand man Bill Gates or L. Ron Hubbard? :)
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
It just so happens that science is the more commond and accepted religion now a days.
That's because science can demonstrate most of its claims. We can see that they are true. So when they use that information to build theories, we have a much easier time accepting them because they fit with what we've already seen to be true.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Slashdot's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) ProgramTM:
Protecting Intellectual Property
In keeping with its status as the internet's largest venue for Nerdish News, Slashdot does not and cannot verify that posters have the right or ability
tocommunicate certain ideas in their slashdot postings. However, we are committed to removing
infringing or unlicensed posts once an authorized representative of the rights
owner properly reports them to us. Slashdot's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO)
Program works to ensure that items presented to the the Slashdot community do not infringe upon the
copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of third parties.
VeRO Program participants, upon reciept of the appropriate monies, are granted a Slashdot account with a permanent supply of ten moderation points, to be used to supress posts that may conflict with their copyrightm, trademark, or other intellectual property rights.
I think in /.'s case, the common carrier defense will never work, because there's no way for a user to remove an article. If you post something copyrighted, the only way the owner of that work can get it removed is to ask the editors, you yourself have no way to do it. Therefore, /. has put itself in the position of having to police its forums.
It's good that it hasn't been an issue until now, but I don't think many would argue that allowing any and all coyrighted materials be posted is a good thing. Scientology aside, you wouldn't want people posting say, scanned novels, or uuencoded warez, or anything else of the sort. Yet some moron probably will, and then the editors will have to remove it since the moron can't.
If slashdot were able to defend any posting of copyrighted material using the common carrier defense, then pretty soon slashdot would become the next napster, because hey, there's nothing anyone can do about it. Someone has to be responsible.
Or else copyright law has to change at a very basic level, but that's another argument entirely.
The only failsafe protection against having a given record subpoena'd or discovered during a search is not creating that record in the first place. Protecting the anonymity of Anonymous Cowards requires that you not create any log entires about them, or at minimum, irretrivably delete those logs as soon as possible after they are created. If you fail to do these things, then Anonymous Cowards aren't really anonymous - they're actually rather reliably traceable.
Hell, here in Japan "Mission to Mars" video rentals are doing very very well. I guess when you have to rely on subtitles, it's easy to imagine that the original dialogue must somehow be insightful and well-written.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Again, consider the international market. The T&A factor is much higher outside the US. Especially when you consider that countries like Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, India, etc. have rather strong anti-pornography laws.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Scientology's one foothold is among the Hollywood Left, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, John Travolta, etc.
As someone on the left, I take a bit of exception to this. Point to Harry Thomason, Norman Lear, Danny Glover, Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, John Wells, Martin Sheen or others who are actually part of "the Hollywood Left" if you want. Hell, point to Jane Fonda if you must. But don't point to the Scientologists. I doubt you'll find a single one, in Hollywood or anywhere else, who is--in the immortal phrase of Bush the First--a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
Gotcha. I know that the spammers-who-call-themselves-trolls have blinded most people's eyes to true trolling, but not mine. This is a troll, and not a bad one to boot.
.sig adds a real nice touch (and the final proof that it is a troll). It's an updated equivalent to "I'm rubber and you're glue", a sort of dare to just try and call a spade a spade.
It starts out reasonable, then becomes increasingly controversial (to garner responses, the purpose of trolling), then finally, it gives the nod to the careful viewer that this is a troll (as all trolls should) by jumping off the end of their logical progression into insanity: "Perhaps the open source movement is unjustified in stealing profits from commercial enterprises."
Haha. Outstanding. Maybe a little too obvious, but then again you probably have to be.
The
Well done.
The enemies of Democracy are
You certainly do have the ability to tamper with posts (unlimited moderator points)
Oh my! Not Unlimited Moderator Points! What horrible evils could he perform? Why, he could mod things up or mod things down! With powers like that, Michael is nearly a GOD! (Is it coincidence that he is named Michael? He must be the reincarnation of the Man from Mars!)
But seriously, your definition of 'tamper' seems odd. Kinda like saying a movie critic 'tampers' with a movie by giving it a bad review -- even if it really is a good movie! My god, but people might not see it because of the bad review! So? The movie is still the same.
Or if that still doesn't satisfy you, I will teach you the secret that is Kryptonite to Michael's Superman-like powers: browse at -1.
Have a nice day.
The enemies of Democracy are
To be fair, I think this article being posted is doing more damage to the Travolta-ologists than the original removed post. Look at all the great links to anti-Scientology(tm) stuff!
Ah -- a Scientology apologist.
The one particular flaw in your argument is that past atrocities are not an excuse for present atrocities.
What the Scientologists do to their "opponents" is both atrocious and inexcusable. Just because other religions, in other times and places, have killed people, pets and reputations does not mean we have to accept Scientology doing so.
Sure, they're free to believe whatever freaky alien space opera they care to --- but the line *must* be drawn at the actions they take which are directly harming their so-called "enemies."
Scientology isn't being treated to a Spanish Inquisition: they *ARE* the Spanish Inquisition!
[As a footnote, the machinations and corruption of the core, controlling group must be exposed: their goal is global domination of the sort that movies make fun of, but which they nonetheless are constantly and pervasively attempting to accomplish. The latter sentence sounds outlandish, but I am confident that were you to spend a half-hour doing some basic research, you'd understand that it is justified and true.
Scientology is emphatically *not* like any religion we have seen in modern times. To treat them as innocuous wackos is extremely dangerous: their stated goal is to infiltrate governments and mandate their own religious views. And because they are mainly trusted milquetoast Americans -- ie. not "untrustworthy [ethnic group]" -- they are succeeding.
It's all well and good to take the stance of "religious freedom," until that stance allows a modern-day American Taliban to destroy the values and society that you cherish.
Make no mistake: Scientology is out to destroy and rule. You will *not* like the consequences should they succeed.]
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
For Taco's sanity's sake alone, he had to delete the post.
Anyone who takes the time to do even a little bit of research into Scientology will realize that the organization will use *ANY* means, *LEGAL OR ILLEGAL* to harass, repress and *destroy* its opponents.
The Taco's life, and the life of everyone at Slashdot and Andover, would have become a living hell.
Scientology has a no-holds-barred *rule*: they are explicitly instructed by Hubbard's words to do *anything* it takes to win.
Which means Taco would have had his pets killed, his car trashed, his house picketed, his parents harassed, his business associates -- banks, etc -- sent packages claiming he's a pedophile, his entire neighbourhood pamphleted with the same pedophile claims, etc. Plus, he'd be challenged by a dozen or more legal suits.
Like I said, a living hell.
People have committed suicide because of Scientology harrassment.
Oh -- and the examples I presented: they're real life. Scientology has done exactly those things to opponents (and even the judges in their court cases!) before, and they'll do it again.
Scientology is one of the most evil organizations on this planet. By every metric you could possibly apply, they are the antithesis of good.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Jellicle is absolutely right..The issue here is Fair Use, which no longer exists online under the provisions of the DMCA. This happens all the time, but this is an entity that pushes all legal issues to the max. Prior to the DMCA this would have been fair use, it seems to me..the legitimate, legal reprinting and citing of material in connection with public discussion.. Common Carrier is Verizon..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I saw on the web that Battlefield Earth is supposedly doing quite well in DVD sales, considering it was a major bomb at the box office.
I haven't seen it myself, but I did read Hubbard's book, and I have to wonder if the reason the DVD is selling so well is because Scientologists are buying it up en masse. I recall reading an article in Time magazine that revealed that the "Church" of Scientology buys thousands of copies of Hubbard's books, in order to keep them rated as Best-sellers...
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
>> In taking down the deleted story, is Slash also turning the IP address of the poster over to the bad guys?
There is a difference between complying with the law, and betraying those you make promises to. Slashdot provides anonymous posting capabilities (and, I believe, doesn't even store IPs of Anon Cowards), and it would be heinous of
Complying with the DCMA is unfortunately pretty unavoidable. But I must confess, a fine response by the Taco.
~Cederic
I think people should also know that Adolf Hitler's views were very pagan in its outlook. Why was it that the Nazis wanted to elevate the old Norse pantheon of gods again? Or why they celebrated the works of Richard Wagner, a virulent anti-Semite himself?
:-/
Equating Naziism with Christianity is a major fallacy, IMHO. And it's small wonder why there's an unwritten rule anytime Naziism is brought up in a Usenet discussion the discussion more or less comes to a screeching halt.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Aggrazel,
I think what Cmdr. Taco is finding out very rapidly is that the Church of Scientology is even more protective of their works than Coca-Cola and Disney, both companies notorious for zealous protection of their copyrights.
The last thing Andover.net wants is being dragged into a ugly, expensive lawsuit that will result in Slashdot being shut down for good because Andover can't pay the legal bills fighting the lawsuit.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The DMCA even effects places that have 'common carrier' status. The particular title referenced essentially makes common carriers liable for the copyright violations of the people who post stuff on the Internet using their equipment if they don't take down copyright violations quickly when notified of them.
This is a summarization of the various things I've heard people say about it, and not a result of my own reading. I am also not a lawyer. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
-josh
I mean, how can a website like slashdot hope to fight the good fight against a bunch of brainwashed zealots who'se religion is to take as much money as they can from their members.
Stupid scientology.
Oh by the way, until it gets deleted here's a good link to the evils of the Church of Scientology: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/index.html
IFES is a drinking club. No one in it or out of it takes it seriously.
Linux O Muerte!
If you really want to know, why not go and get the text from one of the links above and post it here?
Wrong. Slashdot does have control over the content. In fat, they're the only ones who can control it, because it's on their server, and Slashdot users do not have any way of editing or deleting their posts.
Secondly, they aren't taking responsibility for the content, that's sort of what this is all about. This is exactly the kind of thing that a "common carrier" has to do in order to not be held responsible for someone else's posting. If they had taken a stand, then they would have assumed responsibility.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
But part of the cost of not being liable for content, is that you automatically cave in whenever someone tells you that you're carrying copyrighted content. By caving in, they avoided liability. It is the poster's fight, not Slashdot's. That's what being a common carrier is all about.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I see. They're like trolling under you own UID.
Funny, I had just thought that they were Scientology-speak for "soul" (itself a somewhat wierd concept).
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
OTOH, this isn't prior to posting censorship. And I don't often read the old news anyway.
.. unreasonable. I'm still not certain that they are more generally harmful than, say, the Roman Catholic Church, but then that's certainly faint praise.
It's certainly unpleasant, but then I wouldn't have thought about it again if the new story hadn't come up.
Then again, it's also preaching to the choir. Most people who read here are already convinced that Scientology is
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The "Cult of greed" has lost some courtcases in the Netherlands too.
And contrary to the USA the "cult of greed" has lots of problems here in Europe.
And we don't have something like the DMCA here in Europe too. (lucky us).
No. Everyone is required to obey the law.
In this case, slashdot, as a service provider (they provide a discussion forum), has been informed that they are hosting infringing material.
Once they have been informed, it is now partially their responsibility if they continue to assist the poster in his/her illegal posting. They can refuse, if they think that the posting of the material is legal... however.
In this case, this is not a harassment case. The material is copyright the COS, and however disagreeable their little cult is... they have the right of copyright.
Andover could chose to fight it.... but what would be the point? How, as a public company, do they justify this to their shareholders? Where is the profit? Are you implying that a site like slashdot that clearly has infringing material on it should never be required to take it down? I mean, they are the only people that can take it down.
Look. I'm not contesting that. Not all laws are good, and sometimes they need to be disobeyed and challenged in court. The DMCA is probably one such law. However...
This isn't just about slashdot, it's about the parent company, and more importantly, the shareholders, because it IS a public company. On what grounds should the shareholders' company have contested this? You're talking about a very expensive constitutional challenge against the DMCA. Someone will do it eventually, but this probably won't be it. And if you look at it from an information warfare point of view, taking it offline took an otherwise obscure comment in a story (how many had never even seen it? or thought anythign of it?) and elevated it to a front-page story, including links to information sources *all over the place* about the same information.
They DID post the event as it happened, it happened quickly. And as for what the law requires... you are right. They don't have to remove it.. they can keep it there. And all the COS has to do after that point is go to court and prove that they hold the copyright on the document (which they can do so fast you wouldn't believe it, because they DO hold it), and the company is in shit for contributory infringement. Their only recourse in this case would be to contest the DMCA, which is law, as unconstitutional.. which I addressed above.
They concede nothing. THe DMCA, which IS A LAW that /. must obey, says they MUST remove the material at once. SO they did. It's not a 'choice'. Their other choice was to contest the copyright. (won't work.. it IS copyrwritten by COS)
/. to remove the post.
demon.co.uk removing posts for illegality is a different matter, because nothing required them to do so. In this case, the law requires
I know how you feel, but stopping would be tantamount to burying your head in the sand. You might feel better, but the DMCA is still there. What you're depressed about isn't /., it's the foolishness that is this law. By continuing to read you will continue to be informed and knowledge (good or bad) is power. Hang in there.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
So, post the text. Grab a copy for the multiple posts here. Then post it with your user ID.
Make it clear in the post that you're doing it to educate people as to the many illegal acts of the church and their insane religious beliefs. This will help establish that you aren't doing it JUST to violate copyright. Perhaps comment on their wacky beliefs every paragraph of so.
Then post links to it on Slashdot, hell, submit it to the editors as a story. A test case posting (on your own webpage) of the scientology lies.
Register at fairtunes.org, and mention that. You'll get people helping with the legal bills. Ditto no doubt with the EFF and ACLU.
You're the perfect person to test this.
Doesn't the disclaimer say that "comments are owned by the poster?" Does that hold if the poster is anonymous or not?
I don't know. I wish I had the guts that the folks at www.xenu.net have. But I don't know if a "religion" like Scientology can be killed or hurt by the presence or absence of a comment on slashdot, but it can't hurt them to have the legal clout to remove a message.
Wonder if they'd remove mine if I had done the same...
-Ben
... I also think it's interesting when a significant part of a religion is "secret" (Mormons, Clams, Masons...). Why would anyone want to hide their religion? I can see why the Scientologists do it, because they make a tremendous amount of money. Why do the Mormons have so many secrets? Why has their religion been compared in publsihed works as comparable to Soviet bureaucracy? Why aren't non-believers even allowed in a Mormon temple? What do they have to hide?
/. and k5, but no one can argue that the Church tries to silence dissenters .. if they did excommunication would be a lot more common. In any event, it takes a certain amount of confidence in your philosophies to set yourself up for criticism and not try to suppress it.
I think part of it is that in all three cases mentioned above, if you are not indoctrinated gradually into the tortured uses of language and logic that is the foundation of these philosophies, you would see it for what it is. You can always judge an organization by how it handles detractors. The U.S. government, for instance, has codified tolerance for criticism in its Constitution, and generally adheres to this principal. An organization with any merit can withstand criticism.
I hear a lot of Catholic-bashing on forums like
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Also I'm fairly sure that I've seen DeCSS code a couple of times (then again most code looks the same to me).
Perhaps the setting of a legal defence fund, or even a paypal account would help Slashdot fight this battle, and the others that will inevitably follow.
I'd make a comment about Americans and their silly laws, but its probably just a matter of time before DMCA-type laws spread elsewhere.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
I'm glad the Slashdot guys had the resources of Andover at their disposal, as long as those resources helped out. One of the benefits of being part of a big company is that they've usually got some capital they can burn if you get attacked by lawyers.
On the flip side, being part of a big company means you can't always take a stand. Your parent company also has more resources to lose, and thus sometimes you have to buckle under.
We'll never know if the old Slashdot would have fought off the religion-for-profit crowd, and some people on here are going to say Andover had a negative effect. Let's not turn this into a flame war - at least, not flame Andover, because we'll never know whether they had a positive effect or not.
What's your damage, Heather?
As a person who has once got an threatening email from the lawyers of this evil cult, I understand very well why /. gave up (I posted one of $cn's "secret" documents with some comments to a.r.s. but later cancelled that post). These people are ready to spend as money as needed to suppress free speech. They don't play on these matters, there's too much their money on the stake. They can ruin private person financially badly (Zenon for example) and the cost can be very high also for the companies which dear to criticize them (NY Times had to spend awful lot of money to defend itself against the clamsuit(tm))
This is the exact reason why systems like FreeNet are neened. They are the only line of defence against this misuse of intellectual property rigts. $cientology today, the goverment of China tomorrow...?
Ville Oksanen
SP4 and damn proud of it.
My DeCSS archive:
Each person copy one sentence.
Post each sentence in reverse order, starting with the last one and working towards the first.
Mod each post up to 5.
Then, the only way to read the text (properly and in 'infringing' form) is to set your comment display options to Oldest First and Threshold: 5.
I wonder who is at fault there. Ah, I should have gone into law.
They ought to have Obfuscated Precedent contests.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I don't see where they are blaming the DMCA. They are most certainly blaming the CoS, and giving them a lot of exposure to boot.
/. liable if they don't remove the infringing material.
They are merely pointing out that the DMCA makes
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
It means that slashdot is just as much a spineless corporate puppet as everyone thought it was.
One the one hand I see where this guy/gal is coming from. Slashdot seems to have sold out. For Malda and Co. to fight the Scientologists would generate major press both against Scientologists and that laughable piece of legislation called the DMCA. Just imagine:
Slashdot Takes Stand Against Both Scientology and DMCA
Geeks Put Oft-touted Ideology To the Test
Open Source Site puts money where mouth is in DMCA wrangle
But another part of me agrees with the blurb. It really isn't worth the time and trouble and lawyers' (more than one :) fees to fight something posted anonymously - especially if the Co$ decide they would like to go after the real poster and subpoena the IP or something.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
...if it hadn't been an AC?
If someone with a UID had posted the comment?
D.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Not much, really.
I already pointed out that it's not my religion. Some of us are actually willing to defend people's right to hold viewpoints that differ from our own.
More importantly, why do you assume faith is an "all or nothing" thing? Sure, the Roman Catholics might present it that way, but many other branches of Christianity require little or nothing beyond belief in the existence of God[1]. To address your example, Unitarians in particular are famous for their acceptance of gay people. There's a pretty well established body of historical scholarship proving that much of what's in the Bible was politically rather than divinely inspired - particularly by Paul - leading to a natural questioning of how much credence it should really be given. Much of this knowledge and debate is filtering into the theological community, and is leading to a sort of "neo-Fundamentalism" that draws sharp distinctions between the words/teachings of Christ and other stuff that has been attached to those teachings by other people.
The point, at long last, is that religion is not an all-or-nothing thing. What objection do you have, for example, to someone who happens to believe in God and in salvation through Christ, but eschews sexist/xenophobic ranting by people like Paul or Augustine? What's your dispute with someone who, based on such a faith, exhibits forgiveness, charity, and other positive behaviors to a degree they otherwise might not? It is because the previous poster's broad brush would tar such people along with those who subscribe to the most twisted and harmful kinds of religious belief that I called his comments obnoxious.
If you want to criticize the behavior of religious people, that's fine. If you want to criticize specific religious beliefs as origins of those behaviors, that's fine too but I'd recommend a little caution. If you want to lambaste all religion everywhere, without regard for (or even familiarity with) how it actually affects people, I think you'll find many people like me leaving your side to stand shoulder to shoulder with people of faith.
[1] It's easier for me to limit my comments to Christianity due to familiarity, but that shouldn't be taken to imply that other religions don't have the same issues.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
That's not a problem with religion. *People* tend to pick and choose their moral beliefs; non-religious people tend to be even more inconsistent and self-serving about it than religious people. Why should religious people be less free to choose their beliefs than non-religious people? Is the message here supposed to be "your ethics can be whatever you want, as long as they're not mandated by a religious authority"? Balls to that.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Man, you really need to get off the shrooms and onto Prozac or something. Jesus and Adam Smith are both dead, and if you see either of them accumulating wealth you have a problem.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Y'know, you come off sounding every bit as self-righteous and narrow-minded as any preacher ever did.
But s/he never said that; the claim was that *some* of the good around us came from work inspired by or dedicated to religion - not all. Constructing strawmen won't help you deconstruct religion.
Because it is. You might not be religious, religion - particularly the organized kind - might have its flaws, but using phrases like "mass hysteria" or "brainwashing" or "fantasy" to descibe *all* religion is just obnoxious.
And what's wrong with faith? Solipsism is a singularly useless philosophy, and for anything else you need faith in *something*. Even Descartes recognized as much in his Meditations of First Philosophy, and that's really basic stuff. You seem to have a lot of faith, if I may say so, in your own perceptions and reasoning, incomplete as those might be.
So, again, what's wrong with faith? I'm not asking what's wrong with the Scientologists, or the Catholic Church, or with things that people who have faith happen to do. What's wrong with faith in and of itself? Obviously if one's faith is contradicted by observation that's one thing, but is there anything wrong with believing something not contradicted by observation?
Apparently you're not finished with being angry, though. The Church still seems to have quite a hold on you, if the mere mention of faith can cause you to have such a hissy fit.
Like you, I was brought up in a very religious environment. Like you, I broke away from it. Unlike you, I've learned to accept that what's right or wrong for me is not necessarily right or wrong for everyone, recognize that I have my own faith (even if it's not religious) and allow other people theirs.
And you always did. Religion doesn't change that; most don't even try.
Here's some news: from where I sit, your thought processes don't look all that great. I've met many religious people who could construct a better argument for their POV than you have done, and then present it more persuasively. Maybe religion isn't to blame for any deficiency in thought processes, and lack of religion is no panacea.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
"Why is it that the only prejudice it's Politically Correct to have is anti-Christian prejudice?"
Well now let's take two "life style choices" homosexuality, and christianity. Actually one can probably make a damned convincing argument that homosexuality is actually genetic and not a "life style choice" but surely not even Dick Cheney and George W. Bush will claim that chirtianity is in the genes but for the sake of this argument let's presume that homosexuality is a choice.
If the homosexuals in this country treated christians like the christians treat homosexuality THEN you could go around saying things like you were being prejudiced against but lets face it.
The president is not homosexual, neither is the vice president, nor 99% of the combined houses of the congress.
Homosexuals do not try and deny christians the right to marry.
Homosexuals do not try to deny christians teching jobs or any other jobs.
Homosexuals do not shoot christians.
Homosexuals do not routinely beat the living crap out christians as they come out church.
So it's one thing to hold people accountable for the choices they made and to challenge their beliefs it's another to try and deny them civil rights and to beat them up or kill them.
Ever hear of an abortion doctor killing a priest?
Even hear of a abortion doctor bombing a church?
Ever hear of an abortion doctor putting up web sites that call priests vile names and encourage others to kill them?
Of course not! They are not that evil.
Sorry dude but you reap what you sow. There are a slew of bad apples in your religion ans unfortunately for all your enemies (jews, moslems, gays, budhists, environmentalists, doctors, liberals, teletubbies, and well anybody who disagrees with you) you are running this country from the highest levels to the lowest. All it takes is one crazy christian amongst the millions and BAM your life is snuffed out because you dared to think different.
War is necrophilia.
"Because it is. You might not be religious, religion - particularly the organized kind - might have its flaws, but using phrases like "mass hysteria" or "brainwashing" or "fantasy" to descibe *all* religion is just obnoxious."
Why is that? Just exacly what is the difference between believing that thetans are locked in your body and that an invisible, all powerful, omnicient man who lives in the sky caused a virgin to give birth? The bible is full of "fantasy" like this it's also full of unspeakable acts of horror. Sure christians like to disregard any part of the bible they don't like (which IMHO also gives me the right to ignore any part of the bible I don't like BTW) but you can not deny that they are a part and parcel of your religion.
Example. Christians routinely point out that homosexuality is a sin according to the bible but they never quote the second part of that sentence which states that the punishment for homosexuality is death!.
War is necrophilia.
OK was he the son of god? did he die and then came to life? was he born of a virgin mother? Or was all that just some story getting embelished in the last two thousand years?
War is necrophilia.
Here is my beef. If like you say religion is not a all or nothing proposition then the bible is just some text that anybody is free to interpret any way they want. Ok fine.
The problem occurs when the bible is interpreted to deny people housing, jobs or civil rights. Even worse when it is interpreted to justify killing people.
The probelm with a "take whatever you want" approach is that it gives other people take whatever portion of the bible they like and ignore the rest. While you may zero in on "turn the other cheek" somebody else may zero in on "salt the earth".
War is necrophilia.
No the mesage is that that rules of society should not depend on a two thousand year old book written by people who could not possibly have a grasp of what your world looks like now. Remember these people had no conception of anything outside of their little world the bible never mentions anything outside of a postage stamp size of the world which the jews knew about.
Not only that but this book should never be used to justify any action denying someone their civil rights or killing someone.
As it stands a society built on christian values like the US suffers from the highest crime rate in the world, ethics is a joke when the CEO of the biggest company in the world can lie under oath and tamper with evidence, when a corporation can kill hundres of people because it costs too much money ot make a safe tire. Ethics in america is all about money baby that what your bible brought forth. Maybe I am being unfair maybe Adam Smith singlehandedly destroyed any influence that Jesus might have had on the shape of this society after all I don't see Jesus accumulating wealth but I see Adam Smith doing it.
War is necrophilia.
The article said the comment contained a text called "OT III"
If it contained the entire text,or a substantial part of it (several paragraphs), without any other commentary, then it violates copyright law, pure and simple. However, if it contained a small part of the text (a few sentences), with commentary on that text, then it would be criticism, and would "fair use".
Best Slashdot Co
I, too, hate it that /. removed the comment. Scientology earns another black eye, some more negative exposure. That's a nice end, but the price paid (the means) may not be worth it. But in the grand scheme of things, they lose.
And isn't it Cosmic Justice that John Travolta's money goes to laywers, because of what he did to us in Saturday Night Fever?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
By its very nature, Slashdot is a site which often hosts controversial items. So far, they have brilliantly resisted against any attempt of censorship. This tradition has now been broken. Now, the next time the MPAA comes knocking, Slashdot no longer can say "Sorry, we won't take down any comments, as a matter of principle". They have done it for the clams, and now it will be pretty hard to convince the MPAA's and the Microsofts of the world why the clams intellectual property deserves protection, while somehow theirs doesn't. I fear that we'll see a lot more of these incidents in the future.
Yes, but is the DMCA constitutional? Unfortunately, AFAIK, the only way to get a law overturned for unconstitutionality is to violate it, have yourself sued, and then fight all the way to the top until Supreme Court. Looks like Slashdot passed an excellent opportunity of toppling the DMCA.
The Church did not ever approve or condone the actions of the Fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. Maybe they didn't denounce it at every opportunity, but that would have only increased the bloodshed. What should they have done, gotten up and screamed from every pulpit in every church around Europe? What would have happened? I'll tell you - every Catholic as well as every Jew would have been rounded up.
Every church, monastery, convent, and seminary in Nazi-controlled territory harbored as many Jews as they could, on the orders of the Vatican. The Franciscan monastery in Assisi, for example, sheltered some hundreds of Jews, and was named the sister city of Bethlehem by Israel in thanks afterward.
Peddle your angry-with-God crap elsewhere, but try at least appearing factual when you do so. There are very few things I find more irresponsible in this world than attempting to blame Christianity for the Holocaust. The two have as much in common as the Taliban does with statues of Buddha - just because they exist in the same place at the same time doesn't mean they are friends.
Right...
Read my post, and you'll see exactly what I was talking about. It was by Pope Pius XII's orders that Catholic institutions all over Italy and the rest of Europe harbored Jews by the thousands.
Is he somehow more culpable than any other leader of the time? Great Britain told Hitler, "Oh, go ahead and take Czechoslovakia - we'll just turn a blind eye." Stalin and Hitler carved up Poland between them. The U.S. sat on its thumbs until it was forced into the arena.
Pope Pius, on the other hand, was always an opponent of the Nazis. I quote from a terrific page at http://www.catholic.com/ROCK/pius_xii.htm:
On April 28, 1935, four years before the War even started, Pacelli gave a speech that aroused the attention of the world press. Speaking to an audience of 250,000 pilgrims in Lourdes, France, the future Pius XII stated that the Nazis "are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false concept of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult." It was talks like this, in addition to private remarks and numerous notes of protest that Pacelli sent to Berlin in his capacity as Vatican Secretary of State, that earned him a reputation as an enemy of the Nazi party.
Elsewhere:
While the U.S., Great Britain, and other countries often refused to allow Jewish refugees to immigrate during the war, the Vatican was issuing tens of thousands of false documents to allow Jews to pass secretly as Christians so they could escape the Nazis. What is more, the financial aid Pius XII helped provide the Jews was very real. Lichten, Lapide, and other Jewish chroniclers record those funds as being in the millions of dollars--dollars even more valuable then than they are now.
Think Jews were unknowing or ungrateful? Think again:
The Pope's efforts did not go unrecognized by Jewish authorities, even during the War. The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent the Pope a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944, in which he said: "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."
You're damn right the Catholic Church stands ready to make him a Saint - and I say, the sooner, the better.
Right...
Anti-moderator comments aren't allowed?
--
With another 100,000 pissed-off geeks learning about the Co$ today, I'd lay good odds the geeks won this round bigtime.
If you know people who don't read Slashdot, tell them about the cult today.
This is memetic warfare - and we outnumber and outclue the cult by a million-to-one margin.
That's right - this cult successfully DDoSed the IRS' legal team by ordering its members to file individual suits against IRS in such numbers that the IRS caved in and granted the cult tax-exempt status.
Just because it's done with legal papers and not TCP/IP packets doesn't change the fact that it's a DDoS attack.
For more $cieno DDoS activity, search for "scientology spam usenet attack" or some such. Basically, it was the largest and most coordinated HipCrime-style attack on in USENET history.
Where did you get that ?
Does it really matter where he got that? Even if it's not true, it would make sense.
Every crazy KKK freak calls what he does (practice hate) a religious act, even thinking up crazy names like the "Church of the Creator" or some nonsense. If Christianity can be interpreted as whatever by whoever, then what is the point of it?
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Well sir, this post was a thing of beauty. some additional points:
There's thousands (maybe more?) religions in the world. Why is YOURS right, or true? Why is there a God instead of another deity? Does the christian God exists because it is the most popular religion? And I'm supposed to believe religion X because I was born in region Y? I can't accept that.
The religions that exist today have survived because they are vague and were designed as unprovable as possible. The greeks believed a god pulled the sun across the sky. They believed a god threw down the lighting bolts from a high mountain. But what happened when man climbed that mountain? What happened when man realized what the sun was? Those beliefs were disproved, and those religions dropped like a bad habit.
The ambitious monks who devised Christianity knew what they were doing, and they designed a religion that has stood the test of time because it does NOT contain mountains, or chariots, or anything else dissprovable... yet.
I find it most interesting that Galileo was imprisoned by the Church when he was spreading his information about the solar system, yet a few(?) years ago, the Pope met with Hawking, and gave formal approval to the Big Bang theory as "compatible" with the Bible. Quite a change of opinion, no?
Religions dont bother me though. I know that religion is just a manifestation of the morals and conscience and common sense of ALL human beings. As such, it is doing NO harm to humanity, and only good things come out of it. I, for one, do not know the meaning of "blind faith," so I listen to my conscience.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
How about human morality and conscience? ALL religions are based off these anyway.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
How does the moderation effect them being publishers? The moderation is not done by them, nor does it have to do with the legality of the post. I just has to do with how useful the post is, as decided by the slashdot readers, not slashdot.
The revolution is not over, however, in fact it's just begun! People like myself, and doubtless others out there have tasted the freedom of expressing themselves, and are not going to let themselves get shut out again. While slashdot certainly isn't perfect, it's a great way for myself and others to have a conversation.
The scientologists have chosen to try to control our conversation. If we allow this to continue, we'll lose our voice. The choice will then be to take the conversation underground (the last resort, but effective), or to push back, hard.
I will not be censored! I, like Taco, may make my tactical retreats (such as in the Microsoft stupid EULA skirmish of last year), but I will not quit the battle. The costs of inaction are too high, and they only rise according to Warot's law: "The price of inaction against evil always rises"
It's time for the Jihad, the holy war, the fight of good against the deamons of stupidity, no matter how big or small. Rise up, my fellow citizens of the world, call things as you see them, and express yourself. The costs of inaction always rise with time, act now, while it's still easy.
--Mike--
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance - Thomas Jefferson
That's true its the law. This just makes me more convinced that if the Founding Fathers were alive today they would be seriously thinking of overthrowing our current government.
To hear today's politicians talk of the "Founders wishes" makes me sick. They talk about it and then they make laws directly opposed to those wishes.
1. Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz
2. Church of Scientology vs. the Net
3. Scientology Court Files
4. Scientology Cult Attacks XS4ALL
5. Scientology v. the Internet
(Found via Google and Yahoo!)
How to Download YouTube Videos
That's a distinction you'd do well to learn. Don't mod me down just because you don't like what I say.
Where exactly did I say something intentionally incendiary? What was it that is potentially attracting flames? I challenge you to find it.
Times like this make me glad that /. is not a representative sample of humanity. The obvious flamebait above me gets Insightful mods, and when I post some truth I get the Flamebait mods. Go figure.
Why is it that the only prejudice it's Politically Correct to have is anti-Christian prejudice?
Flamebait != Disagree
Constitutionally Correct
Maybe because this thread is proof? Posts denigrating faith in God and generally anti-Christian in tone get moderated up. Posts defending belief and pro-Christian get moderated down. Why? Certainly wasn't based on the quality of the post itself, which is what moderation is supposed to rate.
Say the AC posted a very one-sided comment about Mexicans (to use your example) being lazy. Maybe the AC even has a few examples of lazy Mexicans he's seen. Then, say I post a reply that Mexicans are hard workers, along with examples of people I know. Furthermore, the AC gets moderated up and I get moderated down. What would you surmise? The moderators obviously agree that Mexicans are lazy. Persecution of Mexicans, wouldn't you say? That's exactly what's happened here.
The Slashdot community, it seems, has a strong anti-Christian bias. They are unwilling to give up their preconceived notions of Christianity. Slashdot (and increasingly our culture in general) wants to believe that Christianity is responsible for lots of bad things (witch trials, Crusades) which did undeniably happen, but also wants to deny it's responsible for lots of good things (art, science, medicine) too. Looking at only one side of the truth about somebody is prejudice just as much as believing lies about him is.
Flamebait != Disagree
Constitutionally Correct
Score: 4 (Insightful)? What are the moderators smoking today? This AC is spewing nothing but Flamebait.
How dare you associate the Holocaust with Christianity? The Holocaust was the sick dream of one sick man, who has been quoted that when the Jews were gone, the Christians were next. Hitler hated God and anything that had to do with Him.
"Religion kills." Sadly, it's true that people have killed in the name of religion. But try looking at the whole picture. Some of humanity's greatest science, art, and literature was also inspired by God. Newton was on a quest to "think God's thoughts after him," and his contemporaries were sometimes disappointed that he spent a majority of his later years writing about the Bible rather than science. This is a common theme throughout the Renaissance. Bach, Beethoven, Michelangelo...so many of history's greatest minds were inspired to that greatness by their Creator. This is the Renaissance we're talking about here, man! One of mankind's greatest intellectual awakenings!
Without the influence of Jesus Christ, this world would be a much sadder place. You really need to read What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? by Kennedy and Newcombe to get the full picture. Social justice, respect for human life and decline of cannibalism, the end of slavery, rise of medicine/arts/science...all can be attributed in great part to the message of Jesus Christ: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. These are the results of faith in action.
Flamebait != Disagree
Constitutionally Correct
You, as a poster, are liable for what you write
I'm sorry, but you have always been liable for what you say, long before the DMCA, and that's not a bad thing in itself.
Slashdot is liable for everything written on Slashdot.
In this case, Slashdot was not liable for the content. In this case, a copyright infringement was found in a comment and Slashdot was asked to "help" repair de "damage" by removing the comment. That's all.
I still don't agree with copyrights on a this kind of stuff, but that's another matter.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
... usenet? .. you know, that place where, along with mailing lists, where we'll have our discussions after all the waste.of.breath.and.funding.com discussion sites dry up.
While certainly people abused usenet, perhaps none so much as Scientology, at least it's harder to shut down.
Maybe we'll have to graft a chat/newsgroup function onto gnutella/freenet to finally stop worrying about all this bullshit.
I would disagree. If the action that is demanded by law is wrong, then it is the duty of a citizen to have no part of the law.
Of course, that does mean, quite often, suffering the penalties of doing such. Then again, perhaps I am the only one who reads Thoreau and seriously contemplates ceasing to pay taxes under the belief that it is wrong to support wrongful actions.
In short, noone ever MUST obey anyone or anything. There are often consequences for not obeying, but obedience is never a moral obligation. (at least, not according to my world view)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Scientology seems to be in favor with the government, not like most cults...
So will you guys be changing your name from Andover to Bend-over?
ROLCIOF
(Rolling on the floor cause I'm on fire)
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
We hear a lot of calls, in slashdot as well as elsewhere, that people should stand up, should focus attention on the evils, etc
You don't hear them from the owners of the site, nota bene.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Ummm, I wasn't a history major or anything, but I'm pretty sure that no one tried to cover up the Crusades. Sure the reasons were misrepresented, and the uglier aspects were gloosed over/ignored, but if you ask a Jesuit 'Did a shitload of people get killed in the crusades?', he'll be startled by your language, but he'd admit it happened. If you went back in time and asked Pope Whoever about while they were going on, he'd say 'Damn straight, bubba!' (translated from the Latin). No one Christain denies thwe Crusades, the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials, and I've never heard anybody say that they were actually Good Things either. The Co$, got this woman out of an emergency room, held her in their 'hotel' for several days, even though she was urinating and defecating on herself, forced her to take 'medicine' and let her die of dehydration. BTW, dehydration takes days of neglect, it does't happen overnight, barring a massive infection, which this woman had no signs of. Then, the people at this 'hotel' took her corpse to a different emergency room (in a different county), lied to the doctors there, lied to the police, lied to the press, 'lost' records relating to what they did to her at the 'hotel' and did everything they could to act like the woman died of a bacterial infection overnight. Hell, even the Catholic Church will occasionally admit that some priests have a taste for the altar boys and try to find some other place for them to work, but they don't put up this much of a stonewall.
Also, Nazism was not Christian even in name. They were either strict materialists, or some kind of Old Norse-derived paganists. Their symbol, the swastika, was usually refered to as a 'hakenkruaz' (bad German spelling, I'm sure), which basically means twisted or broken cross. Not to mention that they went after Christianity's spiritual forebears, and were quite willing to squash any church that didn't toe the line and quickly (look up 'Dietrich Bonhoeffer'). Christianity has done shitloads worth of stuff, but the Nazis != Christians. Don't let the Neo-Nazis fool ya on that one.
My father-in-law is a Lutheran minister, and he has repeatedly said that whenever a church turns to secular methods (Crusade, Inquisition, Witch hunt) instead of religious methods (outreach, evangelism, telling people that they're going to hell if they don't shape up, whatever) only bad things come of it. The Co$'s methods of secrecy, ma$$ive donation$ before you get counseling, sending lawyers after any dissenters, etc., all sound pretty secular to me....
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
How much do you want to bet that the comments on this story will contain the text at issue, as well as in every article for the next two weeks or so.
It happened with DeCSS. Let's all get Rob in trouble!
Hmmm...
Ron Hubbard's drones
censoring Slashdot comments
with a "clear" concience?
-- WhiskeyJack
When I read about MS trying to silence some comments a while ago, I made a casual vow to stop reading slashdot if censorship ever occurred.
However, I have to make a concession in this case. The CoS (in this case the Church of Scientology, not the Church of Satan) have a nasty reputation for having things go their way, and I can only be relieved at the fact that slashdot still has its servers.
If this sounds dramatic, talk to some people who were mrerely suspected of having CoS-copyrighted material about six years ago. When they quit the CoS, they also (unwittingly) forfeit their home computers and all storage devices.
I'd post a link to the info, but it's been years since I read it, and no longer have a link. Sorry.
Steve
[ approaching AI ]
Prejudice is when you have (usually wrong) beliefs about a person based on their nationality, race, religion, or whatnot. The key here is that you are drawing an inference from a trait that has nothing to do with what you are concluding. For example, if I were to say that so and so (who I don't know at all) is a lazy person, and I based this assertion on the fact that so and so is Mexican, that would be prejudiced, because I am "pre-judging" a person based on a stereotype.
On the other hand, if I were to say "Christians think that they are sinful, and need to accept Jesus Christ as their savior to be absolved of these sins," this is not a prejudice. As near as I can tell, this is a fairly factual statement. If I were to then go on and say "These beliefs are fucking bullshit and people need to stop propagating them," I'm expressing an opinion on actual traits on the religion and am in no way being prejudiced.
Why is it that so many Christians have persecution complexes?
--
share and enjoy
I am not going to go back and sort through the comments and their moderation to try to see whether flamebait was marked as insightful, or insightful comments were marked as flamebait, I simply pointing out that you are wrong to call it prejudice, and that you are continuing to make a false analogy.
The Slashdot community, it seems, has a strong anti-Christian bias. They are unwilling to give up their preconceived notions of Christianity. Slashdot (and increasingly our culture in general)
I would consider Slashdot as being more non-Christian than the rest of the world. However, to say that our culture has an anti-Christian bias is insane. This is why I say that Christians have a persecution complex; you see this anti-Christian majority that just doesn't exist.
wants to believe that Christianity is responsible for lots of bad things (witch trials, Crusades) which did undeniably happen, but also wants to deny it's responsible for lots of good things (art, science, medicine) too. Looking at only one side of the truth about somebody is prejudice just as much as believing lies about him is.
It's true, these arguments lack a certain intellectual rigor. If Christianity had never existed, it's impossible to tell what would have happened. Maybe the Crusades would have been fought over something else. Maybe religious art would have found a different inspiration.
However, it seems to me that the teachings of Christianity are much more geared toward producing conformity, obedience, and fear of the unknown than they are towards encouraging art and good-will. So it seems reasonable to blame Christianty for the bad things in our society that are produced by the traits it encourages.
Oh, ps. Saying that someone "wants to believe" something is lame and insulting. I do believe that Christianity is a Bad Thing, there's no wanting involved.
--
share and enjoy
Scientology didn't *have to* spend a lot of money to do what they did (send a DMCA infringment notice/takedown demand). You don't even need to be a lawyer to do it, *I* (a lay person) could easily make a legal DMCA notice. The law spells it out quite clearly. They very well may have used a lawyer, but one hour of one lawyer's time is not a huge amount of money. At MOST a few thousand dollars I would imagine.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I don't know what kind of database your running for your backend, but I don't see why you couldn't "tamper" with the posts...even if you had to log into the box and UPDATE table SET xxx=xxx you could modify them, unless you intentionall forgot the passwords to access the machine!
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
I would disagree. If the action that is demanded by law is wrong, then it is the duty of a citizen to have no part of the law.
They did do this. With Microsoft. when M$ asked them to take down the spec to their Kerberos extensions, they didn't, even though Microsoft threatened to shut them down in 48 hours if they didn't. But this is different, this is the COS. Those people will stop at nothing to get what they want, even breaking the law. It would have been a lot more then legal fees for the Andover boys.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
On your website, you mention that HTML tags should always be in uppercase. Not only is this stylistically wrong, but according to the xhtml specification, it is now technically wrong as well. In other words, HTML with uppercase tags, is no longer HTML
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Not that I don't like Christians, but you really can't really blame the Holocaust on Christians, or on any Christian sect, The anti-Semitism at the time was really more race-based rather then religion-based. And while Hitler did mention god one or two times in his speeches, he was not any kind of 'actively' religious person.
Actually Nazism under Hitler was very similar to a cult or religion in its own rights, and I doubt Hitler would want to defer to a 'higher power' other them himself.
Yes, Christianity has caused a lot of problems in the past, but the holocaust wasn't one of them
Scientology itself is a weird case, in that it's a 'vicious' religion like some branches Christianity and Islam, one who's tenants is to spread, and to attack its deriders. On the other hand, it came about in a more civilized world, and only asks people to sue and harass people, rather then kill them.
So, while scientology is evil, it isn't really that bad at least at this point (I wouldn't want to see what would happen if they ever got any real power). Compared to Christianity and Islam (etc), which are less evil but cause more problems and death.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
While there is no 'god' just like there is no Xenu, there was a guy named Jesus just like there was a guy named L.Ron Hubbard. Asside from the Christian teaching, a few Roman court documents have surfaced as well.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
I had no idea how screwey this whole deal was. I remembered a 60 minutes story a long long time ago about how they were harassing and stalking people about this, but I never really get any details about what this OT III thing was.
Gawd, this guy (Hubbard) was really whacked out when he scribbled all this crap about liberating Body Thetans and implanting and all. That in itself is not surprising. Guy drinks and pills himself into an alternate reality and goes off evangelizing it - happens all the time.
What amazes me is that anyone takes this seriously enough to copyright it and then go after websites that post the 'leaked' versions!
Funny though, had they left it alone only the trolls and those that browse at -1 would even have seen it. Now, this is one of the heaviest threads ever on
Classic.
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
We can convince the scientologists that Senor Goat is a copyrighted scientology secret.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
How is the DMCA ever going to get overturned unless people demonstrate -- over and over again -- that it leads to unforeseen and terrible consequences? That it impacts civil society in ways that are unacceptable? If every time someone is faced with an action under DMCA, they fold, then the the law will never be challenged and it will last forever. Let's face it, that's exactly the effect we all feared under DMCA: Not that people will be prosecuted, but that they will self-censor to avoid legal hassle.
Now, the people runnng slashdot are the ones who face any legal consequences, so they are the ones who must decide whether to walk that path. But it's entirely reasonable for people to have expected that slashdot would go to the wall, considering the editorial exhortations to that effect that we've seen over the years.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
So Scientology is reading Slashdot now? *shudder* Next they will be after me! Maybe there's still time, I ... Hey , hello ... I... Aaaaahaaaaaaaaargh!
Right on /. Good way of handling morons like this who just dont get it. Exposure, exposure, exposure.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
Better watch it! COS's lawyers have a very broad notion of what constitutes libel. People have received C&Ds for saying that Hubbard was a bad writer!
Yeah, that sounds funny. But you'll stop laughing when you get your legal bill. Which of course, is the whole point.
That's the big flaw in the American legal system. Nobody can take away your rights — but it's pretty easy to make exercising them unaffordable.
__________________
Plus they can make it difficult for you to get internet access (attention ISP! your customer is libeling us! cut him off or be sued!), make trouble for you at work (attention, Fred's Garage! your employee is using your computers to libel us! we don't care if it's just a point-of-sale terminal -- we're going to get an order to impound it so we can search it for illegal files! oh, you were going to fire him anyway? that's all right then), etc., etc.
Anyway, your specific situation is beside the point. Most people can't afford to be sued.
Hey, are you suicidal? Then I guess you aren't afraid of the Mafia either. Now just work on your anorexia and you can save a ton on food!
__________________
You certainly do have the ability to tamper with posts (unlimited moderator points), and I will go further and say that you've abused this privilege in the past. Wanna make me prove it? But note that, if I have to go to the effort, I'm not going to want to waste the material unearthed on a single slashdot comment.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The document posted on here was a full document, and thus, not under fair use.
Not entirely true. It's about 10% of the OT III course. There's a lot of other stuff, too. It's probably an infringement, though.
As well, when we had been sued, all of the server logs would have been taken.
Actually they could get the relevant portions without even filing a suit. Read the DMCA section entitled "Subpoena to Identify Infringer."
The anonymous coward would have been identified and taken. Moreover, under DMCA, we are liable.
Actually, you were liable under existing copyright law prior to DMCA. The DMCA just provides an escape hatch.
That's how it works. Next time, read the summary of the DMCA before posting.
I can't say I blame Slashdot for removing the posting. These materials are everywhere anyway, regardless of what the archaic and antiquated copyright laws say. Scientology is just a great example of precisely *why* these laws are fucked. People have a right to know what kind of gibberish they're going to be brainwashed into believing *before* they join a cult or a "religion." People have a right to know what kind of code they're buying *before* they buy it. People have the right to decrypt DVDs they buy and use them on any operating system.
Copyright law basically says this is all illegal. Fuck copyright law. But do it in a favorable jurisdiction. Unfortunately Slashdot has to exist in an oppressive jurisdiction which is trying to force stupid laws like this down the throat of the rest of the world.
All I can say is the only hope we have now is foreign jurisdictions. America and American IP law is deeply, hopelessly fucked and nothing short of smashing it all will solve anything. Death to the "Intellectual Property" mafia, of whom the Scientology crime cult is only one of the more obnoxious representatives.
But your not in Rob's or even VA's position.
There are two distinct ways to fight injustice. The first is to go underground and literally fight a "guerrilla" war of sorts. Neither Rob or VA can do that. It just isn't possible. The second method is to meet your opponent on the battlefield. The problem is, this issue will not garner much media attention and thus popular support. Just look at the DeCSS case, believe it or not that case has better odds than this one ever could. The problem is the only way Slashdot can win is to get the DMCA declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or somehow manage to lobby enough Congressmen to repeal or ammend the DMCA. The former is unlikely and the latter will never happen. Congress doesn't like to admit they screwed up, and it usually takes until nearly everyone who voted in a law is gone before its repealed.
Not only would taking this case to court be a colossal waste of money, it would end up making the DMCA stonger through precedent. The old adage, "What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" applies more than ever to law. That which doesn't kill a law, only makes it stronger. Taking this to court would be a HUGE mistake.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
I have been a /. reader for while now and I have to say -- I have thought about stopping.
/., I become depressed for a while. When the DMCA first came out I thought -- "well, this should be interesting.. wonder how long it will take for it to be destroyed" and it is still giving me bad feelings today.
/. is so that one day, when all the crap is taken care of, I can see the joyful post that exclaims to the world that the DMCA is over...
Why? Because (almost without fail) whenever I read
The reason I still read
Quoted, 'cuz its got a score of 1...
/. fears the power of a million evil sychophants. Can we get John Travolta's thetans to speak up on this please? From what I have learned about this cult today, I am frankly a little worried that it be allowed to remain a bona fide religion enjoying tax-free status and governmental protections.
Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but at this point the trolls have a wonderful way of keeping slashdot admins busy. Instead of writing goatse.cx trolls, just paste in bits and pieces of L.Ron Hubbard's idiotic stories. What better way to DDOS slashdot than with lawyers?
I would hope that at least the administrators would have to be notified of a particular post first before they were required to delete the post. It should not be the job of admins to censor their own free forum, but the responsibility of those offended to speak up and ask that each and every offense be retracted.
That is, if we live in a sane society.
In any case, I hope that CoS would have reason to fear the awesome power of a million pissed-off nerds as much as
Shouldn't a religion be exempt from copyright protections for reasons such as this very example?
Not that this post will ever get read, being one among THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS, but perhaps someone will read it (hopefully not a clam, tho, would hate to have that bunch on my tail...)
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
By way of example, if Microsoft had the forsight to copyright their infamous "Halloween Documents", the Justice Department's case against them would have been considerably weaker.
If somebody is engaging in fraud or other illegal activities, documents which incriminate them that leak out should be considered fair game to republish as an act of critical speech.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Or, could anybody please post a piece of C code (or is it perl) which I'm sure exists. It has variables named after certain words from English, and coincidentally certain space beings. It's a funny piece of code because it almost reads like English. Anyway, it does something useful and I'd like to use it.
Our lawyers tell us that it appears to be a violation of Copyright law,
How can your lawyers think it's a copy of a copyrighted work unless the crazy cultists provided a copy of the original text to compare against? Could you post that as part of your full disclosure of the case? They sent it to you.
we simply can't defend an anonymous poster who violates copyright law.
In taking down the deleted story, is Slash also turning the IP address of the poster over to the bad guys?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You might like this: " Scientologists believe that most human problems can be traced to lingering spirits of an extraterrestrial people massacred by their ruler, Xenu, over 75 million years ago. These spirits attach themselves by "clusters" to individuals in the contemporary world, causing spiritual harm and negatively influencing the lives of their hosts ". USDJ Judge Leonie Brinkema 4 Oct 96 Memorandum Opinion, RTC vs Lerma I originally scanned and posted the OTIII crap see http://www.lermanet.com/cos/wpost.html arnie lerma
While I am not the person who moderated it (and for better or worse, the moderator can't directly defend his/her moderation without undoing said moderation), it does strike me that reposting text to Slashdot that Slashdot is receiving cease-and-desist letters over is just asking for trouble and creating more work for the people who run this site.
It's also worth pointing out that the initial post that this entire thread is built off of, which got moderated up to (+5, Informative), should really be (-1, Redundant) as anyone capable of reading paragraph 6 of the main Slashdot article can see.
According to this webpage they're protecting us all from dying from pneumonia!!!
Quoted:
"Anyone who encounters this material without having undertaken Scientology courses up to OT 2 will supposedly die from pneumonia."
---
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
The difference here is that the portion of the DMCA that makes it clear that Slashdot needs to remove the offening OT III post is Constitutionally sound (at least to my non-lawyerly point of view). Neither the Constitution nor any copyright law from the last 200 years make any allowances for fully quoting any copyrighted document without permission. This particular instance does not fall under even the most stretched notion of Fair Use. There was no discussion of the document, there was no discussion of Scientology. It is no different than if I start posting poems from literary journals. Even if credit is given, this is simply copying.
For everyone trying to draw some parallel to DeCSS and trotting out some slippery slope argument about the impending death of Freedom on Slashdot, it seems to me that the fight for DeCSS is something that Slashdot has repeatedly been willing to undertake, based on the notion that the portion of the DMCA that forbids sharing DeCSS code is clearly in contradiction of Fair Use, and may well be unconstitutional.
I do not have a signature
Keeping
D.M.C.A.
used as weapon; Taco bends
but he never breaks
I'm not sure why /. is trying to blame all this on DMCA, since the Church of Scientology has been suing their^W enemies^W people for copyright infringment for years. It certainly didn't start after the DMCA came about.
All things considered, CmdrTaco, I think you did the smartest thing. While this is distasteful to all of us, as you say, it's just as important to know when not to fight as it is to fight hard when important principles are at stake.
Onorio Catenacci
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
-- Stan Dunn
Suppose I start a Church of Moderation, right here:
OT I: Offtopic (-1)
OT II: Overrated (-1)
OT III: Troll (-1)
OT IV: Flamebait (-1)
OT V: Funny (+1)
Co$ moles would see this as a threat and bury it, thus ending enterprise, other moderators would be none the wiser, assuming this post got what it deserved. Who needs the DMCA when that can happen.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Kudos to Taco for taking a crappy situation and making the best of it.
I echo his call for people to write to there rep/sentor; remmeber: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
The Mormon Church -- er, I mean, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"* -- once pulled a similar feat when they sued to get Jerald and Sandra Tanner (two of their most prominent critics) to remove several pages of copyrighted material. The material was from the General Handbook of Instruction, a book of procedures and policies used by LDS bishops, and it described how to get one's name removed from the records of the Church.
So the Mormon Church sued, the Tanners took down the material after a protracted legal battle, replacing it with a link and later with a summary of the material. Meanwhile, hits to their website tripled, and it became very popular in "anti-Mormon" circles for everyone to have their own electronic copy of the General Handbook of Instruction. The Tanners have a summary of the whole legal battle, for anyone interested. I think it's relevant to the discussion because they discovered that linking to the copyrighted material -- as /. has -- still opened them up to liability.
* Lately, "The Church" has been strangely obsessed with media outlets using its "proper name."
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I'm not going to flame you, but I think I should have my say. To be fair, I am Catholic, so I have an admitedly biased look on religion, but here we go anyway.
I'm very sorry you feel the way you do. I have studied, and have found no good alternative to religion. Modern philosophers have tried to justify the non-existance of God with moderate success (ei. Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus), but none have ever given a satisfactory answer to the continuation of human existance. Albert Camus wrote an essay on this very subject in The Myth of Sysiphus and other plays in which he asks, If there is no God, and life is absurd (without any higher meaning), then should we all commit suicide? He did not give an answer to my satisfaction. He used this as a jumping off point to create a way of living that knew no rules, no obligation to anyone, and no feelings for other people. This is not how I choose to live my life.
Camus originally hated religion. He called religion "philosophical suicide" meaning that you left reason when you "got religion". Even Camus changed his mind. He did not become religious, but he did come to have respect for the religious during WWII when he joined the french underground. He no longer thought they were without reason, but rather they accepted fate in a way that others did not.
To conclude, I think it should be stated that the real danger is not religion, but blind following. If you are religious, research. Research your faith and see the reasons behind what they do. That is the rational approach.
Gotta Go.
Zeus_tfc
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
The problem with this is that Senator Hatch _is not_ representing the public interest in his dealings, but rather special interests _just like_ those of scientologists. In fact, when France was investigating scientologist's legal terroism tactics, he defended them.
He is responsible for the CTEA (written by Hatch). More here.
He co-authored the DMCA that's making slashdot fold. More here.
He's also responsible for this juicy piece
You can count on only one thing from this politician.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You can tell that "cult in control" in a religion is in full effect when;
y berlaw/10law.html
1) They want to hide from you unfavorable opinions - from todays Salt Lake Tribune;
Somebody Blinked
CNN has pulled from its Web site a story alleging Utah is a difficult place to live because of the influence of the LDS Church. It was pulled after a stinging response sent by Bruce Olsen, managing director of the church's Public Affairs Department. He wrote: "Not only have you insulted the 11 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but you have done harm to the economic development of Salt Lake City with your misleading report."
Olsen forwarded his response to the Anti-Defamation League, the National Conference for Community and Justice, the Columbia Journalism Review and the Utah Division of Business and Economic Development.
2) Or stop you from learning how to leave their cult (NY times article);
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/cyber/c
Compared to CNN, the guys at Slashdot are true warriors.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that this happened, but I, for one, understand. Kudos to Taco for being so forthright about it, spelling errors and all. ;-)
Perhaps, to avoid this in the future, someone should look at archiving /. to an eternity service - one that would distribute, encrypt, and hide portions of all posts on many servers, disallowing deletion or even location of a specific post, but allowing free retrieval, if such a thing is possible. Anyone have links or specific knowledge regarding the existence or possiblity of such a thing?
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
The comment itself probably didn't get anywhere near the exposure the headline and removal will get. So, while it may seem that our boys at /. have sold-out or are spineless, I see it as creative rebellion.
I am, however, slightly worried about the implications of editorial control over the forums now. Does this mean the common carrier defense is no longer valid? Personally, I don't think so, simply because in this case, they were alerted to the problem, then asked to remove. If they had noticed it themselves, then removed it, I'd be taking a different stand....
Mad about writings
on Slashdot, seems as though my
thetans are still here.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
One of L. Ron Hubbards tenets for dealing with enemies (this is published literature internal to the Church) is to sure people until they lack the financial means to resist you any longer.
They have systemematically destroyed the lives of many, many opponents through years of legal maneuvering and stalling to make a simple legal suit take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Most average people simply lack the funds to support that kind of wrangling for long times.
This space for rent.
Trust the source!
Here is the full text. Also Understand I'm posting this comment as a citizen of Maldives and that Church of Scientology would not have jurisdiction over me or my comments.
Trust the source!
Fisherman's Affidavit Sorry I couldnt past it cause of lameness filter.
Trust the source!
Even with Disney's and others massive lobbying to extend it... :-)
The CoS texts, on the other hand have been written in recent years, and has the same copyright protection as any other work. You may not agree that an organization claiming to be a church should be allowed to use copyright protection, but most religious organizations do - just rarely for their core religious texts.
But I suspect thats more a result of the age of most established religions, than a lack of interest in using copyright to protect income.
In this case the DMCA is requiring that Slashdot take down a document that is posted in blatant violation of copyright law. You may not agree that that should be illegal, buth IMHO, the DeCSS case stands a lot better chance of affecting the DMCA than something like this.
The real problem here is the DMCA.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer)
I second that. The poster had no right to make the association between the Holocaust and Christianity.
Anybody who believes that Jewish people were the only ones affected are being naive. My own grandmother, a Catholic, was taken from her own home in Ukraine when she was a teenager and moved to a Nazi slave camp during the Holocaust. Following the war, thousands of Ukrainians from this camp were slaughtered on the way out by the Russions (who claimed that they were going to take them back to Ukraine). My grandparents (having leared about this from the grapevine) both escaped this fate by claiming to be Polish, and were subsequently sent to England.
Do not dare to minimize that or claim that it didn't happen. To do so is a grave insult to everything that they had to endure.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
*Comment removed by The Church of Scientology for violating Section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. All your rights are belong to us. And now that we're friends, come join us in our religion. Remember, if it wasn't for us, there would be no Battlefield Earth*
This action by Slashdot is not the end of Slashdot, nor is it legally binding (IANAL). It is nothing more than a prudent move in our current "Freedom of Speech" climate.
As we all know, Freedom of Speech does not exist in this country. When the constitution reads "Congress shall make 'no' law...", and those in congress interpret this as "Congress shall make 'some' laws...", then a move made to preserve your own existence could only be called prudent. We have to choose our battles.... in this case the comment itself was removed, but links can be provided and instructions for how to obtain the text through serch engines can also be provided.
One does not weather a storm by attempting to sail through it at full sail.
I'll add a sig just as soon as I clean up this room...