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Wayback Machine Purged of Scientology Criticism
muldrake writes "The Wayback Machine, an archive of websites as they appeared in their past incarnations, is reported by CNET in this story as having censored the Scientology-critical Xenu.net, in a repeat of the heavy-handed tactics used against Google as reported in this previous Slashdot thread."
http://www.clambake.org/
Operation Clam Bake. Wanna know an interestin fact? Scientologists believe we evolved from clams. Hence the name of the site "Clam Bake".
This guy has balls taking on this cult. I'm surprised they have put a hit on him. I mean Travolta was a bad mofo in Pulp Fiction.
LawMeme not only has a detailed report with lots of links, they have suggestions on what archivel.org should do. See, Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine for Scientology .
While we understand that the organization behind the Wayback Machine does not want to unwittingly contribute to copyright infringement, we are distressed by the way in which the removal of our site was conducted, and the lack of feedback that we received from archive.org when we questioned this decision earlier this year.
When a Wayback Machine user attempts to access the archived version of SlatkinFraud.com, they are instead provided with a misleading message claiming that the 'site owners' requested that it not be included in the archive. This is wholly untrue, and entirely in contradiction to the actual views of the website owners in question, who would very much like to see our site become part of the Internet Archive. The material contained within SlatkinFraud.com is wholly owned and maintained by its site owners.
Unfortunately, as has become clear in recent days, SlatkinFraud.com is not the only site that has been summarily removed from the Archive based on complaints from the Church of Scientology. In the explanation recently provided by archive.org, the writer notes that the Church "asserted ownership" of an unknown quantity of material that was, at the time, available through the Wayback Machine archives. The maintainers of archive.org, however, have apparently made no effort whatsoever to inform site owners of these complaints lodged against their material, and in fact, until now, had not even replied to direct questions regarding the removal of certain sites when asked by the site owners in question.
This is clearly not an acceptable system for determining what sites or material should be archived by the Wayback Machine, since it does not adhere to one of the main provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: the counter-notification process.
Under the DMCA, the owner of a site that has been alleged to contain infringing material has the right to challenge that claim via a counternotification letter to the hosting ISP if he or she believes that the material in question does not infringe on the copyright in question. After receiving this counter-notification from the user, the ISP is obliged to replace any files that were temporarily removed pending the complaint, at which point the original complainant must either initiate formal legal action against the owner of the site, or drop the matter entirely.
This system provides an important check to the sometimes perilous balance between the rights of copyright owners, and those of users. By formalizing the process, and allowing a response from the individual responsible for the alleged infringement, it frees the hosting company from the annoyance of dealing with frivolous claims.
A similar situation that arose resulted from similar complaints made by Church of Scientology lawyers about certain listings on the popular search engine Google. These complaints initially resulted in the wholesale removal of several Scientology-related sites from the Google database. Once this omission was discovered, the decision taken by Google to remove the sites without notice led to an outcry from its users. In fact, on closer examination of the complaints from Scientology, it became immediately obvious that the Church's lawyers were acting in bad faith by deliberately mixing trademark and copyright complaints, even though trademark complaints are not covered under the DMCA at all.
The ensuing barrage of criticism and media coverage both national and international forced Google to reconsider its decision. After several days, the company replaced the links in question, and agreed to make public any further DMCA complaints in cooperation with Chilling Effects, a non-profit website dedicated to preventing abuse of existing copyright law. This solution was welcomed by Google users, who had felt betrayed not only by the removal itself, but by the lack of disclosure on the part of Google regarding the initial complaints.
The explanation offered by the Internet Archive does not mention whether the original complaints received from the Church of Scientology were made under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Such information would be helpful to site owners such as ourselves, as it would assist us in determining whether a complaint is justified, and remove any infringing material on our own volition.
Assuming that it was, in fact, a DMCA request, it would serve archive.org well to follow the same procedure as that eventually and successfully - - adopted by Google, and make every effort to inform site owners of such complaints in a timely manner. This could be done through a simple email alert system that would inform the site owner that a complaint had been made, or through a similar policy to that of Google, and publicizing the letters, either on the archive.org website itself or through an interested third party such as Chilling Effects.
This would allow the site owners to decide whether or not to issue a counter-notification, and relieve the Internet Archive of any concerns over contributory liability that may have played a role in its decision to remove the material without warning. It would also discourage copyright owners from making frivolous complaints about material that is obviously protected by fair use, since the process requires that formal legal action be taken within thirty days of receiving the counter notification letter.
Should archive.org decide not to re-list a site within the Wayback Machine at this point, which is, of course, its right, it should also refrain from suggesting that this was at the request of the site owner, and instead, explain its own concerns over potential infringement.
Finally, given the enormity of the Internet Archive project, and the benefits that it has provided, and, we hope, will continue to provide to the online community, it is essential for the Library maintainers to be open and transparent about the methodology used in selecting sites to be archived. Removing sites from the archive in a clandestine fashion, as dictated by the current policy, will only lead to increased concern that the Archive itself is rewriting the Internet history that it seeks to chronicle.
The Internet Archive's stated commitment is to provide a useful, wide-ranging resource for researchers, historians and scholars. It is surely in part due to such an admirable mandate that the Internet Archive has benefited from contributions from sponsors such as Alexa Internet, AT&T, Compaq and Xerox PARC, not to mention many individual supporters who believe in the idea of an Internet history that is freely accessible to all. It is doubtful that these supporters would want to see this ambitious initiative tainted by the suggestion that the integrity of the archive itself has been corrupted by those who would misuse copyright and trademark laws to censor views with which they disagree. The risk of such silent, selective discrimination against protected speech is great; the power to prevent such abuses by making all information related to such attempts to discriminate will always be greater.
Clearly, the best course of action is for the Internet Archive to adopt policy that is not only transparent, but dedicated to protecting not only its own interests, but those of copyright owners, site creators and, of course, the thousands of individuals who use the Wayback Machine and other Internet Archive services on a daily basis. On balance, the approach taken by Google, modified appropriately for the particular situation faced by the Internet Archive, would seem to be an excellent roadmap for the Internet Archive to follow.
Kady O'Malley, Dave Touretzky, and Scott Pilutik
Owners of Slatkinfraud.com
Find information about scientology at
g /2 //n tisc ient/5//P AgM/xenu2/ /
freenet:SSK@Zl388MATYv0Ah8GY6I2GuuNJapYPAgM/bor
freenet:SSK@WRhGF3h0ijFh1eVJnFu~H9OyIpAPAgM/a
freenet:SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0
on freenet.
Apparently the deal is that A. they feel they have the right to copyright whatever they want (as I religious institution, I have my doubts about that) but also B. their beliefs are that if you hear the "higher level" teachings before you are ready, you will become sick and die. That's why it's always important to let a low-level Scientology "preclear" know that your consciousness is made up of many spirits called "thetans" from outer space who were banished to this planet billions of years ago by the evil galactic overlord Xenu. Then ask them if they are feeling well.
"Thank you, God, for your healing gift of religion."
Read all about it over in their forums in this thread.
Slashdot HAS been targeted. One of the very few times that content has been deleted from Slashdot instead of just being modded into oblivion was in response to a Scientology lawsuit.
And at that point, when said person has nothing much to live for anymore and certainly nothing to lose, Scientology HQ will go up in a big orange-red ball of ammonium nitrate and diesel oil.
Frankly, I'm surprised that it hasn't happened already. But with their present behavior, it's only a matter of time.
Don't even joke about this kind of stuff - Keith Henson was convicted in California of religious intolerance for someone else cracking a joke on alt.religion.scientology about passing by the headquarters of Golden Era Productions (a Scientology front company) with a "Tom Cruise Missile", and published the coordinates for the complex, along with the occasional protest of Scientology orgs. He was convicted, and bolted to Canada. Last I heard, he applied for refugee status.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
In a very real way, the Church of Scientology is waging a Crusade on the Internet. Its knights are lawyers, its swords are copyright law, and its Holy Land is an Internet the Church can control.
Well, the Raging Clueless Cult will never silence this heathen. Muahahaha!
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
What was the Church of Scientology thinking?
Allow me to point to two earlier postings to explain why Scientology does this:
They make enemies because they need enemies
Scientology is a pyramid scheme. The product? paranoia.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
I should really make this a text file so I don't have to type it each time...
The McDonald's case, although popular belief would hold otherwise, was actually a reasonably good decision. The story brought to the jury, which is all that is allowed to be decided upon, goes as such. The lady recieved second and third degree burns all around her lower torso and legs, to the extent that quite a bit of plastic surgery was required. However even including reimbursment for medical bills and pain and suffering the compensatory damage was very small (160,000 USD). I think almost everyone can agree that was probably fair, since it compensates her for her lost time, and expenses. The rest of the judgement was punative, and was intended to punish the McDonalds corporation for their behavior. Keep in mind that the verdict was probably calculated as a result of McDonald's finances. It was later reduced to 3 times compensatory damages.
What sort of behavior would incite a jury to want to punish the company like that? Well, first of all realize that coffee is usually served around 160 F (~71 C), which will not produce the burns she suffered. The coffee was estimated to be about 190 F (~87 C), by medical experts, from the nature and severity of the burns. McDonald's was not errant in keeping their coffee this hot, it was corporate policy. The policy was designed to save money, because hotter coffee lasted longer before dispoal was required. The jury deemed this action so negligent that they decided to punish the company, hense the judgement.
You can read much more than I wish to type here, at a consumer's attorney page here.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Warning! Top Secret Clam facts are about to be exposed.
This may cause jaw pain and extreme cases of uncontrolled
laughter.
All over the internet, the latest question due to well known
controversies originating from alt.religion.scientology seems to
be, "What is this bit about clams?" "Why do people on ARS think
this is funny?", and the ever popular, "Can I be in on the joke?"
Well, here are some answers to all of this and more.
L. Ron Hubbard late in 1952 wrote a book called "What To Audit",
later renamed "The History Of Man". It is still sold by the
Church Of Scientology and this book contains many of the basic
beliefs of the Church Of Scientology. It is considered by many
connosieurs of kook literature as a true classic of kook nonsense
and it is well worth looking for this book in used books stores
if you are indeed interested in a book that proves that there isn't
anything so stupid that people won't believe in it if it's in a book.
L. Ron Hubbard in the introduction claimed it was "a cold blooded
look at your last 60 trillion years." How could this be wrong?
He also claimed his book finally proved the theory of evolution.
(Patience, we will get to them clams soon enough.)
This following excert of History Of Man is taken from the book
Bare Faced Messiah by Russell Miller, a fine book for the neophyte
Scientologist watcher and clam afficionado.
Thanks also to Diane Richardson who originally typed this excerpt
up and posted it to ARS.
In a narrative style that wobbled uncertainly between
schoolboy fiction and a pseudo-scientific medical paper,
Hubbard sought to explain the the human body was occupied by
both a thetan and a 'genetic entity', or GE, a sort of low-
grade soul located more or less in the centre of the body.
To underpin his new science, Hubbard created an entire
cosmology, the essence of which was that the true self of
an individual was an immortal, omniscient and ominpotent
entity called a 'thetan'. In existence before the beginning
of time, thetans picked up and discarded millions of bodies
over trillions of years.
('The genetic entity apparently enters the protoplasm line
some two days or a week prior to conception. There is some
evidence that the GE is actually double, one entering on the
sperm side...') The GE carried on through the evolutionary
line, 'usually on the same planet', whereas the thetan only
came to earth about 35,000 years ago to supervise the
development of caveman into homo sapiens. Thus the GE was
once 'an anthropoid in the deep forests of forgetten
continents or a mollusc seeking to survive on the shore of
some lost sea'. The discovery of the GE (Hubbard hailed
every fanciful new idea as a 'discovery') 'makes it possible
at last to vindicate the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin'.
Much of the book was devoted to a re-working of evolution,
starting with 'an atom, complete with electronic rings'
after which came cosmic impact producing a 'photon
converter', the first single-cell creature, then seaweed,
jellyfish and the clam.
^^^^^^ Look! Clams!
Many engrams, for example, could be traced back to clams.
The clam's big problem was that there was a conflict
between the hinge that wanted to open and the hinge that
wanted to close. It was easy to restimulate the engram
caused by the defeat of the weaker hinge, Hubbard pronounced,
by asking a pre-clear to imagine a clam on a beach opening
and closing its shell very rapidly and at the same time
making an opening and closing motion with thumb and
forefinger. This gesture, he said, would upset large
numbers of people.
'By the way,' he warned, 'your discussion of these incidents
with the uninitiated in Scientology can cause havoc.
Should you describe the "clam" to some one [sic], you may
restimulate it in him to the extent of causing severe jaw
pain. Once such victim, after hearing about a clam death,
could not use his jaws for three days.'
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Does your jaw ache, dear reader?
Bwahahahhahahahaha!
Clams! And people pay to be taught stuff like this from silly lads
who believe stuff like this. And they claim it is science!
And a religion! Low level Scientologists are discouraged from
reading this book and are told it will all be explained later
when they are ready to understand the higher secrets of Scientology.
'Clam' is a word used on alt.religion.scientology to describe
scientologists who believe stuff like this and explains the rash of
clam jokes of alt.religion.scientology.
More secrets of Scientology:
After the clam became the 'Weeper' or the 'Boohoo', a
mollusc that rolled in the surf for half a million years,
pumping sea water out of its shell as it breathed, hence
its name. Weepers had 'trillions of misadventures',
prominent among them the anxiety caused by trying to gulp
air before being swamped by the next wave. 'The inability
of a pre-clear to cry,' Hubbard explained, 'is partly a
hang-up in the Weeper. He is about to be hit by a wave,
has his eyes full of sand or is frightened about opening
his shell because he may be hit.'
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Progressing along the genetic time-track, evolution arrived
at the sloth, which 'had bad times falling out of trees',
the ape and the famous Piltdown Man, which was the cause
of a multitude of engrams, ranging from obsessions about
biting to family problems. These could be traced back to
the fact that 'the Piltdown teeth were enormous and he was
quite careless as to whom and what he bit.' Indeed, so
careless was the Piltdown Man, Hubbard recorded, that he
was sometimes guilty of 'eating one's wife and other
somewhat illogical activities.' (Unfortunately
for Hubbard, just twelve months after The History of Man
was published, the supposed fossil remains of primitive
man found in gravel on Piltdown Common in the south of
England were exposed as a hoax. The Piltdown Man had
never existed.
The History of Man drifted into pure science fiction when
Hubbard came to the point of explaining how thetans
moved from body to body. Thetans abandoned bodies earlier
than GEs, it appeared. While the GE stayed around to see
the body through to death, thetans were obliged to report
to a between-lives 'implant station' where they were
implanted with a variety of control phases while waiting
to pick up another body, sometimes in competition with
other disembodied thetans. Hubbard revealed that most
implant stations were on Mars, although women occasionally
had to report elsewhere in the solar system and there
was a 'Martian implant station somewhere in the Pyrenees'.
Well, there you have it. How can we deny the genius of
L.Ron Hubbard? The thoughtful and useful ideas he taught
the world? He obvious deep learning and careful judgement?
The certain correctness and amazing insights of the basic beliefs
of Scientology?
More tartar sauce with your clams?
Poor Little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor Little Clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Pope Charles
SubGenius Pope Of Houston
Slack!
Actually, $cientology lost one recently. A court case, started back in the 80's, which cult head David Miscavaige promised "Not one thin dime for Wollersheim", was finally resolved this year when $cientology paid 86,748,430 thin dimes ($8,674,848) to Lawrence Wollersheim after the long battle. He originally won $30 million in a lawsuit, but was later reduced to $2.5 million on appeal. $cientology drained the assets out of the "Church of $cientology of California", then claimed bankruptcy, forcing long drawn out proceedings to extend the judgement to the receivers of C$C of California's assets.
As Wollersheim prepared to expose $cientology's true corporate structure, $cientology paid the $2.5 million, plus stautatory interest of 10% since judgement (hence the $8.6 million award).
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs