Dutch Court Rules That Linking Is Legal In Scientology Case

touretzky writes "The Court of Appeal in The Hague today rejected all of Scientology's claims in appeal in Scientology's action against XS4ALL, Karin Spaink and ten other internet providers. As a result, Karin Spaink's website, which Scientology sought to remove from the Internet based on copyright claims, is entirely legal in the Netherlands. The court also overturned two lower court rulings, one of which said that linking to material that infringed a copyright was itself actionable. The other ruling said that ISPs that failed to act on credible notification of a copyright violation could be held liable for that. The Appeals Court felt that this was too vague a standard, and thus posed a threat to free speech. More info at ScientologyWatch.org."

Comments

A bad decision

[egg troll]

I'll be the first to say that Scientology is evil. However, I'm distressed by this court's decision. For example, if I were to post an entire album by $BAND along with a critique, everyone would agree that this was copyright infringement.

Of course, this is Slashdot where all copyrights are bad, so I expect this post to drown in a sea of downmods. Still, I feel that I need to point out that this decision doesn't sit well with me.

Re:A bad decision

[Nels]

What makes you extend this to posting an entire album? What about fair use? Simply because the website posted portions of copyrighted material doesn't mean it's illegal. Also, another important thing is parody. I'm not familiar with the website, but if it could in any way be construed as a parody, it would be completely legit.
We aren't against all copyrights (most of us anyways). We just don't like it when copyright owners try to make us use their information exactly as they wish and not to critique it with excerpts.

Re:A bad decision

[serps]

However, I'm distressed by this court's decision. For example, if I were to post an entire album by $BAND along with a critique, everyone would agree that this was copyright infringement.

Everyone does (assuming you don't have permission from $BAND). However, the court upheld the right to post links to other sites, which is not the same thing.

Re:A bad decision

[kevinz]

I've got one modpoint left, so I could mod you down, but that would prevent me from asking if you even read the slashdot article, much less the linked article. Besides, it'll happen anyway.

Based on what the article says, what you are really saying is that if you posted a review of $BAND with a link to the illegal posting of the entire album that your ISP should be held liable for copywrite infringement. That argument doesn't wash with me; the ISP should be considered a common carrier and nothing more.

This has nothing to do with Scientology and everything to do with protecting those entities that provide access to content providers. The fact that some copywrite holders (RIAA, Sceintology, etc) think that it is easier and cheaper to attach the bandwith provider than it is to attach the content providers does not make such actions justified. This is a good decision that should be mirrored in the US. I've got my fingers crossed....

Re:A bad decision

[eht]

You haven't been here long enough...

All copyrights are bad except things copyrighted by the GPL.

Re:A bad decision

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with copyright infringement. This has to do with publishing of PUBLIC COURT DOCUMENTS. RTFA.

Re:A bad decision

[anagama]

Not the same at all.

May I suggest following the link? The "Fishman Affidavit" is a court record - a public document. Here, I'll help you out a little:

When Fishman was then brought to court, he used parts of Scientology-documents to prove he had been brainwashed by the Church. These Scientology documents thereby became public material: anybody could go to the court library and read them. The Church, fearing that its sacred secrets would be revealed, had some of their people going to the library every day to borrow these documents, thereby preventing other people (read: non-Scientologists) from reading them. Nevertheless, the Fishman Affidavit got copied (it was also available through the clerk of the court, for a mere $36.50). Somebody retrieved the affidavit via the clerk, scanned it, and posted it to the net. The Fishman Affidavit has been travelling on the Internet ever since.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

GPL is a defensive copyright.

if we abolished all copyright (and patents) completely then we wouldn't need GPL.

Therefore it is not inconsistent to be against copyright and for GPL copyleft.

Re:A bad decision

[Kenja]

Ok, let me strap myself in for this one.

Please explain what would stop someone from taking a GPLd work, sticking their name on it, compiling it, claiming it was there own and selling it if there where no copyrights?

Re:A bad decision

[aardvarkjoe]

Untrue. If copyright was abolished, then there would be nothing stopping people from releasing binaries without source code. Stallman would have a fit.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

nothing.

nothing to stop you compiling and selling a GPL'd work right now.

Right now you can't claim ownership and stop other people redistributing it (for free or by sale).

If there were no copyright you wouldn't have to worry about that.

Re:A bad decision

[Kenja]

Sure there is, the GPL. Which is backed up by copyright laws. It would be illigal for me to claim open source work as my own if I did not in fact create it. You get rid of copyright and the GPL can no longer be enforced so there is no more open source since anything you release can be made into a non opensource product.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

yes but no-one would be forced to use their rotten binaries.

GPL is primarily a social contract, as I said, teh copyright aspects are primarily defensive.

i *have* read the colelcted essays of RMS - whether I understood them properly only time will tell.

My understanding is that the GPL is a response to copyright laws.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

the GPL is a response to copyright.

yes you can turn the code into a non-opensource product, but the code is still free, if someone else gets it (in a no copyright world) then they too can do what they want with it.

release it as anything they damn well please.

if there was no copyright no-one would have needed to invent the GPL.

Re:A bad decision

[aardvarkjoe]

yes but no-one would be forced to use their rotten binaries.
... I don't see what that has to do with what I said. Stallman is the "GNU/Free Software" guy, remember? His primary goal is to make the source code for all software available (in fact, he wants to make it illegal to distribute something without source code -- even if I wrote the thing myself.)

He sometimes claims that his purpose is to destroy copyright, but he wants more than that -- he wants copyright replaced with a system that enforces his particular views.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

"he wants to make it illegal to distribute something without source code -- even if I wrote the thing myself"

only if you wrote it and used other people's GPL'd code.

My understanding is that those provisions are defensive in the current environment.

Without copyright anyone could redistribute and use your binaries tho, so why not release the source?

Re:A bad decision

[aardvarkjoe]

For someone who has read Stallman's essays, you sure don't understand his beliefs.

only if you wrote it and used other people's GPL'd code.

No. (Remember, in this post-copyright world, there is no GPL.) Right now, that's all the GPL enforces. However, I meant exactly what I said. RMS claims that it is immoral to release binaries without source code, and thus it should be forbidden. If I write something completely from scratch, and Stallman becomes king, it will be illegal for me to distribute the compiled binaries without giving away my source code.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

while I hesitate to speak for others,

my understanding is that stallman believes that the moral thing for you to do is to release the source.

that does not necesarily mean you should be forced to do so on pain of incarceration.

Of course it also means he thinks it would be immoral for others to choose to use your closed software.

don't mistake important things like right and wrong for trivial things like the current law of the day.

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.

Re:A bad decision

[Waffle Iron]

Please explain what would stop someone from taking a GPLd work, sticking their name on it, compiling it, claiming it was there own and selling it if there where no copyrights?

You can do that now with a GPLd program, except for claiming that you wrote it (since you have to retain the original copyright notices when you redistribute).

It's too late to remove copyright laws now (anybody who proposed such a thing would be accused of being some kind of communist). However, it would be interesting to go back to the late 18th century when the utility of copyrights was still under debate. If one could inform the people formulating these laws how much feature creep and freedom-restricting expansions the copyright concept would experience over the next 250 years, I wonder if they wouldn't put a clause in the constitution prohibiting copyrights.

In its place, very strong laws prohibiting false claims of authorship might have been put in place. (This would address the "claiming it as their own" problem you mentioned, and almost nobody would object to such a statute because it's basically fair.) Additionally, only the actual author or his licensees could produce copies labeled as "genuine". Other than that, anybody could produce copies of anything, as long as they weren't billed as genuine.

I would bet that over the centuries, this kind of copyrightless scheme would have supported plenty of content creation. It would tend to favor high quality works since people tend pay extra for genuine copies of the things that they enjoy most. The media industries would be smaller than they are today, but that's no real loss since 90% of everything put out right now is crap.

Re:A bad decision

[aardvarkjoe]

Well, I suppose that you can believe that he will be a benevolent dictator. Me, though, I'm going to vote for Kodos.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

I don't think he's ever expressed a desire to be king.

I'll admit I admire the way the man has saved the world from a potentially very dark place by sheer force of will and purpose and without anyone having to die.

Very few people have had the impact he's had with so little collateral damage.

You obviously feel personally threatened by the proposed model.

The point is that under stallmans model you aren't forced to trust anyone (although you may choose to).

Under your model people are forced to trust others.

The primacy today of the english speaking peoples has been a refusal to accept systems where trust is required.

That's not compatible with a world of pervasive secret software.

Re:A bad decision

[Anonymous Coward]

According to you:
GPL without Copyright Law = BSD Licence.

So, why not just use the BSD Licence?

(end troll)

Basically, you are on a bogus meme. Without copyright law, the FSF would come up with the General Public Contract or something that would preserve source code availability.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

So, why not just use the BSD Licence?

because we have copyright law of course.

Re:A bad decision

[aardvarkjoe]

"Personally threatened?" That's laughable. I release all my stuff under a BSD-style license, which is "freer" than the GPL -- people can do whatever the heck they want with it. Claiming that someone "feels threatened" when they disagree with something is a classic ad hominem attack.

You claim that he has "saved the world from a potentially very dark place." I don't buy it. His politics haven't done anything but create a bunch of people spouting his rhetoric. His software development has been much more successful, and I respect the amount of work he has put into it, but that doesn't mean that I have to accept his political views.

But this is way offtopic. The original discussion was "would abolishing copyright make the GPL unneccesary?" and somehow you've managed to get it to meander into condemning English-speakers for being untrusting.

Re:A bad decision

[Nels]

UPDATE: this may be redundant, but the scientology tracts on this woman's website are publicly available court documents, known as the "Fishman Affadavit" because of a court case involving a former scientologist and his contention that he committed crimes because he was brainwashed.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

Actually I'm praising english speakers for being untrusting.

Re:A bad decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, did this get way the hell off topic, but I just can't resist posting on this since special preferance based on skin color or ethnicity has always bothered me as well.

It seems like trying to balance things out by doing the same thing - two wrongs not making a right, and the etc.

Why can't we just judge whatever based on real criteria like ability or qualifications? Jeez. :P

I'm not the origional AC that started this, but I'll contribute since it's always irked me. Note that in the above I'm not talking about affirmative action in specific or WMD (whatever WMD is - Can't find anything in a quick google) since I honestly don't know exactly how either works and really don't care to find out. I always check the "sod off" box since I'd rather be taken on ability. ;)

Re:A bad decision

[squiggleslash]

While nobody's been brazen enough to claim a GPL'd work is their's after being caught, there certainly have been cases where companies have used GPL'd software and "forgotten" to credit it or include source code, and who were subsequently found out by eagle-eyed users of their goods. Linksys would be an example, one of their wireless routers runs a Linux kernel, something they "forgot" to mention to buyers. It was found out, Linksys were informed they may be in violation of the GPL if they didn't reveal the fact and release the source, and Linksys, belatedly, did the right thing.

So there are mechanisms to deal with this kind of situation.

Re:A bad decision

[boots@work]

While nobody's been brazen enough to claim a GPL'd work is their's after being caught,

I'm sorry to say it has happened. I had the displeasure of seeing Stephen Kapp rip off some free software, and I've heard of him doing it to other people too. And he's not the only one; I heard of something similar happening to Samba.

Re:A bad decision

[Sphere1952]

Well, this doesn't go back quite that far...

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY 1841

by Thomas Babington Macaulay

On the twenty-ninth of January 1841, Mr Serjeant Talfourd obtained leave to bring in a bill to amend the law of copyright. The object of this bill was to extend the term of copyright in a book to sixty years, reckoned from the death of the writer.

On the fifth of February Mr Serjeant Talfourd moved that the bill should be read a second time. In reply to him the following Speech was made. The bill was rejected by 45 votes to 38.

Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject with which political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my honourable and learned friend on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, and which he regards with a parental interest. These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under discussion. But as I am, on full consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it.

The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what principles the question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? Many of those who have written and petitioned against the existing state of things treat the question as one of right. The law of nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and imagination. The legislature has indeed the power to take away this property, just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial. But, as such an act of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal robbery.

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may. I am not prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for the public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right of property; and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the House. I agree, I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of the law, and that the law which creates property can be defended only on this ground, that it is a law beneficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary to debate that point. For, even if I believed in a natural right of property, independent of utility and anterior to legislation, I should still deny that this right could survive the original proprietor. Few, I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the most mystical and sentimental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there is a natural law of succession older and of higher authority than any human code. If there be, it is quite certain that we have abuses to reform much more serious than any connected with the question of copyright. For this natural law can be only one; and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions are twenty. To go no further than England, land generally descends to the eldest son. In Kent the sons share and share alike. In many districts the youngest takes the whole. Formerly a portion of a man's personal property was secured to his family; and it

Re:A bad decision

[Sphere1952]

It might be copyright infrigement, but I have every moral right to do it anyway. If I post the entire album I am engaging in non-commercial free speech -- even if my objective is to bring ruination to a commercial entity.

Re:A bad decision

[waterbear]

I'm distressed by this court's decision. For example, if I were to post an entire album by $BAND along with a critique, everyone would agree that this was copyright infringement.

It's a good decision. The point raised by your hypothetical situation is entirely different than the one that was decided just now. IMO it's a very good thing that at least in the Netherlands, the courts seem now to limit the ability of copyright holders to use legal procedures to hook in people who at the very least are not primary copyright-infringers. The decision limits the scope for IP holders to abuse their IP rights by treating them as tools to intimidate people from doing lawful things.

What seems a great pity is that some of the results of reported litigation have seemed linked to whether the defendant's activities are intrinsically sympathetic, not so much whether they breach the core purpose of the IP laws. The result is for example that litigation prospects for filesharing/ searching software can apparently be damaged by linking this activity -- fairly or unfairly -- with activities that Judge Joe Public finds generally unsympathetic.

In this kind of environment, these Scientology cases actually look like good news for parties representing freedom. The Scientology parties are such unattractive litigants, that their attempts to use IP rights as pretexts to bolster their unsavoury activities are likely to produce decisions in favour of freedom that limit the abuse of IP rights.

Re:A bad decision

[squiggleslash]

Please don't mod the above up, I misread the question.

Re:A bad decision

[edbarrett]

While nobody's been brazen enough to claim a GPL'd work is their's after being caught

Squiggleslash, this is SCO. SCO, Squiggleslash. I'll leave you two alone to talk for a bit. SCO here has an interesting story to tell you!

Re:A bad decision

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is not a copyright. It is a license. That is what the "L" stands for on the end of GPL. There is a huge difference between the two. I fear that you like many people simply consider the two to be the same. I think that's part of the reason some of the FUD from the SCO case seems to work on people.

Anyway, some of the important distinctions to understand are that a copyright basically limits most uses of a copyrighted work. As in those "All Rights Reserved" lables. A license is a mechanism for a copyright holder to give or restrict certain uses of their copyrighted material. The GPL is a somewhat unique license in that the copyright hodler gives the user very broad amounts of freedom to use their copyrighted work.

Re:A bad decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you have no idea what racism means, and then redefine racism so that you're not actually a racist, you are ignorant, and so you probably are a racist.

The fact that you and dictionary.com don't require racism to be systematic doesn't mean that the racism that affirmative action seeks to correct isn't systematic. And it doesn't change the fact that there are systematic attempts to deprive certain races of places of power.

Basically, you, your dictionary, and your white friends who agree with your dictionary do not get to determine what racism is.

Try and find out exactly what people are talking about when they call you racist. They're not talking about some pathetic prejudice that you don't think you participate in.

Re:A bad decision

[Esion Modnar]

For example, if I were to post an entire album by $BAND along with a critique, everyone would agree that this was copyright infringement.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but there's a big difference between posting an illegal copy of something on your website, and linking to some illegal posting on another person's website.

Maybe you could argue that by posting a link I'm facilitating copyright violations. It would be free speech to say "You can find this album here. Its illegal, and its not mine, but there it is if you want it."

Look at it this way: its illegal to run around in public with no clothes on, but its not illegal to point at the silly naked man.

Re:A bad decision

[cens0r]

But in a hypothetical world with no copyright (which is what is being discussed here) your license is meaningless because it doesn't have copyright law to enforce it.

Re:A bad decision

[mazur]

UPDATE: this may be redundant, but the scientology tracts on this woman's website are publicly available court documents, known as the "Fishman Affadavit" because of a court case

Yes, but that was

1. an USA ruling.
2. from later than the original legal action
3. doesn't stop Scientology from seeking to silence it's denouncers.

This article is about the judgement in the appeal of the judgement in the full procedure.

Mazur.

Re:A bad decision

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your outlook is that you have bought into the racist propaganda and been fooled into believing that affirmative action and quotas are the same thing.

Affirmative action is about creating equal opportunity, so quotas are in fact antithetical to affirmative action.

Re:A bad decision

[eht]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kang.

Re:A bad decision

[Registered Coward v2]

if we abolished all copyright (and patents) completely then we wouldn't need GPL.

Except then i can take the code, make whatever changes I want, sell it and not make my modified code available to anyone - since there would be no owner of the code. MS, could, for example, take whatever they wante dand incorporate it into Windows, keep Windows closed and there would be no recourse available for anyone who's code they took - since no one owns it.

Re:A bad decision

[child_of_mercy]

and anyone would be able to reverse engineer it, decompile it, or just give away the binaries to their friends

there would be no incentive to produce closed software.

Re:A bad decision

[NateTech]

I have moderator points right now, but there's nothing called "Idiotic Posting of something you already linked to" in the checkbox!

The link and an excerpt would have been plenty.

Of course, moderators can waste their points modding this reply as "Offtopic" as they'd like, but that's blatently obvious. ;-)

Re:A bad decision

[Hognoxious]

Affirmative action is about creating equal opportunity

No it isn't.

Selection on merit (merit alone, and nothing but merit) creates equal opportunity.

Affirmative action, at best, is an attempt to create equality of outcome.

Good to see.

[Endareth]

It seems to me that the two lower rulings being overturned is a great achievement. Linking to remote content almost defines what the web is! And making ISPs into police is always just asking for trouble. Well done the Hague!

Re:Good to see.

[Anonymous Coward]

The earlier rulings were upheld, not overturned. It was the Church of Scientology that was appealing.

"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[AEton]

A religion that has trade secrets is a little frightening. And if you believe even a fraction of what the Xenu people have to tell, it's more of a public service than anything else to expose the nonsense propaganda that this organization spreads.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, though, there's translations of the Bible that are copyrighted and these copyrights are enforced. Now if you go and translate it from Hebrew, Greek, and the other languages used in the original texts, then you own the copyright and aren't subject to any trouble. Furthermore, I don't think anyone could possibly claim ownership to such translations as the king James Version. Most of the books you see published about Christianity are copyrighted, as are most of the hymns, though. It's a little different with scientology, but it's not the only religion whose texts are copyrighted.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[TWX]

Remember, some European countries have deported all of the scientologists who are there for "religious work". I think that Germany was one of said countries.

Religion has typically tried to assimilate as many people as possible, pretty openly, into it's grasp. Scientology's attempts to do this through a corporate mentality should bite it in the ass.

Two things that religions shouldn't be allowed to do, in my opinion, are to engage in politics and to have inaccessible "trade secret" documentation. Even as fiscally based as many churches are in the U.S., it's not impossible to look at pretty much all of their published works and opinions. Organizations that claim spirituality yet violate these two borders should be required to have corporate licenses and be taxed, in my opinion.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your analogy is that these religions don't actually consider their copyrighted texts "Trade Secrets".

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully when you say that religions shouldn't be allowed to engage in politics, you mean that they can't function as a political party. They ought to be able to make donations to any candidate just like any other organization is able to, under the election laws. Just because they're a religion doesn't mean they should be treated any differently. Also, they should be allowed to stage demonstrations, especially on certain issues. Whether or not you agree with the opinions of most Christian churches on abortion, they should have the right to peacefully demonstrate about issues and get their members to mail congressmen in mass about these issues.

On the other hand, if they decide to act as a political party, then they should lose tax-exempt status and be dealt with like any business under the laws of that country.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

A religion that has trade secrets is a little frightening.

Even more frightening when you consider that it was founded by a hack science fiction writer (L. Ron Hubbard) at least in part to prove that he could, (I've heard mixed reports from contemporary SF writers as to whether a bet was involved or not), and in part for tax reasons. It's possible that it got more out of hand than he originally intended -- but he certainly seemed to enjoy his years as a cult leader.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Captain Sarcastic]

I have to agree with AEton above.

Religions are given a tax-exempt status on the grounds that they are pursuing a "higher truth," one that is supposed to be shared with others.

Not so with Scientology. Try looking for one of their texts in the public library, and you'll more often than not find them missing. They say that "the world isn't ready for these truths yet," but still believe that they should enjoy the protection granted to other religions that do make their messages freely available.

They can't have it both ways - either Scientology has trade secrets (in which case it is a business) or it doesn't (in which case it is a church).

Thud

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Babbster]

Individual biblical works may be copyrighted in the sense that I can't obtain them, photocopy/transcribe them and then distribute the copies...but nobody is going to sue me for either singing a hymn or spreading "The Word" in ANY language. If, on the other hand, I spread the "history" espoused at the top level of Scientology there's probably a better than even chance that I will be sued.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[donnz]

I get so confused by propaganda - is that the same religion that spreads the virgin birth and cannibalism nonsense...or are there others?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

If, on the other hand, I spread the "history" espoused at the top level of Scientology there's probably a better than even chance that I will be sued.

I think your chances of being sued are probably better than 100% actually.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[arvindn]

Absolutely. If anyone reading this hasn't already read the stuff at xenu.net, please please do so now to know what the CoS is really about. In fact, it is not a religion at all, but merely uses the pretense of religion as a veil for a massive and fraudulent operation of psychological abuse. The aim, of course, is to strip you of your last penny.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[pyrrhonist]

In all fairness, though, there's translations of the Bible that are copyrighted and these copyrights are enforced.

Yes, but the difference is that you are normally allowed to print up to 500 verses from these translations as long as you attribute the source. In non-profit printings, you can print as much as you want as long as you attribute the source. At least this is the way it is with the NIV and NRSB. Also, the text of the Bible is not secret. You can get it from multiple sources, with multiple translations, and some translations are in the public domain. No one will come after you if you link to it.

I don't think anyone could possibly claim ownership to such translations as the king James Version.

Nope, it's public domain: The KJV Bible

Most of the books you see published about Christianity are copyrighted

Uh, what's the point? Most books are copyrighted. A book about Christianity is not a sacred text.

as are most of the hymns, though.

As are most secular songs. Some hymns are also public domain. Hymns are not a major tenet of Christianity. They even differ from church to church within Christianity.

but it's not the only religion whose texts are copyrighted.

Christianity's texts aren't copyrighted. The Bible isn't copyrighted. Other Christian works such as the "Apostle's Creed" aren't copyrighted either. Some translations of Christian works are copyrighted, and some of them aren't.

Anyone can translate the Bible and publish it.
Anybody can get a copy of the KJV and publish it.
I guarantee that neither Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor John will sue your ass for publishing it.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely Sonny Bono wasn't the only person who couldn't see any reason why copyrights should ever run out. I bet people like Jack Valenti would likely agree. So by extension, there most likely are people who would see nothing wrong with someone (the anglican church? the british royals? heirs of the translators?) having copyright to the King James Version of the bible.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[TWX]

I believe that any financial transaction between a church and a political official or candidate (from the church, not necessarily to the church) should be barred. Of course, I believe that any funding contribution from any organized group, rather than from private donors, should be illegal. This isn't to say that organizations should be barred from encouraging people so that people themselves make contributions, but it should not be processed in any way through the organization, nor should the organization keep any records of "commits" or the like. They should be free to voice their opinions, but it should stop there. This is supposed to be a country governed by people and for people, not by corporate or organizational puppets for organizations and corporations.

Other countries call this sort of corporate contribution a bribe, and could go so far as to call accepting money like that treason.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. My point was, you ought to hold a church to the same rules you hold any other organization to. As long as it's legal for a company, special interest group, or other organization to contribute this way, it ought to be legal for a church to. I think we're in agreement, actually. :)

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

...but nobody is going to sue me for either singing a hymn or spreading "The Word" in ANY language.

This is because Christianity has lost it's power base. Remember they used to burn people alive for translating the bible from latin just because doing so allowed the actual doctrine to leak out to ordinary people.

Hidden secrets are common in religions. A cynic might say this is because the stuff whichis most obviously bollocks has to be kept from people who haven't yet been brainwashed into complete gullability, but I couldn't say such a thing or Hastur will ge.....

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, it is not a religion at all, but merely uses the pretense of religion as a veil for a massive and fraudulent operation of psychological abuse.

Which, I guess is, entirely different from an actual religion carrying out massive and fraudulent psychological abuse?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. My point was, you ought to hold a church to the same rules you hold any other organization to.

Agreed. Like taxes, for example.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[msevior]

The information in the Bible is the opposite of confidential!

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[JVert]

Well, I dont think its as black and white as it seems. There is always information witheld to the lower ranks in almost all religions, starting with christianity in the older days, the priest was the only one who was supposed to actually read the bible and translate it for you, that was their purpose, granted thats all changed now. However I beleive mormans withold information to those not of their own, and carry a "level" system similar to scientology, at least I make this assumtion based on the limited access to their temples from outsiders.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[capedgirardeau]

Ya, that is a description of every religion I know of:

Superior being, lives "up above" somehow
Get power or special priveledges
Get special treatment after death
Live forevever
Boogey man out to get you
Only we can save you
Give us money

Blah blah.

They are every much a religion as every other religion, and just like every other religion, if their practitions do something illegal, prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

No other religion would try to cover up its 'priests' did something illegal would they?

I am not a scientologist, but lets not be hypocrites when it comes to who's fairytale is the "real" one.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

...massive and fraudulent operation of psychological abuse... ...strip you of your last penny...

SCO?!
Microsoft?!
RMS?!

I'm so confused!

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[arvindn]

Which, I guess is, entirely different from an actual religion carrying out massive and fraudulent psychological abuse?

Your sarcasm is wasted on me - I'm an atheist myself. However, there is indeed a big difference between what the CoS is doing and, say, people who try to convince you of the creation myth. Do you understand the word "abuse"? Can't you see that it is different from "deceit"?

From Spaink's site:

Scientology urged him to get the money any which way he could. According to Fishman, they also assigned him to kill somebody, and failing that, ordered him to commit suicide.

Certainly there are other (pseudo) religions that carry out systematic psychological abuse, and I'm not condoning them: for example see this chilling article - sin and death in Mormon country; but then these are by far the exception rather than the rule.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Babbster]

It's not because Christianity has lost its power base (though the faith clearly doesn't have the direct power it used to have), rather it's because that religion has grown and changed over time. Evangelism is key to Christianity and said evangelism can't take placed without The Bible.

The key to scientology, however, is in getting as much money out of the mark as possible while revealing as little detail as possible - an odd system for a "religion" which purportedly wishes to maximize human potential and rid the world of all negativity.

Before anyone says it, yes, other religions take money and often "demand" it by making it a part of the religion. However, relatively few make that money the price of knowing the proverbial score. Were I Catholic, for example, I might be expected to tithe a percentage of my income. But, even if I didn't I would be able to not only read The Bible and attend services, my priest would be available to me for confession and other counseling when I needed it, not to mention that my fellow Catholics would be there for me when I need them. In scientology, there are times when you won't even be acknowledged by another scientologist without paying whatever money they are demanding.

There are incredible things in every religion. Every faith has its idiosyncracies. But most major religions are at least a little bit more - and a little bit better - than pyramid schemes with brainwashing thrown in.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because Christianity has lost it's power base. Remember they used to burn people alive for translating the bible from latin just because doing so allowed the actual doctrine to leak out to ordinary people.

And that lead to the reformation, political revolution, the Renaissance and 300 years of warring and other ugliness.

The net result was that Catholicism lost much of it's power base, but Christianity in general came out much stronger than it was before.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Babbster]

Here's a test to see if what you say is the truth or just a cynical "fairytale":

Walk into a Christian church, Islamic mosque or Jewish synagogue and ask if you can sit down in their place of worship and read The Bible, Koran or Torah. Then, walk into a Scientology office and ask if you can sit down in their place of worship and read the history of Xenu and the thetans. I'm willing to bet that any of the first three will be happy to accommodate you while the fourth will not - though the fourth might just offer you a personality test, the chance to watch a video starring L. Ron Hubbard and an introductory talk with an auditor...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

Evangelism is key to Christianity and said evangelism can't take placed without The Bible.

Clearly it tookplace for centuries without the bible. It is quite possible, even easier, to evangelise by letting only the evangeliser read the secrets and pass on only those which will be useful at this moment, preferably distorted to match the local situation.

Remember, the early church didn't have the bible, the first attempts to pull together a canonical collection was in the second century AD. Then for a long time it was the case that only the priesthood and educated laymen were given access to the bible.

That the marks^H^H^H^H^Hordinary believers should be allowed to read the secrets and convince themselves was one of the big innovations of the protestant reformers.

There are incredible things in every religion. Every faith has its idiosyncracies. But most major religions are at least a little bit more - and a little bit better - than pyramid schemes with brainwashing thrown in.

Take a walk around the vatican and ask where the money came from.

Scientology took it's model from Christianity and just sharpened up the operation, looking more like the church back when it still had teeth than the stumbling mess christianity now is.

But yes, most religions are not nearly as bad as Christainity and Scientology, I'd guess it was the close identification of christanity with the later roman empire which built it into such an efficiant command and control structure, or perhaps they learned a great deal from their enemies in Persia.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

The net result was that Catholicism lost much of it's power base, but Christianity in general came out much stronger than it was before.

Classical, dark ages and middle ages christianity was pervasive and a major power center, since then it has been all down hill.

Apart from the USA, christianity is a mildly amusing sideshow in all of the developed nations. Even the Irish have been kicking it in the head in the past few decades. The Italians have a weird relationship with it, in that the church seems to be everywhere, but they basicly ignore it (eg look at their birth rate).

The main places where christianity is really a force are in south and central america and some bits of eastern Europe (noteably Poland), where it is still the catholic church which is the power. The orthodox church looked like it might make a power grab in Russia after the fall of communism, but that is looking less likely as time goes by.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Empiric]

Nice shot... but to get slightly more on-topic here, the one you refer to and most others share a baseline of mythological imagery across them, something that Jung called a "archetype". You'll find that virgin birth, for example, in quite a few ancient religions.

It's said that basically every modern religion can be distilled down to "Treat others how you'd want to be treated" with a bunch of other symbolic and mythological stuff added in, some of which people find interesting and/or personally valuable.

And for that common baseline of religions, our Scientology topic doesn't seem to qualify.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

reminds me of the catholic church with it's excorcisms in which people die at times, their scare tactics, the "dangerous" knwoledge which is locked away in the papal libraries...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Deternal]

Hmm I'm trying to get this - CoS has some high level documents which they (right or wrong who's to say) only initiated members can fully understand/comprehend, and you are then questioning why they are not to be found in public libraries?

I'm pretty sure some of their 'basic' books can be found - and if not, well then you could ask the library to obtain them. It's not like the Catholic Churh is giving away free bibles to any library in the world.

It's not like this is new - the Tibetan monks have secret documents too which only initiated believers (basically monks) are allowed to read - would you argue that Buddhism is also a business and not a religion? :=)

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[capedgirardeau]

Scientology has books that are public as well.

Christian, Islamic and Jewish religions all have "seceret" texts that lay people are not supposed to read.

They cant even agree on which books really belong in the bible.

Go ask for full access to the dead sea scrolls, you wont get it, you'll get the scrolls they released as but one example.

Go ask the Catholic church for all the papal documents ever created about church doctrine, you wont get them for another example.

You're uninformed about how your supposed "real" religions work.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Shardis]

And this makes it any more believable to you then?

Interesting...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[hughk]

Remember, some European countries have deported all of the scientologists who are there for "religious work". I think that Germany was one of said countries.

The Scientologists may do what they want in Germany, however they are not granted either tax exempt status or the ability to garnish money directly from their member's pay checks Kirchsteur or church tax.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[DNS-and-BIND]

I've noticed lately that religious intolerance has made a real comeback, especially among Leftists. What happened to disagreement with tolerance?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Deusy]

Remember, the early church didn't have the bible, the first attempts to pull together a canonical collection was in the second century AD. Then for a long time it was the case that only the priesthood and educated laymen were given access to the bible.

You readily assume such things as translation - both the Bible and sermons were previously only commonly available in Latin.

The Catholic Church has never been comparable to Scientology. It's never charged for mere information and it has always had it's true preachers who would not bias their services to the rich.

That the Catholic Church has been a power base, an organisation that actively sought to accumulate both land and other forms of wealth, is not in doubt. Like all ancient organisations, it's had dark roots and dark periods.

But it's very rare that you get turned down at a Catholic church. Scientology, on the other hand, is just a scam to extort the rich.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Statistics for Slashbots^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDummies, where your P value can be greater than 1.0 !!!

It's probability, man. You can't have a greater probability than 100%.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Scientology, on the other hand, is just a scam to extort the rich.

So they're not that bad after all...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you eat a fellow human, you make the J-man cry.

Why? Because Gaawwwwwwwwrd says so.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

"would you argue that Buddhism is also a business and not a religion?"

Have you noticed that actors (for example) who are Buddhists seem to be pretty clued up. Whereas actors who are Scientologists are f***king clueless and make mostly shit films.

Coincidence? I dunno...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[jcr]

Religions are given a tax-exempt status on the grounds that they are pursuing a "higher truth," one that is supposed to be shared with others.

Umm, NO. Religions get their special tax privileges on the premise that they're akin to charitable organizations.

Scientology only professes to be a religion because Hubbard's decistion to try the "religion angle" succeded beyond his wildest dreams. The mere claim to religious status apparently paralyzes law enforcement in the USA.

-jcr

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

You readily assume such things as translation - both the Bible and sermons were previously only commonly available in Latin.

Indeed, information was for a long time not available in venacular translations because it was church policy not to let ordinary people have access to the sources. Just like scientology really.

The Catholic Church has never been comparable to Scientology.

Well, Scientologists don't burn people alive.

It's never charged for mere information

Well, it only allowed the information out through authorised channels, and to get access to an authorised channel you were expected to pay a tithe to support the local priest.

But it's very rare that you get turned down at a Catholic church.

Have you ever been turned down at a Scientology centre? The more suckers the better.

Scientology, on the other hand, is just a scam to extort the rich.

If only they limited themselves that way. The big money is in getting lots of small amounts from lots of people, not a large amount from a couple of rich people. That is why scientologists and preachers stand on street corners looking for suckers. That is also why televangelists exist and why a collection plate goes around a church.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[jcr]

Two things that religions shouldn't be allowed to do, in my opinion, are to engage in politics and to have inaccessible "trade secret" documentation.

They also shouldn't get away with running a gulag and kidapping and torturing members who want to leave.

Do a google search for "Larry Wollersheim". What they did to him alone should get that vicious little nut-cult disbanded, and get a couple hundred of their chain of command thrown in the pokey.

-jcr

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[kahei]

That the marks^H^H^H^H^Hordinary believers should be allowed to read the secrets and convince themselves was one of the big innovations of the protestant reformers.

Confining myself to factual corrections, I note that in many medieval christian communities everyone could read the bible. For instance, Alfred the Great translated it into English for that very purpose. It was only later when the ecclesiastical hierarchy became more rigid and more focused on Rome that the Bible was restricted to the clergy.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

I note that in many medieval christian communities everyone could read the bible. For instance, Alfred the Great translated it into English for that very purpose.

Do you have a reference for that, I know he translated some philosophical, historical and religious works, and I think there were some Psalms, but not the bible as a whole.

And, of course, no matter how much they wanted to it is unlikely the church could have managed to burn the king:-).

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, those aren't key documents of the basic religion, and aren't comparable to the CoS secret texts.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Blue Stone]

You're making the mistake of lending Scientology legitimacy by calling it a religion.

The correct term is "scam."

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[nattt]

All churches and charities are businesses and should be taxed as such. Some churches have been around a long time and should really owe a lot of back taxes....

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that religions prefer people to believe that their doctrines are absolute truth.
The Church of Scientology in this case is trying to use international copyright law (Berne convention, etc) to control its materials.

IANAL, as they say, but as far as I can make out these laws protect the rights of authors and inventors to their creations. Suing under these laws seems to me to be tantamount to them standing up in court and declaring "we have no absolute truth at all. Hubbard just MADE ALL THIS SHIT UP!"

On another note, it's nice to see such a compact and lucid legal document. It's hard to believe that you would ever see the phrase "put shortly" in a US court document..

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[mark_lybarger]

Uh, what's the point? Most books are copyrighted. A book about Christianity is not a sacred text.

the point is that the people who copyright christian works can be viewed as being hypocritical. first off, they're making a personal profit from their attempt to spread the word of god. secondly, they're restricting others from freely spreading their interpretation of the word.

just because we have texts (KJV and others) that are public domain doesn't make it right or moral for any of the other biblical translators to copyright and restrict free copying of their works.

As are most secular songs. Some hymns are also public domain. Hymns are not a major tenet of Christianity. They even differ from church to church within Christianity.

i'd argue that hymns and songs in general are a major part of the religion. most churches dedicate a good portion of their worship service to songs. in my view, using copyrights to "protect" religious hymns is hypocritical.

I guarantee that neither Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor John will sue your ass for publishing it.

that's only because they were part of a religious movement. their function wasn't to write religious texts to publish to put food on the table. their job was to convert people to christianity and to teach the word of god. god put food on the table for them.

i would highly question the motives and inspiration of anyone who copyrights the works or derivitive works of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or any other authors of biblical passages and who restricts the free publication and disemination of those works.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[oolon]

You mean like the way the church remove lilith (adams first wife) from the bible because it really didn't fit into what they wanted from a creation myth. (Gensis has far old roots that the Christian or Jewish faith).

James

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[BobTheLawyer]

I'm not aware of any religion which (historically or today) withholds its *core beliefs* and aggressively pursues anyone who tries to disseminate them.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[tzanger]

But it's very rare that you get turned down at a Catholic church.

Having a child out of wedlock is a pretty easy way to get turned away, even today.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Evangelism is key to Christianity and said evangelism can't take placed without The Bible.

In the beginning of Christianity there was no Bible, but still Christianity managed to spread like wildfire. At the council of Nicea (325AD) was decided which books do and which books don't belong to the biblical canon to reject certain persuations (like gnosticism) within what was then called Christianity. Later councils happily went on editing the Bible. Still later, in medieval times, the language of Christianity was Latin, a dead language spoken by priests and learned men only. This kept the actual doctrines of faith hidden from the common believers, who couldn't understand a word of what they heard during mass. Early protestants were protesting many things done by the church, but this was one of the most important.

The key to scientology, however, is in getting as much money out of the mark as possible while revealing as little detail as possible - an odd system for a "religion" which purportedly wishes to maximize human potential and rid the world of all negativity.

This is exactly what Christianity did during medieval times. How do you think they got rich enough to have an own sovereign state today (the Vatican) along with the incredible amount of treasures they display and hide there? Scientology is in the business of selling exorcism (driving out body thetans(tm)) and enlightment (becoming an operating thetan(tm)). Like many creeds, there is an initiatory path to be followed, which explains for a lot of the secrecy. (Christianity was an initiatory religion too, as the initiatory sacraments in Catholicism prove.)

The real problem with Scientology is neither the secrecy and brainwashing nor their greed. Many religions exploit their followers, all religions brainwash their followers (spoonfeeding religious stories to your children is brainwashing/indoctrinating too). The real problem with Scientology is its modus operandi in gaining power in the world of business, the media and politics.

Scientology claims to be a church, but it uses the huge sums of money it gathers from its followers very unlike any other church or religion. It buys and founds (for-profit) companies, uses large funds to convert the rich and famous, and it spies on everyone it grades an "enemy" (they formally grade you), governments included. If you only look at what the religion actually teaches or how it treats its followers, I think some Christian sects are a lot more dangerous than Scientology is.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can translate the Bible and publish it.

<note type="pedantic">Not everyone! In the UK it's still within copyright: the publishers were given the copyright in perpetuity. It was published before there was a limit on copyrights, and while this seems ridiculous (it was published in 1911) there was a recent legal case in the UK that upheld the publisher's copyright.</note>

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[ojQj]

Speaking as someone who is somewhere between an inactive and a non- member of the LDS church, I can say that the article you are linking there contains a large number of falsehoods and half-truths. A lot of the information which I cannot claim from personal knowledge to be false, I consider rather implausible.

If you are actually interested in hearing what's wrong with that article, and what are (in my opinion of course) the real problems with the Mormon church, respond to this post. I don't really feel like making the effort of a sentence by sentence rebuttal of that article though for a religion I don't believe in, if you don't actually care about the truthfulness of what you post.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[ponxx]

> Scientology, on the other hand, is just a scam to extort the rich.

Good point. Most religions are quite happy to extort the poor as well....

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[ThyTurkeyIsDone]

I guarantee that neither Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor John will sue your ass...

And even if they did, you could always turn the... um, other cheek.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[glwtta]

but merely uses the pretense of religion as a veil for a massive and fraudulent operation of psychological abuse.

In all seriousness, name one religion for which this isn't true.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Vindicator9000]

Probably get modded down for defending religion in any way, shape, or form, but here goes...

Christianity != Catholocism. Catholocism very arguably denies some of the central tenets of historical Christianity, and has done so since at least the council of Nicea, hence the reason for the reformation. It also was not historically the first Christian church, but grew from a perversion of the original ones founded by Paul and his followers. To find out what Christianity was originally intended to be (not Crusades and witch-burnings), read the writings of Paul, James, Peter, and the like, and you'll find that a great many people who claim to be Christian are actually not at all, in the context of the actual definition of the word. The problem is that people are considered Christian simply because they claim to follow the teachings of Christ, when actually they actually do not, in light of what the bible says he taught.

I think some Christian sects are a lot more dangerous than Scientology is.

Of course, many sects that claim to be Christian are more dangerous than Scientology, but I advance the opinion that those sects are not Christian in the historical sense of the word.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[fenix down]

Sure you can, these days they sue you at least a dozen times for each time you piss them off.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Bios_Hakr]

>>there's[sic] translations of the Bible that are copyrighted and these copyrights are enforced.

A derivitave of a public-domain work is also public domain. I assume you are refering to New Internation Version or the other "plain language" translations. I don't know if they are copyrighted or not, but they shouldn't be.

My church (LDS - Mormons) uses the KJV. We insert hyper-link-like annotations in the text. A word followed by a superscript has info at the bottom of the page about other signifigant appearances of that word. I'm not sure if it's copyrighted, but I'd argue that it shouldn't be.

Anyway, I have heard that derivitave works are not copyrightable, but I could be wrong.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

"there's translations of the Bible that are copyrighted and these copyrights are enforced"

Everything is copyrighted, implicitly.

"It's a little different with scientology"

Yes, they are not only copyrighted (see above) but are also kept secret.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Scientology, on the other hand, is just a scam to extort the rich.

Not true, they exploit poor people for labor as well. If you can't pay, they're happy to let you work for little or no money.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[cindik]

In fact, some churches have paid fines for failing to pay for licenses for copyrighted hymns which they published in their own hymnals or bulletins. It can be quite costly.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

> > The Catholic Church has never been comparable to Scientology.

> Well, Scientologists don't burn people alive.

Actually, that reminds me of one case:
http://whyaretheydead.net/room771.html (Warning: Strong image.)

Granted, they didn't burn him to death, but still...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's said that basically every modern religion can be distilled down to "Treat others how you'd want to be treated"...

Then why do fanatic Islamic fundamentalists get so upset when their people are blown up? Surely kill the infidels goes both ways, right?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[fanpoe]

the point is that the people who copyright christian works can be viewed as being hypocritical. first off, they're making a personal profit from their attempt to spread the word of god. secondly, they're restricting others from freely spreading their interpretation of the word

They are not necessarily hypocritical. They may not consider the works to be the word of god. They may consider them to be merely interesting historical documentation of how a whole bunch of people were duped and milked.

Depending on your beliefs you may or may not find that attitude equally abhorrent but there are possibilities other than that such people are hypocrites

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[grylnsmn]

A derivitave of a public-domain work is also public domain. I assume you are refering to New Internation Version or the other "plain language" translations. I don't know if they are copyrighted or not, but they shouldn't be.

That's not true. A derivative of a public domain work is copyrightable. That's how Disney makes so much money off of their animated films. All that public domain means is that you don't need anyone's permission to use it.

My church (LDS - Mormons) uses the KJV. We insert hyper-link-like annotations in the text. A word followed by a superscript has info at the bottom of the page about other signifigant appearances of that word. I'm not sure if it's copyrighted, but I'd argue that it shouldn't be.

Actually, the LDS edition of the Bible is copyrighted (1979), and the LDS edition of the Triple Combination (Boom of Mormon/Doctrine & Covenants/Pearl of Great Price) is copyrighted as well (1981).

However, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price are not copyrighted. They have both lapsed into the public domain. The older editions of the D&C are also public domain, but the more recent ones aren't because of the addition of the official declaration 2 and Section 138. However, the Church offers a license to all those who would use the scriptures (including the footnotes) for non-commercial uses.

There's nothing wrong with this, though. Copyright law does not change just because a work is religious in nature. For example, I could publish Don Quixote in the original Spanish and would hold no copyright. However, if I were to translate it into English myself, I would then hold the copyright on that derivative work (translation).

That's just how copyright law works.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[mark_lybarger]

you make it extremely obvious your religious beliefs in your statements. but, regardless of personal religious beliefs...

most people would believe that the vast majority of the authors of christian spiritual literature, both translations of the bible as well as other materials that are intended to be inspriational, are sincere in their personal faith in their religion. they also feel it is their right to personally profit from their created works and (perhaps blindingly) keep their message from being spread by using monopolistic copyright measures.

most people would believe that any religious author that is attempting to further any particular religion is sincere in their attempt to further that religion.

yes, there's lots of bad apples in religious relm, most of which are on tv, or in charge of large churches that have members with big incomes.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[DickBreath]

In all fairness, though, there's translations of the Bible that are copyrighted and these copyrights are enforced.

Ahh, but The Bible is NOT a trade secret of Christianity Inc. that is maintained as a strict secret, lest the common people get to see it.

There may have been a time when the Bible was a trade secret of Christianity Inc.

The Bible is widely available. KJV is public domain. Other translations are available on whatever lenient copyright terms that their authors/translators allow. NIV is pretty liberal about allowing extensive quotations. The only copyright notice that you need to put for small quotations is simply the designation "NIV". For very extensive quotations they require written permission, but this still may be easy to obtain (not that I've tried).

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[fanpoe]

The example given was meant purely to fit in with the general theme of the topic

To take off the pedant hat. I would agree with you that most works connected to religion were nominally created to advance the religion by those who claimed they followed the religion. And yes I would agree that it indicates a tendency to not follow the religion.

My own beliefs are simply a list of likelihoods of different ideas being correct and not fixed at all. However, limited to that subset of ideas in which the universe has a creator, personally I find it more likely that in that case we are more in the position of either lab rats or penicillin. I have trouble with the idea of omniscience and the complexity of entities that are allowed to exist without a creator due to Occam's Razor. I also believe that a lot of people who claim to be Christian technically are not (although I may be putting my pedant hat back on now).

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Misch]

The Catholic Church has never been comparable to Scientology.

Well, Scientologists don't burn people alive.

No, they electrocute.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Deusy]

Whilst I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church, I find your arguments to be rather bitter and ridiculous.

Well, Scientologists don't burn people alive.

When did the Catholic Church last burn people alive? When they were burning people alive, it was a common practise. As was rape, war, pillaging, tortue, and execution. To use that as a point to contrast the Catholic Church and Scientology is to undermine your entire argument.

You argue that the Catholic Church blocked people from learning. Again, the answer varies across history. Yes, it's teachings were only commonly available in Latin for a long period, but that's because it was considered to be the language of the educated (not the 'dead' language it is considered to be today). Also, printing books was not cheap or even possible until very recently (19th Century).

You should only really judge the Catholic Church on how it behaves today.

Somebody else mentiones that you would be outcast by childbith out of wedlock. Not in my country (UK).

To compare Scientology now to Catholicism 100s of years ago is not a fair reflection on the Catholic Church as it stands today. The world was a darker place all those years ago.

Had Scientology existed in medieval times, they would probably have been drinking people's blood and wearing people's skin for clothing.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[jc103]

"..for translating the bible from latin.."

In fact, the original text of the Bible was not written in Latin. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, which was the language of the common people during that period and place in time.

The Dark Ages were a very bad thing.. but it was the antithesis of the spirit in which the original text was created, and a huge perversion of the teachings of the New Testament.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[jdavidb]

... and copyright of modern translations has been controversial since it began (in 1901 with the American Standard Version, I believe). And it really puts a damper on my goreadthebible.com project, where I'd like to have multiple modern translations of the Bible available for reading without some of the doctrinal teachings found on other websites that I believe are incorrect. Unfortunately, I'm just a small fry, and can't afford whatever royalties would be needed for such a project (and they doubtless would disapprove of my intended site policy that anyone in the world be able to print or save the entire contents of the website).

I'm taking training courses in hymnwriting and intend on anything I publish being freely redistributable. My father has been a hymnwriter since the 1960s; I remember when he first explained copyright to me as a boy. It didn't seem right to me, then, and he's now changed his stance so much that he pretty much doesn't care where his hymns go. I think he decided it was more important that people actually SING his hymns than respect his copyright. I know some other great hymnists and wish they would see things the same way.

The difference between scientology and Christianity is that in scientology the originals are copyrighted, while in Christianity someone could conceivably make a new translation and own the rights to it. There are actually people called Freezoners who believe in the scientology principles but not the organization. These people are forced to purchase their religious texts from an organization they find morally repugnant, perhaps violating their religious principles. That doesn't sound right.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[jdavidb]

This should not be moderated up; it's disinformation. There is absolutely no evidence that anything about "lilith" was ever in the Bible. It's in legends which sprang up after the Bible, but never in the Bible itself. The oldest copies of the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, predate the Christian religion and the Church, and don't contain any of this junk. The Dead Sea Scrolls are fascinating evidence that the Old Testament has not been altered since before the time of Christ and the Church.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

When did the Catholic Church last burn people alive?

Last time they had the power to?

Yes, it's teachings were only commonly available in Latin for a long period, but that's because it was considered to be the language of the educated

So, only `educated' people can be trusted to know the secrets. Sounds just like the scientology case to me.

Also, printing books was not cheap or even possible until very recently (19th Century).

Er, what on earthmakes you think that it was not possible to print books before the 19th century? Tyndale's bible was printed in 1524. And the lack of mass production technology is not a reason to burn people, indeed that the books were relatively rare (~20,000 copies of the Tyndale bible IIRC) makes it even clearer how much of a threat the church considered translation to be -- access to the bible by even a relatively small number of unauthorised people had to be stopped at all costs.

You should only really judge the Catholic Church on how it behaves today.

Buggering choirboys you mean? That the power of the churches, and hence their ability to harm people, has been massively reduced in the past few hundred years is a reason for celebration, but not a reason to forget what they will do given the chance. If a mass murderer moves into your street, but doesn't seem to have killed anyone so far this week, it is still a good idea to be wary.

Had Scientology existed in medieval times, [...]

The church would have tortured suspected members to death.

This is all wanderring off topic, my original point was just that keeping the core teachings of a religion to an inner circle is not a weird property of Scientology, it is a common, though not universal, feature of priest based religions.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Just Some Guy]

I'm a Southern Baptist. There are no - zilch, zero, nada - secret doctrinal books. I'm unaware of any Baptist or Protestant denominations that have any "special" texts.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[pwtrash]

But yes, most religions are not nearly as bad as Christainity and Scientology

What?

You're looking for the keys under the lamppost, I think. Scientology and Christianity are quite different in many ways, but disregarding that (which it sounds like you are), anytime there are people willing to demonstrate faith, there are unscrupulous bastards willing to take advantage of them.

So these two are worse than Confucianism was at times? They're worse than the way the invading Aryans manipulated Hinduism? Or maybe - just maybe - you don't like Christianity because of some issues in your past. You've read about the abuses that were committed as part of different organized versions of Christianity-based religions (or maybe watched a documentary about Jim Bakker), and you've decided that Christianity has been the worst abused religion - ever! And oh, since someone said something about Scientology, I'll use this as an opporunity to rant about Christianity, because talking about the abuses of the Catholic Church is so - gasp - shocking.

Wow. Wish my world were that simple. You have blinding issues, dude.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Bios_Hakr]

The addition of Dec #2 and Sec 138 bring up an interesting point: How does one copyright a living document? If I make a minor revision to a Disney film every 70 years, then would the original version be public domain?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[GoRK]

The Catholic Church has never been comparable to Scientology.

Well, Scientologists don't burn people alive.

True, they don't. They much prefer to do this kind of thing to people instead.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[R.Caley]

[But yes, most religions are not nearly as bad as Christainity and Scientology]

What?

I can use smaller words if you like.

Note that I was speaking in a particular context about one aspect of religion, the tendency to be run as a pyramid scheme as raised by `Babbster'. Episcopal christianity and scientology are among the worst from that POV.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please do elaborate . . .

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[fireboy1919]

"Sharpened up the operation?"

For the long period of time that the Bible was kept "secret," it was done so because the thought was that orthodoxy - thinking correctly about it - could only be done if the priests and monks explained it to people. The thought was that they wouldn't be able to grasp it on their own, or would draw the wrong conclusions.

You would only need to study documents written by the church at the time to learn that the priests and monks were, in fact, trying to share their understanding of the Bible with the rest of the world.

For those who were very intent to learn, they could join a monistary for free, and be taught latin for free. In those conditions, it was generally thought that one may learn doctrine properly.

This is a little misguided, I think, since there's not really anything stopping the priests and monks from interpreting the Bible incorrectly themselves, and the Latin Vulgate was a translation twice removed from the original in most parts, but at least it wasn't to keep Christainity a secret.

So I would say that the big difference here is the fact that all the messages of Christainity have always been given, though not always with paper accompaniment. Do Scientologists readily share what they think their documents mean? (For those who don't know, the answer is NO).

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Thing 1]

Please elaborate. Also, if you know details as to the resolution of that court case (which was decades ago?), I'd love to hear it. (I tried googling for it but couldn't find anything on it, other than verbatim copies of the same story.)

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[arvindn]

Please go ahead; it would be nice to have a different perspective. If, indeed, the article contains "a large number of falsehoods and half-truths", that would be surprising since the allaboutsex.org website is non-profit and run by volunteers, and its not like they have an agenda against the Mormon church or anything. But I'm certainly interested in hearing your views.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[randyest]

Hmm, I didn't know evil was the opposite of confidential. Interesting.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation wasn't an issue when the majority of the populace was illiterate. Mass literacy is a modern phenomenon in Western society. Before Gutenberg, few were literate--and those who were the educated elite, who usually could read and write the classical languages as well as their native tongue.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[bogado]

I am not a religious man my self, but your description of a "religion" seems a little hush even to me. There are several religions that seek out self-improvement, and "spiritual ascending". many oriental religions, teaches that one must find the "salvation" (or nirvana, if you preffer) by himself.

Even the catholic church, witch have abused and stills try to abuse it's power even today (see the recent statments the pope did about homosexual marriage), have many vertents that encorage people to give to the poor.

In my opinion religion is not bad as it's own, but generaly there is a organisations behind it. Those organisation that do try to use the power to maximum level it allows them.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[xigxag]

>> don't think anyone could possibly claim ownership to such translations as the king James Version.

>Nope, it's public domain: The KJV Bible

It's public domain in most of the world, but in the UK, it is technically Crown Copyright which, at least in this specific case, acts as a sort-of early version of copyleft!

How true it is, brethren, that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9) ;-)

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Josuah]

Most religions are quite happy to extort the poor as well....

This reminds me of a TV evangelist thing I saw once. They did a profile on this one woman who started giving like 50% of her monthly income to the Church and how she was so much better for that. She was living close to the poverty line with something like three kids, of which at least one was going to be college age soon. She was in despair because she was so poor and she would really like to retire in the next 10 years or so with a cabin on the side of a lake.

So, her answer is to give money to the Church! As she gives more and more of her monthly salary, the "happier" she gets. She starts going on volunteer missionary trips, and saving less and less of her money. She's so happy now. And at the end, they say something like, "So what about that cabin on the lake? She's still looking forward to getting it, someday."

Please. Her kids aren't going to have money for college. She won't be able to retire on the lake anytime soon. And she's probably living paycheck to paycheck without any savings to speak of. Let's see just how happy she is when one of her kids gets a broken leg or can't even afford community college. Statistically speaking, U.S. society might actually benefit a great deal if all those evangelists were dragged into the street and shot.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[TimSneath]

If there was ever a better example of a post that should be marked "Flamebait" than the parent, I've yet to see it. Yet it's marked as "Insightful". How odd...

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[alexo]

> I guarantee that neither Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, nor John will sue your ass for publishing it.

Because that would probably go against the 10th commandment, which says:
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house [...] nor his ass [...]"

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[pyrrhonist]

the point is that the people who copyright christian works can be viewed as being hypocritical.

Why? Jesus didn't say we couldn't make a profit off of what he said.

first off, they're making a personal profit from their attempt to spread the word of god.

No, they're providing an accurate translation as a service to interested people. You can get Bibles for FREE if you want.

i'd argue that hymns and songs in general are a major part of the religion.

Read what I said; they aren't a tenet.

most churches dedicate a good portion of their worship service to songs.

Some do, some don't. Some don't sing at all. In my church, we had about an equal split of sermon/scripture lessons and hymns. We also had two different hymnals that we used for different selections of songs. Other churches even within my sect of Christianity don't necessarily have that. The point is, things can differ a lot even within the same religion with regard to hymns.

in my view, using copyrights to "protect" religious hymns is hypocritical.

It's just a song. If someone writes a hymn, they deserve the same protection that any other song author warrants. Some hymns are in the public domain (i.e. attributed to anonymous, or traditional, etc.). It's not hypocritical. Nothing prevents a church from creating a hymnal with only public domain songs in it.

i would highly question the motives and inspiration of anyone who copyrights the works or derivitive works of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

Yeah, anyone who wants to recoup his cost of printing must be evil.

who restricts the free publication and disemination of those works.

And exactly how are they restricting the free publication of the bible? Get it through your head, anyone can print a bible. Anyone can read the bible for FREE. Anyone can get a FREE bible. There is no restriction.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because Christianity has lost it's power base. Remember they used to burn people alive for translating the bible from latin just because doing so allowed the actual doctrine to leak out to ordinary people.

Yeah, a group that reads parts of it out daily and requires people to attend obviously doesn't want anyone to know what's in it.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Roark Meets Dent]

> In the beginning of Christianity there was no Bible, but still Christianity managed to spread like wildfire.


Nonsense: this is pure mythology. The Christian church grew painfully slowly. In fact, the whole religion is plagiarized from older sources. There WAS NO JESUS. See this article.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Probably get modded down for defending religion in any way, shape, or form, but here goes...

Don't worry, I'm defending religion in some shape too :)

Christianity != Catholocism. Catholocism very arguably denies some of the central tenets of historical Christianity, and has done so since at least the council of Nicea, hence the reason for the reformation.

Of course Christianity != Catholicism, but Catholicism most certainly was the one of the two accepted orthodox forms of Christianity from about 300AD up to the Reformation, which makes it a mainstream form for more than a millennium. Nicea was not the reason for the Reformation; during the Reformation, even more books were declared aphocryphal and removed from the canon.

To find out what Christianity was originally intended to be (not Crusades and witch-burnings), read the writings of Paul, James, Peter, and the like, and you'll find that a great many people who claim to be Christian are actually not at all, in the context of the actual definition of the word.

I agree with you on most of Christianity rather being Pauleanism because almost every Christian accepts Paul's dogma; but bare in mind this goes for Reformism too. So if you want to go to the roots of Christianity, read the aphocryphal books, not the official canon. The canon has been edited eversince it existed to fit Paul's concept of Christianity (Paul never having seen Christ in real life but only in his visions).

Of course, many sects that claim to be Christian are more dangerous than Scientology, but I advance the opinion that those sects are not Christian in the historical sense of the word.

They may not be Christians in the original sense of the word, but they certainly are Christians in the historical sense of the word, because Paul's dogma has dominated Christian history. If you don't agree, you'll have to scratch about 99% of the Christians alive today from your list.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think anyone could possibly claim ownership to such translations as the king James Version."

Nope, it's public domain

True, but any given publication of the KJV could be copyrighted, due to the unique editorializing.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[hkmwbz]

Yes, in the older days and so on and so on. But what about today? You have to look at the situation today. Do the Mormons charge their own members?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[ojQj]

You should know while reading my response that I am a 26 year-old woman. It is possible (though I consider it unlikely) that the education of boys and girls differs on some point that I address. It is also possible that things changed in between the time Kip was in young mens and the time I was in young womens. You decide whether you believe my experience is relevant to your concerns.

Utah has the highest birthrate and the largest families in America. More than 50% of all births are by teenage mothers, with seven of ten out of wedlock, and it has one of the highest divorce rates in the nation.

Utah probably does have a high birthrate and large families. Maybe it even has a high rate of birth out of wedlock. However, the divorce rate among Mormons nationwide is lower than the national average, and the teenage birthrate is also lower nationwide among Mormons than the average. There's this common misconception that all Mormons are in Utah, and that all Utah residents are serious Mormons. I grew up out of Utah, and knew very few Utah-Mormons. Outside of Utah, Utah-Mormons are even the subject of some ridicule (mostly good-natured) in the Mormon community. It's generally believed that more Mormons in Utah are Mormons because everyone else there is too, and that they are less likely to take their religious beliefs seriously (sort of like European Catholics).

Besides having a powerhouse football team, the Mormons' very own Brigham Young University -- alma mater of Donny and Marie Osmond and 1984 Miss America Sharlene Wells -- has one of the highest coed-pregnancy rates in America.

This is a half-truth which implies a falsehood. Reading this without knowing better I might assume we are talking about pregnancy out of marriage. But BYU has one of the highest marriage rates among universities in the US. I bet the vast majority of those pregnancies are in marriage and not accidental. The real tragedy here is that so many women go to BYU to get married and then drop out. It's jokingly called getting your "MRS" in the Mormon church. It's also a problem church leaders are openly trying to combat. They don't have anything against these women getting married and having children, but they want them to finish their educations.

Mormon anti-sex indoctrinations start early. Children are taught that sex is dirty and disgusting, that it is the tool of Satan.

This is a message repeated throughout the article which is simply incorrect. Mormons are taught that sex is something beautiful and sacred to be shared between a man and a woman who are married. I remember hearing this and variants on this lesson repeatedly in my young womanhood, both from my parents and from church leaders. Whether or not you agree with the man and woman part or the married part is your decision, but I don't see that message as harmful for people who want to believe it.

The suit also contends that the Mormon Church subjected Kip to what amounted to an intentional attempt at mind control by using brainwashing techniques under the guise of spiritual teaching.

Okay here's one where I have to call bullshit. The Mormon Church repeatedly tells young people that they have to learn for themselves. It was through my own struggle to learn for myself that I eventually decided the Mormon Church doesn't cut it for me. Yes, they do believe they are the only true religion. That is in fact one of my major problems with the church. But they emphasize discovering this for oneself.

Becoming "worthy" and ultimately reaching "perfection" means living up to the church's 4,300 commandments -- including those condemning natural sex acts.

Um... hello? Where are they coming up with this number? There is no list of 4,314 commandments which all need to be memorized and followed. The commandments Mormons are given are 90% identical with that of other conservative Christian religions. (Okay I'm making up numbers too here -- let's just say very similar.)

In

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[ojQj]

Oh and by the way, allaboutsex didn't write the article. My searching on the web did reveal that the article is repeated in its entirety in a number of anti-Mormon sites. It's apparently also cited in the well-known anti-Mormon film "The Godmakers". Possibly allaboutsex posted it in a sincere desire to help people without knowing its flaws.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[pchown]

We (the UK) forced Hubbard out by refusing to renew his visa. The Scientology headquarters used to be at Saint Hill Manor, about an hour's drive from where I live in London. After Hubbard left, Saint Hill remained an important Scientology centre, but the headquarters moved elsewhere. Clearwater in Florida, I think.

I've been to Saint Hill out of curiosity, but it gives me the creeps. There's something weird about seeing all these people talking bunk with such conviction.

(By the way, expect to get a hard sell if you go to any Scientology organisation. Don't give your real name or contact details, otherwise they will hassle you endlessly to buy courses. Also don't go if there's anything that would make you an easier mark, for example that you're feeling upset about something. A steady trickle of people join cults after visiting them in just such a sceptical frame of mind.)

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[mark_lybarger]

they're not just recouping their costs, they're restricting me or anyone else from printing the exact bible for use. anyone cannot print a bible, they can print a version of the bible that is in the public domain due to it being 100+ years old. there is a restriction.

it's not just a song, to christians it's a praise to the lord. the song writers are restricting use of that praise by using existing copyright laws. they're profiting and protecting their works and limiting the praise of the lord.

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[pyrrhonist]

they're restricting me or anyone else from printing the exact bible for use.

They're copyrighting a translation that they spent the money and time to make. They also copyright the maps they make. The planet is in the public domain, why are maps copyrighted?

Why shouldn't translators be paid for their hard work? I've paid the makers of the NASB, NIV, and NRSB, because I like the translation that they have created. This is not to say that my religion requires me to purchase a bible. It doesn't. I don't even have to own a bible to be a Christian.

anyone cannot print a bible, they can print a version of the bible that is in the public domain due to it being 100+ years old. there is a restriction.

That's just not true. Anyone can print a bible. You can print a public domain version, or you can translate the bible yourself from the Septuagint or other early translation and print it. These two choices don't require you to pay anyone.

If you want to print a specific translation, yes, you have to purchase a translation from one of the groups that create translations (a translation that those groups spent time and money putting together). As for it being a restriction, it isn't. Did you know that different publishing companies print the same translation? For instance, there are several different companies that print the NIV translation of the bible. Even with a copyright on the translation, the word of God doesn't seem to have an issue getting out to people (as can be shown by the sheer number of NIV printings by different companies that there are).

Considering how many different Christian religions that there are, I find it hard to believe that this type of "restriction" amounts to anything.

it's not just a song, to christians it's a praise to the lord. the song writers are restricting use of that praise by using existing copyright laws. they're profiting and protecting their works and limiting the praise of the lord.

Now come on, that's just ridiculous. I fail to see how song copyrights limit praising the Lord. There are several Christian bands that offer praise to the Lord, too. Should they not be able to receive payment for their work?

Re:"Confidential" nature of religious documents?

[kahei]

You're right, he didn't translate the whole bible. But it's still true that before Vatican and Feudal culture extended over all Europe, Christianity had been pretty tolerant. This tolerance vanished as the hierarchy solidified.

On a side note, the opposition between Christianity and science, which people tend to take for granted, is actually a pretty recent thing; Galileo was killed more for personally offending the Pope than for his views, and in fact his research built on work done directly by the Vatican (which still has it's own observatories).

On an even sider note, the slide away from pro-progress and pro-science after a promising start is also visible in Sunni Islam, which parallels the RC Church's development in that way.

Bleeding IP?

[Empiric]

Hmm... the article seems to center more on "common carrier" arguments and paraphrasing of the original work, the paraphrase of which is posted as content on the site, rather than linking, but regardless...

It amazes me that the "Church of Scientology" continues to pursue this, after the well-known Usenet debacle. I don't see how it helps their image at all, trying to force people not to discuss their "religion". This activity only adds fuel to the fire. Surely they have their share of lawyers or PR consultants on board, doesn't the basic concept of sticking to your points and ignoring/downplaying your opposition's get on the strategy table?

The disturbing part here is Scientology's continuing attempt to treat opposing views or information as derivative products of their ideas, and shut them down as if they were an IP violation. Maybe what Enron should have done is patent the concept of cooked books, and sued anyone talking about it.

Re:Bleeding IP?

[Nels]

The Church of Scientology doesn't really care much about image to the public at large. It preys upon the rich and brain-damaged, people who are so clueless that they will give money to a religion inspired by science fiction.
As a result, absolutely any method that gets them their goal of information suppression is completely worth trying, since it can't hurt, and can help keep the rich and ignorant ignorant, and move towards removing their status and rich and replacing it with the status of a member of the Church of Scientology.

Re:Bleeding IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may shock you, but very few people read Usenet or Slashdot, or the other places where Scientology's tactics are discussed.

It seems their plan is to keep popular discussion about Scientology below the radar. If they are willing to spend 10 years suing some Usenet poster, that only serves to discourage mainstream media from running any expose pieces.

(Although, IIRC, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes was after them in the 1980s.)

Re:Bleeding IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the early 1990s they embarked on a high profile recruiting campaign in Finland. The media, surprisingly even the state-owned media which usually does not bother with investigative journalism, got involved and CoS got really bitchslapped. All the abuse, fraud and terror tactics were brought to the daylight.

Since then they've truly stayed below the radar. Not so much as a peep in a decade.

Re:Bleeding IP?

[yduzitmatter]

"The disturbing part here is Scientology's continuing attempt to treat opposing views or information as derivative products of their ideas, and shut them down as if they were an IP violation. Maybe what Enron should have done is patent the concept of cooked books, and sued anyone talking about it."

The reason scientology does this is because they have to - Hubbard wrote that one should always attack and never defend. He also wrote that anyone who critisizes scientology is a criminal and all cos has to do is find the crime - do a full investigation of the person and expose their crime(s) and all criticism will disappear. He also added if you can't find one - make one up - thus on pickets people will hear the scientologists ask "Have you stopped beating your wife?" - or "So, what about the molestation charge" If you read
http://www.religiousfreedomwatch.org/extremi sts/
you can see how the cos puts this doctrine into action.

The court case has been a long one, which is typical of scientology - delays, continuances, snowing the case under with motions etc. The whole idea of a law suit in scientology is not to win but to harass - in the hopes that the person will give up or run out of money for lawyers or both.

Yduz

No you are wrong..

[Anonymous Coward]

Violating Andover/VALinux or whatever named they go by now is also wrong. I can't remember fully, but there was that time when a copyright was violated here and they took legal action. Correct me if I am wrong, I can't recall the exact details.

This is an amazing victory

[IamLarryboy]

This is an amazing victory for free speech. The COS is a rich dangerous cult that is amazingly adept at using the courts to silence its victims. It really is incredable that the good guys won in this case.

Heh

[True Dork]

I first read that as "Thinking ruled is legal in Scientology Case" and thought "It's about time!". Oh well. I wouldn't dare think anything about the case... Hold on... Someone's at my door.

You knew it was coming...

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new Church of Scientology overlords

Proud

[olderchurch]

This makes me proud to be a dutchmen. And proud to use the excellent services from xs4all. They always have been a strong supporter of both privacy and free speech and are willing to back it up. Even though they went from a hacker provider to one of the major league telco subsidairies.

xs4all keep up the good work!

Re:Proud

[CvD]

I second this. XS4ALL is definately the coolest, most techie-friendly ISP that I've ever come across. They provide all sorts of fun techie stuff like a shell account on a FreeBSD server, an IPv6 tunnel, batched SMTP, and a lot more.

Hooray for XS4ALL!

Re:Proud

[Grizzlysmit]

Yay, it makes me proud of my Dutch heritage (both parents), cool :-D 8-)

Never called what it really is

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientology = a satanic cult.

They never call it that, but that's what all of the teachings really are. Their basic ideas is that you are the center of the universe, and anything you do to anybody to obtain your goals is OK. And their rituals (with the E-meter) are just as strange. The only reason for giving it a different name is that "Scientology" is able to recruit celebrities, while those same celebrities typically avoid anything with obvious satanic connotations.

(of course the way Bill Gates manages Microsoft often reminds me of Scientology, but that's a separate topic ;-)

Re:Never called what it really is

[dvcx1]

Scientology = a satanic cult

First let me say, I am not religious to any extent. I believe what I wish and I leave it at that.

I don't see the relevance of Scientology as a satanic cult. From what I have read, I would agree to say scientology is not the best thing and people should be made aware of this fact. But to state that it is "a satanic cult" is a mis-statement. I really don't feel this is the forum to have a religious debate, especially considering your comments are coming from a christian point of view. If you consider scientology's way of practice strange, would you also goto the the extent of critisizing hinduism (one of the oldest religions in the world and definately quite big) as a cult?

Just my rant....

on a lighter note, I do wish the USSC would take a note from some of the other nations on these topics.

Re:Never called what it really is

[Nihilanth]

of course, "satanic" means different things to different people.

what is "satanic" basically depends on whether or not you're asking a christian. People who identify themselves as "satanists" would most likely be offended at being compared to scientologists, since contemporary satanism is based around the idea of rejecting faulty moralism and decaying value systems while persuing a more genuine mode of behavior.

Re:Never called what it really is

[Black Parrot]

> Scientology = a satanic cult. They never call it that, but that's what all of the teachings really are. Their basic ideas is that you are the center of the universe, and anything you do to anybody to obtain your goals is OK.

How do you know they aren't just politicians instead of satanists?

Re:Never called what it really is

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a number of interpretations on what Satanism is. Anyways, here's a link that compares Scientology to some other religions and details the connections between Scientology and the Occult. And the Occult would be one definition of Satanism that a lot of people regognize as such.

Re:Never called what it really is

[dvcx1]

I agree with you.

Its nothing against christians, just an observation, only christians tend to refer to others as "satanic" when others beliefs dont concur with their beliefs.

anyway enough of the religious rant, this is supposed to be about the win of free speech in dutch courts.

Re:Never called what it really is

[Anonymous Coward]

"Satanism" is what you are into if you listen to too much 80s Heavy Metal or play too much D&D.

Well just about. There is a real religion called "Satanism", but it's primarily a bogo-religion with a bunch of incoherent reactionary ideas designed to shock Mom. In most ways, Scientology is significantly more substantial than Satanism, while being just as for profit and bogus.

(Oh, and the root post is basically some canned religious right argument against "Secular Humanism", except that "satanic" is more trolly.)

Re:Never called what it really is

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know they aren't just politicians instead of satanists?

There's a difference?

Re:Never called what it really is

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientology = a satanic cult.

No. Satanists are actually respectably moral individuals. Sure they have a 'do unto others as they would do to you' mantra, but that is leagues better than some of the crap Scientology tries.

Re:Never called what it really is

[DNS-and-BIND]

Satan is known as "The Father of Lies" for a reason...pleasing yourself and ignoring others is a recipe for a life of pain for everyone.

Re:Never called what it really is

[Oddly_Drac]

"Scientology = a satanic cult."

I you mean Anton LeVey's brand of satanism, then it's much cheaper than CoS, and quite fun once you get past the 'Hammer Horror' aspects.

In fact it's quite closely related to Secular Humanism.

"Their basic ideas is that you are the center of the universe, and anything you do to anybody to obtain your goals is OK."

Actually, the central tenet is that you're striving to become 'clear' to be one of those that survives the culling of the 'pre-clears' who're inherently similar to animals. It's a standard superiority clause that most religions pander to. 'Yes, we're taking all your money, but think of what it'll be like when all the other mothers are gone.'...Functionally similar to the rapture.

The major difference between Satanism and CoS is that Satanism asks you to revel in the fact that you're an animal and stop being so goddamned holy about stuff.

"The only reason for giving it a different name is that "Scientology" is able to recruit celebrities,"

I couldn't possibly go into details here, but take a look at who runs cocaine helplines in Hollywood.

Re:Never called what it really is

[dvcx1]

what exactly is that supposed to mean?

Not all copyrights are bad.

[Population]

Copyright is fine. Just as long as it will expire in a reasonable amount of time (20 years).

Patents are okay, too. As long as they aren't for software or "business methods".

Why aren't links just considered a citation format

[jbs0902]

I never understood the Plaintiff's legal logic behind these "linking" equals "copyright violation" cases. (I get the overall logic of "We are powerful. You are not. We'll make you shut-up if we don't like what you say." But, it is the logic in the legal briefs I don't get.)

As far as I am concerned the A tag of HTML is just a citation format. If the link is a copyright violation, why aren't citations made in MLA or Blue Book formats similar copyright violations? The idea extends to deep-linking cases. If deep-linking allows you to skip past the ads on a web page and is supposedly illegal because of that, why aren't pin-point citations (where you cite both the book and the page on the book where the quote is from) illegal?

I'll accept that a trade secret case could be filed, but copyright? If it is a link, it is not a copy; it is a citation, i.e. a pointer to the original "copy" of the web page.

I haven't bothered to do any research on this (because it has yet to directly affect my life). Has any defendant advanced the A tag as citation argument? Did the judge buy it?

Wanna know the meaning of scientology?

[civilengineer]

Here is what dictionary.com says:

scientology: log in for this definition of scientology and other entries in Webster's Millennium(TM) Dictionary of English, available only to Dictionary.com Premium members

Re:Wanna know the meaning of scientology?

[True Dork]

I'm actually afraid to. Lessee... We're talking about Scientology and they want my credit card. Let me think about that... oh yeah, NO.

Re:Wanna know the meaning of scientology?

[EzInKy]

I know this was modded funny, but the poster is absolutely right!

Re:Wanna know the meaning of scientology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same goes for Encarta. You need to be a member to know the secrets!

Re:Wanna know the meaning of scientology?

[Jonner]

I know it makes for a good conspiracy theory, but there's nothing really nefarious here. Scientology is a relatively new term, so it only exists in the relatively new dictionaries, which want you to pay. To look up any word in the Webster's Millennium(TM) Dictionary of English would cost the same. It's not is if you can't find free information on Scientology.

Imagine that.

[cgranade]

The courts actually ruled that free speech is more importatnt than IP. Now, if only the USSC could follow suit...

Re:Imagine that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would this be the same USSC that appointed the president who appointed the attorney general who wants to repeal the first amendment? Good luck.

Re:Imagine that.

[cgranade]

Would this be the same USSC that appointed the president who appointed the attorney general who wants to repeal the first amendment? Good luck.
Hope springs eternal, but after the RIAA lawsuits, I think even my worthless hope begins to fail.

Scientology

[Nanite]

I think a litmus test for all future court cases should be: "If the case is brought by the Church of Scientology, it must have no merit."

Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[tjstork]

Ought to deal with Scientologists the same way. If their work is so secret that they cannot have it published, then perhaps they are consorting with Baphomet too!

Re:Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[Anonymous Coward]

See www.xenu.net and Karin Spaink's site for what Stupidology teaches (secretly) and at great expense. Scientology price list shows it would take about $360,000.00 to do all their courses to obtain OT VIII. The secret teachings about how an ancient space dictator Xenu inplanted us all with body thetans (space cooties) we have to audit out at great expensse is something Scientology wants to keep secret because nobody in their right mind who knew that ahead of time would join scientology knowing that. Which is why Scientology sues and sues and sues. Once EVERYBODY knows, they are sunk. What this Dutch court has said in essence is, no, copyright law was not meant to keep such information from being discussed and proven from a cult's own writings. Its even stupider than Satanism. And that is why they are utterly desperate to keep Hubbard's drivel from being made public in a manner they cannot deny.

Re: Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[Black Parrot]

> Ought to deal with Scientologists the same way. If their work is so secret that they cannot have it published, then perhaps they are consorting with Baphomet too!

Nah, Baphy told them to stuff it. Standards to maintain, kind of thing.

Re:Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[Anonymous Coward]

> Xenu inplanted us all with body thetans (space cooties)

Are those the same as those Midichlorians?

Re:Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[danro]

Are those the same as those Midichlorians?

Yes, except that they are bad for you, and you can only get them out by parting with your cash.
(They don't put it that way, but it seems to be what it boils down to.)

One of the weirdest "religions" I ever heard about, that one is...

Re:Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[Oddly_Drac]

"If their work is so secret that they cannot have it published, then perhaps they are consorting with Baphomet too!"

Of course, you wouldn't want to mistake those allegations with the fact that the Knight's Templar had a bit of a stranglehold on heaps of relics, and had one hell of a business model in escorting people to an from the holy land.

No! Allegations of devil worship would _never_ be used to break a power base...it's unthinkable!

Re:Philip knew how to treat the Knights Templar

[BigBadBri]

Philip was just pissed because the Templars had effective control over the proposed crusade, had the nearest thing to an international banking system at the time, and had the ear of the pope.

Once Philip got his own placeman as pope (Clement V, IIRC), he managed to get the Templars excommunicated and nicked all their French holdings, which should have gone to the Hospitallers.

Odd:

[Mac Degger]

Considering how important I take this ruling to be (it's a ruling upholding fair use and against strong-arm tactics; and it sets a nice precedent) for the web, I'm surprised this isn't being covered in the news in the Netherlands...it didn't even make regional tv.
I wonder if it makes the back pages of the papers...

Re:Odd:

[Anonymous Coward]

This simply isnt true, het Parool, for instance printed it on its front page last friday (or saturday?)

Re:Odd:

[smaughster]

perhaps because it isn't much "news" in the netherlands? Fair use is well-protected and strong arm tactics do not occur that often.

Re:Odd:

[Zzz]

Actually, it was in the Volkskrant (=national Dutch newspaper) last week, on page 5 or so. It was a small piece, 6 or 7 lines.

Re:Odd:

[msh104]

(i'am a dutchmen) it does not make tv because it is only considerd importent by geeks here. thinks non-geeks consider importent here are music shows, sms tv crapp, and don't forgot all those thousends of teenager girls screaming they want Jim ( our own personal wannebe music singer ). so i guess i'am happy to report that i have been classified by most other people as a geek. and yes, i do care! good job here !!

BEGONE FOUL THETAN!

[Anonymous Coward]

That'll be $40,000 please!

Anyone stupid enough to follow scientology deserves to die of ass cancer!

Re: BEGONE FOUL THETAN!

[Black Parrot]

> That'll be $40,000 please!

You'd think this a golden opportunity for some entrepreneur to move in with a cut-price operation and make off with some of their customers. I'm almost certain I could do it for thirty grand - thirty-five, tops - and maybe throw in a free scalp massage for customers whose hair wasn't too greasy.

Re: BEGONE FOUL THETAN!

[RevSmiley]

For that kind of money I would wash their hair!

Now where is that old ohm meter. Need some undented soup cans too. I even actually am an ordained minister.

WELCOME!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new Xenu overlords.

Re: WELCOME!

[Black Parrot]

> I, for one, welcome our new Xenu overlords.

s/Xenu/Dutch/

Re:WELCOME!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new Xenu overlords.

Thou blasphemer! Thou shalt not utter the name of the EVIL ONE. Besides, you want the adjectival "Xenic" overlords.

Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Galactic Federation grammar thetan.

Scientology and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

(of course the way Bill Gates manages Microsoft often reminds me of Scientology, but that's a separate topic ;-)

You put a smiley in for humor, but there is nothing funny about the Scientologist software in Windows.

Re:Scientology and Microsoft

[Alien54]

You put a smiley in for humor, but there is nothing funny about the Scientologist software in Windows.

Frightened of a disk defragger, heh?

I think that this is one case where the Germans freaked out just a bit too much. The forbidding of the software had nothing to do with the technical merits of the code.

Of course, this is all MS closed source stuff. so you can't verify it as safe. But still, if it is a good piece of code, who cares?

Imagine if it was found out that one of the coders contributing to the linux kernal was a scientologist. Imagine the reaction of the german government based on this example.

hey, it could happen.

Re:Scientology and Microsoft

[CaptainZapp]

I think that this is one case where the Germans freaked out just a bit too much. The forbidding of the software had nothing to do with the technical merits of the code.

Actually this is not quite true. Microsoft Germany had to provide instructions about how to remove the offending code. This is quite different from "forbidding the software".

Imagine if it was found out that one of the coders contributing to the linux kernal was a scientologist

No it wouldn't and is actually rebutted by your own words:

Of course, this is all MS closed source stuff. so you can't verify it as safe...

Suppressed Documents

[heli0]

Rob Malda: "Our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the details of this case, the comment should come down"

Here is the document that Slashdot removed when COS threatened them with the DMCA: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/o t3-summary.html

Hosted right here in the USA by Dr. David Touretzky, research professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Re: Suppressed Documents

[Black Parrot]

> Here is the document that Slashdot removed when COS threatened them with the DMCA: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/o t3-summary.html

Yeah, I can kinda see why they wouldn't want anyone to see that. Out of context it could leave the impression that they were some kind of k00ks or something.

Re: Suppressed Documents

[jabber01]

Out of context?

I scanned the whole thing. I can't imagine a context in which it would *not* sound k00ky - but that's because, in the reading of it, I dropped about 50 IQ points.

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Slurpee]

So would Slashdot today still remove that text if it was posted in a comment?

I remember Rob pulling that comment. I thought (and still think) that it was and is the saddest day in the history of Slashdot.
After handling trolls, first posters, legal threats by Microsoft and other parties...they gave in to a Scientology threat. I'm not sure if Slashdot has removed posts since. But that was the first.

a sad sad day.

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the comment was reposted 10,000 times after the fact, and Slashdot did nothing proactive to remove those copies.

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Izago909]

Odd, I though Hawaii didn't exist that many years ago (or the pacific). I'll tell you though, I like that 'evil' leader of theirs. You gotta love someone who commands a civilization of intergalactic star ships and solves over-population problems by taking his subjects to a molten plant, putting them in boxes next to volcanoes, and dropping an h-bomb on them.

I think someone has been dipping their cheese-fiction in the electric acid kool-aid acid a bit too much. Lay off the sauce L Ron.

Re: Suppressed Documents

[Black Parrot]

> Out of context? I scanned the whole thing. I can't imagine a context in which it would *not* sound k00ky

Surely you don't think I'm fool enough to say - or even imply by innuendo - that Scientologists are a bunch of k00ks.

> but that's because, in the reading of it, I dropped about 50 IQ points.

Ah, saved for half damage. Always Identify a scroll before reading it!

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Slurpee]

To be fair, the comment was reposted 10,000 times after the fact, and Slashdot did nothing proactive to remove those copies.

Very very very true. And to also be fair...slashdot has a great history for standing up for free speech.

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Penguinshit]

I love the blurb at the end listing Everest as one of the supposed volcanoes Xenu used to turn the thetans into nuke-dust.

Last I checked, Everest was not volcanic nor ever was.

However, simple facts like that shouldn't bother a Scientolojerk - after all, it's all an implant, right?

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your lawyer one of them by any chance?

Re: Suppressed Documents

[Anonymous Coward]

you lie you only lost 20.

Re: Suppressed Documents

[jcr]

In context, it makes them look even crazier than that!

-jcr

Re:Suppressed Documents

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, I though Hawaii didn't exist that many years ago (or the pacific).

You're right, a lot is wrong with Hubbard's Xenu fiction. Read Peter Forde's A Scientific scrutiny of OT 3 for some fun. He takes the whole story apart

e-meter sessions

[lightspawn]

... And their rituals (with the E-meter) are just as strange.

Not really. Their main purpose is four-fold:

1. Provide a means for subject to discuss problems with another human being (on some very basic level, it does help, I suppose).

2. Pass a low current through subject to introduce a sense of euphoria, which is both addictive and lowers resistance (heh) to interrogator's questions.

3. Alert interrogator to any issues which may weaken hold on subject.

4. Provide information on subject to be used if hold on subject ever looks like it may be broken.

So, what happens in the U.S. if a organization is ever certified as a "religion" by mistake? Is any means available to undo it?

Re:e-meter sessions

[Malcontent]

"So, what happens in the U.S. if a organization is ever certified as a "religion" by mistake? Is any means available to undo it?"

It was tried. The scientologists filed thousands of suits against the IRS. The IRS gave up after a while.

It was the first DDOS attack on the United States of America and it was wildly successful. I would not be suprised if other terrorists undertake similar attacks on the US govt.

Re:e-meter sessions

[Monkelectric]

ok, points 1 3 and 4, no problem. But current or voltage inducing addictive euphoria???

Re:e-meter sessions

[glwtta]

So, what happens in the U.S. if a organization is ever certified as a "religion" by mistake? Is any means available to undo it?

That's a tough one, we've been struggling with this whole "Christianity" thing for centuries now, and it doesn't look good.

Re:e-meter sessions

[Anonymous Coward]

5) Skin resistance is one of the channels of a polygraph or "lie detector". Even if those don't work terribly well, they use it on you while you tell them all sorts of nonsense about your past lives. Thus, you have to get comfortable with making up total nonsense. You also have to claim to have psychic powers to rise to the very top of the organization. Thus, only pathological liars who have become comfortable making up total nonsense lead the organization.

I think that would tend to explain a lot about them...

Re:e-meter sessions

[lep12354]

2. Pass a low current through subject to introduce a sense of euphoria, which is both addictive and lowers resistance (heh) to interrogator's questions

I guesss this is why we see so many Duracell addicts...

Go XS4ALL!

[Martin Wolf]

This proves once more that XS4ALL is one of the greatest ISPs in Europe and possibly the world. No, I'm not affiliated with them, other than being a very happy customer.

Let's face it, how many ISPs would stand by their customer against a rich and dangerous opponent? How many would simply have pulled Karin Spank's site at the first hint of trouble, without caring whether the complaint was justified?

XS4ALL was started by the Dutch hacker group "hack-tic" in a time when Internet access was not available to the general public. Although they are a commercial entity and were bought by the national phone company a few years ago, they remain faithful to the spirit in which they were founded and to their original goals: to promote full, uncensored and unconstrained Internet access for everyone.

Technically, they're great as well -- in my five years as a customer, I've only had a handful of short outages and all of them were caused by the ADSL infrastructure rather than the provider. Power users who want to run Linux, set up a home network and run their own web/mail server are not just allowed, they're encouraged. There's an on-line service page through which you can maintain things like spamfilters, a firewall (off by default, but easy to turn on and heavily promoted) and an experimental IPv6 tunnel. They run a number of game servers themselves and during Gulf War II, they participated in a digital TV trial which offered several Arabian stations in addition to BBC Worldnews etc.

In short, if you're a geek, you should move to the Netherlands just so you can get an XS4ALL account.

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[BlindSpot]

XS4ALL is also the host of Python's official web site, so in a small way - probably a very very small way - this is also a victory for open source!

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[Babbster]

One would hope that with the international nature of the Internet, we would be able to set up accounts simply by contacting them and arranging payment. Moving to the land of wooden shoes seems like overkill. :)

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[CvD]

I've not seen anyone mention that XS4ALL, in their Terms and Conditions, encourages customers to hack their system and gain root access, and tell XS4ALL how you did it. They'll then give you 6 months of free access.

Shows how serious they are about their own security and setup, too.

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[Plugoor]

last year a film about the founders of XS4ALL was put on the internet:

http://hippies.waag.org
The film is a good 234 mb (lo-res!) and 534 mb (vcd).

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only where they on of the first public internet providers, they where one of the first to comply with the tapping requirements to. Along with the other kpn owned ips`s.

Ofcourse the reasoning for both those complying and refusing to comply with the tapping legislation where purely financial... but it just goes to show that XS4ALL may run the best forum/opinion paper I know about privacy and social mathers on the net (includes comentary on the "toetjesterrorist", the campina desert extorionist, no laughing mather. The FBI got the name and address out of an american ISP which claimed to never ever give out these details) But they are just as scared as the rest to get in financial trouble like its new owner, the "dutch AT&T" kpn. (as in kpnqwest)

Sure "newszilla" (Bigest usenet server in the world?) is great for those in need for p0rn (as where their peercache experiments) but maintenance could be better (they where running a counter-strike 4.0 server for a year, which got kinda boring after beta 6.0 .... so much for "great game servers") They do have a nice set of mirrors though... Lots of big words from a now big isp, some them (deeplinking, freedom of speech) they live up to, but the godsend for those who care about privacy they are not.

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[corbosman]

Hi, that movie isn't specifically about XS4ALL. It's about the Hippies from Hell (www.hippiesfromhell.org). It's a group of friends that, just like XS4ALL, grew out of the hacker/alternative scene in The Netherlands. Ofcourse all these groups have large overlaps, but to say that movie is about the founders of XS4ALL is not entirely true. (I should know, im one of the founders myself ;)

Someone asked if it took from 1999 to get this sorted. Worse, I was there when in 1995 Scientology raided our office and put a lean on all of our equipment. Ofcourse they wanted to just get the name and address of one of our customers but they couldn't have it, not without a court order. (and even then, we have refused court orders if we didnt believe they were lawful).

This is the third ruling in our favor on this case. Except that the second ruling claimed ISPs were responsible for illegal content if the 'ISP knows fairly sure it's illegal'. This third ruling overruled that again, and now we can fall back on european law which states an ISP 'needs to know beyond any doubt that material is illegal before being expected to remove it'.

That'll teach em to mess with a bunch of hacker hippies :)

Cor

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[cameleon]

Wow! I'm a customer of XS4ALL, but I didn't know this. I looked it up, and it's right here:

4.4 Onverminderd het in artikel 4.3 gestelde is het klanten toegestaan het systeem van XS4ALL te hacken. De klant die als eerste erin slaagt een positie te verwerven gelijk aan de systeembeheerder van XS4ALL, krijgt van XS4ALL zes maanden gratis gebruik van het systeem aangeboden, onder voorwaarde dat de desbetreffende klant uitlegt op welke wijze hij of zij geslaagd is in het hacken, hij of zij geen schade heeft toegebracht aan het systeem en aan andere klanten en hij of zij de privacy van andere klanten heeft gerespecteerd. Iedere klant geeft bij deze toestemming aan andere klanten onder voornoemde voorwaarden te trachten het systeem te hacken.

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[FunkyChild]

And of both of Blender's main sites, too for what it's worth.

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[whaley]

Which translates as:

Customers are allowed to hack the XS4ALL system. Te customer who is first to succeed in gaining access equivalent to the systems administrator of XS4ALL gets six months of free use, provided the customer explains how he or she succeeded in hacking the system, has not done damage to the system and to other customers and has respected other customers' privacy. Every customer hereby permits other customers to hack the system by these rules.

Re:Go XS4ALL!

[Grizzlysmit]

Could some one talk them into branching out here, in Australia we could really do with an ISP thats both good and big enough to whip Telstra's sorry ass, so far the only big foreign mobs have been the likes of AOL (== Altogether Overated Losers I think). :-D

Telstra === local ex national telco, still near monopoly.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[Tokerat]

What I don't understand is the fact that in these deep link cases, the sites didn't take any steps to prevent the deep linking through passwords ro REFERER checks...that's akin to putting a poster of information near a window in your house and suing people who walk by the window and see it. How any judge could rule in their favor is beyond me.

Like my Old Man used to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't kill enough Scientologists.

But I'm sure he also would of said "You can win enough court cases against Scientologist"

I'm not rich enough or uneducated enough to be a Scientologist.

Re:Like my Old Man used to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since so many celibrities are scientologists, it's clearly the one true religion.

Re:You know what's a really odd religion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminder to self, never to post to Slashdot.

What could be the problem with links?

[Chuck Chunder]

Every Slashdotter knows no-one reads them anyway....

Re:A bad decision -- SCO copyright

[screenrc]

Time to call SCO's isp and tell them
about their copyright violation of Linux. It
is also time for SCO to call the isp's that
mirror kernel.org to have the linux removed,
and it is time to call SGI's isp to have
their copyright violations removed as well.
You see where this is heading.

In my opinion, it is best for the courts
to decide when (and if) to remove files from
the web.

What they *really* are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are organized criminials and terrorists masquarading as a cult. Why do you think they run all these front companies? Money laundering and tax evasion. Rread the comments on the site linked in the story, find the really long one where some guy wrote about the 10 odd years of his life he wasted on these creeps, he mentions several said front companies there and the illegal practices they did. Yes, it is in english. You can't miss it, it fills half the page. They are a LOT like Al Qaida, only its an American organization instead of an islamic one.

With her stuff dated 1999.. Why is this so new?

[ivi]

I'm a bit confused as to the news-worthiness
of this story... The latest document in her
list of stuff she used in her defence is 1999

Surely it didn't take the court 3 years to find?!?

What am I missing here? ;-\

TIA

Re:With her stuff dated 1999.. Why is this so new?

[troc]

This court case is in the Guinness book of records I believe for having been adjourned the most number of times or something.......

Troc

PS Another very happy Xs4all customer.

Re:With her stuff dated 1999.. Why is this so new?

[defender]

Nope it isn't.
The Guinness Book refused to list it, citing some very weak stuff about it being to specific. I see more merit in having 9 adjourments (lazy, dictionary, what's that !?) listed, then having the smallest one bedroom hotel listed.

Scientology's Plan...

[tonywestonuk]

How to get this site off the web...

Plan a: Sue em!
(if that doesn't work)
Plan b: Get their link posted to Slashdot..... that'll burn their serves off the net!

Seriously, I was approached by the Scientologiests a few years back (before knowing anything about them). I was a little naieve (sp?) , and signed up for a course in Dynetics... What they said seemed very plausible. The people who were running this course did seam a tad strange, almost as if they were in a daze....

After doing a search on Infoseek for dynetics, (Google wasn't around then), I was quite shocked what these people could be up to. I decided not to return, though they phoned me back loads of times trying to persuade me to.

I now consider Scientology akin to a computer virus, exploiting a flaw in the human brain, and spread from one to the next. First the brain is rooted. Trust is gained. And then, over the corse of many months, subsystem after subsystem is taken down. All for the persuit of cash. The net could well have saved me, by downloading info into my head, that prevents rooting by these people.

I can only feel sorry for those who are already taken over by this cult.

Re:Scientology's Plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

spelling lesson for u

naieve = naive

dynetics = dianetics

I can only feel sorry for those who are already taken over by this cult.

That's funny .. they sued "cult awareness network" for slander/libel etc. about 10 years ago .. and guess what .. the judge awarded them control of the organization ... so they now run cult awareness network!

Re:Scientology's Plan...

[jcr]

I now consider Scientology akin to a computer virus, exploiting a flaw in the human brain, and spread from one to the next.

That sounds very much like Keith Henson's description of cults in general.

Go to www.operatingthetan.org to get the full details of Scientology's vicious persecution of Henson, and also to find his articles on evolutionary psychology.

-jcr

Re:Scientology's Plan...

[Evil Pete]

I now consider Scientology akin to a computer virus, exploiting a flaw in the human brain

Like a real "Snow Crash".

I got asked by one of them once to do a "test". And I started talking to him, but my answers must have been so non-standard he seemed like he was lost for an answer. And when I started describing the works of L. Ron Hubbard and his supposed bet with the editor of Astounding(?) about who could start a religion first .... he seemed to lose interest. Sigh. Its so hard to make friends when you bring up inconvenient facts.

Re:Scientology's Plan...

[Oddly_Drac]

"I now consider Scientology akin to a computer virus"

or 'meme'.

Reading the dianetics book in isolation is quite good, because it's waffle. Complete waffle. The agenda doesn't even start to kick in until you've glazed over about 30% of the way in. I'm surprised that nobody has pointed out the links between Star Trek and CoS...

Expiration concepts

[TWX]

The trouble that I've noticed with copyright is that it doesn't deal well when something becomes part of mass-culture. Someone or some group creates something that becomes intrinsic in society, yet even after the novelty has worn off, they continue to maintain an iron grip on it. They won't release it to the benefit of society. Disney, the RIAA, the MPAA, and the like are all involved in this. Hell, half of the old TV shows made after '68 are unknown to younger generations. How many kids under the age of fifteen have seen "Scarecrow and Mrs. King", or "Laverne and Shirley", or "Taxi"? Some of the programs that were popular even as little as 20 years ago, ones that made a large impact on popular culture, are not really found anymore, while TV shows before that (which were subject to differing copyright and public domain rules), like "Star Trek", "Lost in Space", "The Andy Griffith Show", and such are still entertaining people today.

New culture can be cool. I've found groups like Space Hog, Chris Isaac, and Love and Rockets to be very entertaining and very talented, but I've also found a wealth of very good music and media from the past, and it doesn't see the light of day anymore unless it was top-40 back in it's heyday. That's just sad.

Re:Expiration concepts

[fenix down]

I'm 19 and I've only ever heard of Taxi from that list. Guess I don't watch enough Nick at Nite.

Re:Expiration concepts

[TWX]

Here's one for you...

The scene in "Wayne's World 2" where Wayne Campbell rushes up the stairs of the church to bang on the windows, to shout, "Cassandra!", only to find the wrong couple, to which he realises that there's a church across the street that is identical, do you know what that was parodying? It wasn't original to "Wayne's World 2"...

I don't think that you'll find "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" on nick at nite. It's too new.

Re:Expiration concepts

[Population]

What is "The Graduate"?

I'll take "Obscure Movie Scenes" for $200, Alex.

Re:Expiration concepts

[cayenne8]

"Hell, half of the old TV shows made after '68 are unknown to younger generations. How many kids under the age of fifteen have seen "Scarecrow and Mrs. King", or "Laverne and Shirley", or "Taxi"? "

And this is a bad thing how........?

:-)

What is really scarry

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of these cult members are lawyers and media types. Foxes Gretta (used to be at CNN) is one. She is pretty popular rating wise.

As far as I am concerned any group that has engaged in the acts that have been often alleged against them should be outlawed as some European countries have done. Short of that hunting them down and putting a stake through their hearts is a valid option.

Re:What is really scarry

[Penguinshit]

Oh man.. so she has Scientology to blame for her hair?

I'd sue!

(and I liked Gretta when she was on CNN.. too bad she sold her soul to Beelzebub O'Reilly).

Re:What is really scarry

[RevSmiley]

With he old face and bad hair even.

Most Intersting Quote From Descion

[cluge]

Finally, defendant sub 23 appeals to her right of free speech. Her texts enjoy the particularly high level of protection as defined in art. 10 EVRM. It is of the utmost importance that said texts are shown, as a warning, as those texts are based on the repulsion of the values of a democratic society. In this case the right to free speech prevails above copyright protection, if the latter applies.

Re:Most Intersting Quote From Descion

[whaley]

As far as I can read it, the Sept. 4th appeal does not agree. It's just that Spaink isn't doing anything wrong on her current website and so providers aren't either. The EVRM does not overrule copyright law here.

IANAL, comments welcome ofcourse.

Re:Why is this so new? OOPSIE!!!

[ivi]

OK, folks... Sorry... I see that it was an appeal
that got decided on 4 Sep 2003.

Mu! (Ie, I un-ask my earlier question... ;-)

apples compared to oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting copyrighted works on the internet is still illegal.

Read the article read the decision read the website

Then post.

You are comparing apples to oranges.

Scientologists sue.

[Anonymous Coward]

News organizations don't like gettting sued.
Scientologists also run lots of news organizations.

I used to be a scientologist

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you first hand that this organization is evil. Now the people who are within it are generally well intentioned and sincerely believe that they are a part of something that is working to make the world a better place. This is part of what makes it so evil, it uses its own victims to perpetrate its crimes. Make no mistake, the primary victims of Scientology are its own members who are lied to at every turn and discouraged from seeking out or even looking at independent sources of information on the cult. Those like myself who get wise to the scam and leave are viciously attacked whenever we speak out against the cult and try to warn others of its evil. Of course you could say the same thing about any cult and even Amway for that matter. What makes scientology so bad is that unlike some scams that simply go after your money, scientology goes after your life. Scientology will bankrupt you, separate you from your family and friends, literally make you into a slave, and then cast you aside like yesterday's garbage once they've gotten everything they can out of you.

Scientology is essentially a mind control cult bent on world domination disguised as a religion. The only weapon that works against such an entity is the truth, and is it ever working. Scientology has gone from being something that most people think is strange, if they've ever heard of it to begin with, to something that most people despise or at least distrust. I have the deepest respect and admiration for those who have the courage to fight this organization. If even one person is saved from a life of misery it will have been worth it.

If anyone wants to know more about this organization, there is one place that should be able to answer your questions: Operation Clambake at www.xenu.net

Re:I used to be a scientologist

[Captain McCrank]

Hubbard used to be involved with devil worship vis-a-vis John Whiteside Parsons before he "discovered" scientology.

Other Christians out there are quite comfortable seeing where the source of this evil comes from. An institution that is so whole-heartedly devoted to the distraction and misdirection of mental and spiritual energy really has to serve on some level, some kind of purpose. Given that no one's ever completed the "research" of Scientology, can it really serve any other purpose?

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist".

Re:I used to be a scientologist

[nattt]

Yes, you can say the same thing about any cult - or religion for that matter. They're all the same, they're all bad, and they all try the same tricks. The only thing that holds back more traditional religions is that their leaders actually believe it!!

A cult is a religion with less members

[gad_zuki!]

>They never call it that, but that's what all of the teachings really are.

And this is different from mainstream religion because...?

I'm not one to defend Scientology or its methods but at its core is the concept of faith, the belief of things without proof or belief from authority. ALL religions share that, thus they are very much the same e.g. authoritarian, traditional, unquestionable, abusive, controlling, etc.

A cult may be more intense but the e-meter and its wielders have nothing on days on end of meditation of the buddhist, the player schedule and diet of the muslim, or the passion of the revival christian.

The good news is that as scientology gets criticized people start to ask the question what is a cult and find it hard to rationally come to a conclusion without hurting their own faith. The more agnostics and atheists the better. Keep up the lousy work Scientology, you're acting just like Rome and your other peers except you don't have quite the backing they do. Lawyers help, but billions of believers put a million lawyers to shame.

Re:A cult is a religion with less members

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd be very surprised about some religions. It's a shame that so much of the perception of religious groups is based on ignorance.

I'm a Catholic, and yes, I know it's popular to attack the Catholic Church in the United States for the "sex scandal" which keeps brewing. The actions of some people are indefensible, and there is corruption within the Catholic Church. Even so, it's no more corrupt than any large government.

That being said, I want to debunk a few myths about what it means to be a Catholic and what the Catholic Church really stands for. And no, I won't get sued for it, in fact, I think the Catholic Church probably is very appreciative of people telling the truth about it.

As for being authoritarian, I'd say that's probably true, depending on what in the Catholic Church you're labeling as authoritarian.

If you accuse the Catholic Church as being traditional, I don't know if I'd accept that or not. There's been lots of reforms in the church to make it much less traditional and much more friendly. The mass is relatively traditional, but there's been lots of reforms, too. The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) made some pretty large changes, that that's very recent.

In the past, the Catholic Church could probably have been deemed unquestionable. On the other hand, they've apologized for their mistakes in the past. The "infallibility" that the Catholic Church professes, and they get attacked on, is actually very limited. It doesn't mean that the Catholic Church is always right or that it's free of corruption. All it means is that its doctrine and morals aren't corrupted. And there are documents, dating back to the very early church, saying exactly how to bring up objections. The fact is, a lot of what Martin Luther said was right, and had he followed this and in today's church, he would have been taken very seriously and certainly he wouldn't have been excommunicated.

I don't know how you can say that the Catholic Church would be abusive. They're actually very tolerant.

I'd like to point out that the Catholic Church officially says that other people who follow other religions - meaning other Christians, Jews, Muslims, and many others, probably including some Eastern religions - are saved, with a couple restrictions. Christians talk about God as a loving God, one who doesn't want to condemn his people to hell. And this very tolerant belief of the Catholic Church goes right along with God being a loving God.

Even as far as issues such as homosexuality, the Catholic Church is tolerant. While they won't support stuff like gay marriage, they don't believe that a man is evil for being attracted to other men, or that a woman is evil for being attracted to other women. While the Catholic Church states the act of homosexual sex is a sin, being attracted to members of the same sex in itself is not a sin. It's only a sin to act on those urges. In fact, it's completely acceptable to have gay preists, just as long as they don't act on it. And heterosexual preists aren't supposed to act on their heterosexual urges for that matter.

The Catholic Church isn't draconian as you'd make it out to be. And I'd bet that most other churches are far less harsh that you think, too. It's too bad religion gets such a bad name because of a few extremists.

Re:A cult is a religion with less members

[BenjyD]

Oh yeah, very progressive.

Whatever you say though, his main point must be true for all religions - they are all, just like Scientology, based on a faith, a blind, unthinking belief in a higher power of some sort.
The indoctrination of people into 'normal' religions is just as evil as what scientology does, it's just less obvious and more socially accetable.

Re:A cult is a religion with less members

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd be very surprised about some religions. It's a shame that so much of the perception of religious groups is based on ignorance.

From the available evidence, it seems that Catholics believe a supernatural being with magical powers came to earth in the physical form of a human being and then died to pay for the things he had said they were doing wrong. Is that about right?

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[jonbryce]

The problem with a Trade Secret case would be that if it is already published on their web site, it can hardly be called a trade secret.

Did you see the paragraph on costs?

[Mostly a lurker]

Condemns the plaintiffs to pay the costs of this suit, up to this moment on the part of defendants ... estimated to be fl 2830.- each time, of which f 330.- is recording rights.

We are talking about legal costs for each ISP of less than US$1500. And the costs paid by the plaintiffs when the ISPs are found to do nothing wrong. Why cannot the US legal system be more like Holland's?

Re:Did you see the paragraph on costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry; I doubt this number is accurate, since the case has been stretched over the years ever since 1995/96 or so.

Re:Did you see the paragraph on costs?

[leto]

It is valid!

Dutch courts assign legal costs. It is never more then a few thousand. It does not mean that any party involved hired a fucking expensive laywer. Those are not reimbursed. It's like renting a hellicopter to go to court. You only get travel expenses paid based on normal transportation.

It makes sense, Scientology has gotten millions of theoretical damages just in legal fees. It denies a citizen the right to use the legal system.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[drinkypoo]

It's really more like offering to send people the document, without charging people for postage, upon request. There are numerous access control methods for websites besides referrer tracking. Since all you have to do is make a GET request through HTTP, I'd say it's completely analogous to my example. You don't even pay for their bandwidth!

SBC does not carry alt.religion.scientology.*

[Anonymous Coward]

Why sbcglobal.net does not carry alt.religion.scientology.* on their USENET/NEWS server?

Re:SBC does not carry alt.religion.scientology.*

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it on news.la.sbcglobal.net.

Re:SBC does not carry alt.religion.scientology.*

[RevSmiley]

LOL they don't carry any fucking thing on there worthless so called newserver.

SBC does not carry alt.religion.scientology.*

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY ?

Sue me for singing a hymn ? Yes it's been done!

[Anonymous Coward]

but nobody is going to sue me for either singing a hymn

Actually, in Finland our *IAA representative Teosto has successfully sued the cab drivers for having a radio on while they've got a customer. You know, the customer might get to hear music for free and the artists would be left starving... Now each cab driver must pay a fee to Teosto or prove that he/she is not listening to the radio when with a customer.

They also attempted to sue churches for singing copyrighted hymns and kindergartens for playing and singing copyrighted childrens' songs. That didn't go too well in courts, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'll try again later on when the EU DMCA is in force.

News

[Animaether]

It's internet news and as such it's generally not deemed to be too interesting.

But to say it wasn't covered, though, is silly. NU.nl covered it, and they're one of the most popular Dutch news sources on the web;
http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=200076&c=52

Once upon a time: slightly offtopic

[bettiwettiwoo]

Once upon a time I actually did one of those Scientology personality tests (in my defense: it was sort of early in the mid-afternoon and the sun was really, really quite uncomfortably bright and I was really hung-over and ... well, anyway, it's a long story) and it was the greatest thing: I never heard from them again and could always say -- truthfully -- to all those pesky Scientologists accosting you on the street trying to make you take one that I already had.

On the other hand, you know you're really f*cked when not even the Scientologists want you.

Re:Once upon a time: slightly offtopic

[johannesg]

On the other hand, you know you're really f*cked when not even the Scientologists want you.
Don't knock yourself, it probably just means you are not susceptible to their propaganda. It's just a sign of a strong mind.
Well, that or an empty wallet...

Re:Once upon a time: slightly offtopic

[cmdrbuzz]

Or sane....

In case of slashdotting, violate DMCA with rot13

[Anonymous Coward]

ur urnq bs gur Tnynpgvp Srqrengvba (76 cynargf nebhaq ynetre
fgnef ivfvoyr sebz urer) (sbhaqrq 95,000,000 lrnef ntb, irel
fcnpr bcren) fbyirq birecbchyngvba (250 ovyyvba be fb cre cynarg,
178 ovyyvba ba nirentr) ol znff vzcynagvat. Ur pnhfrq crbcyr gb
or oebhtug gb Grrtrrnpx (Rnegu) naq chg na U-Obzo ba gur
cevapvcny ibypnabf (Vapvqrag VV) naq gura gur Cnpvsvp nern barf
jrer gnxra va obkrf gb Unjnvv naq gur Ngynagvp nern barf gb
Ynf Cnyznf naq gurer "cnpxntrq".

Uvf anzr jnf Krah. Ur hfrq erartnqrf. Inevbhf zvfyrnqvat
qngn ol zrnaf bs pvephvgf rgp. jnf cynprq va gur vzcynagf.

Jura guebhtu jvgu uvf pevzr yblny bssvpref (gb gur crbcyr)
pncgherq uvz nsgre fvk lrnef bs onggyr naq chg uvz va na
ryrpgebavp zbhagnva genc jurer ur fgvyy vf. "Gurl" ner tbar.
Gur cynpr (Pbasrqrengvba) unf fvapr orra n qrfreg. Gur yratgu
naq oehgnyvgl bs vg nyy jnf fhpu gung guvf Pbasrqrengvba arire
erpbirerq. Gur vzcynag vf pnyphyngrq gb xvyy (ol carhzbavn rgp)
nalbar jub nggrzcgf gb fbyir vg. Guvf yvnovyvgl unf orra
qvfcrafrq jvgu ol zl grpu qrirybczrag.
Bar pna serrjurry guebhtu gur vzcynag naq qvr hayrff vg vf
nccebnpurq nf cerpvfryl bhgyvarq. Gur "serrjurry" (nhgb-ehaavat
ba naq ba) ynfgf gbb ybat, qravrf fyrrc rgp naq bar qvrf. Fb or
pnershy gb qb bayl Vapvqragf V naq VV nf tvira naq abg cybj
nebhaq naq snvy gb pbzcyrgr bar gurgna ng n gvzr.

Va Qrprzore 1967 V xarj fbzrbar unq gb gnxr gur cyhatr. V qvq
naq rzretrq irel xabpxrq bhg, ohg nyvir. Cebonoyl gur bayl bar
rire gb qb fb va 75,000,000 lrnef. V unir nyy gur qngn abj, ohg
bayl gung tvira urer vf arrqshy.

Bar'f obql vf n znff bs vaqvivqhny gurgnaf fghpx gb barfrys be
gb gur obql.

Bar unf gb pyrna gurz bss ol ehaavat vapvqrag VV naq Vapvqrag V.
Vg vf n ybat wbo, erdhvevat pner, cngvrapr naq tbbq nhqvgvat.
Lbh ner ehaavat orvatf. Gurl erfcbaq yvxr nal cerpyrne. Fbzr
ynetr, fbzr fznyy.

Gurgnaf oryvrirq gurl jrer bar. Guvf vf gur cevznel reebe.
Tbbq yhpx.

Beware free I.Q tests..

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a not so good run in with the scientologists. In Australia they hand out pamphlets saying "Free I.Q Test" with an address. Absolutely no details whatsoever saying who they are. Many years ago I actually went to it thinking cool (as if it was legitimate). I did the test and then they went off to mark it.

When they come back they do a one on one interview. I think I got 132 (what they said). She said that's very good, entry level genius. I thought shit okay, then she said now look at this chart. Showed me a chart with different moods labelled on it, she said "you're all over the place, you're an unstable person" - "You have the intelligence but you need to balance yourself out, why don't you come on one of our courses?, $100." Thats when I started to think "Oh I see, get me in for a free i.q test and then try and get me to go on a course, well see you later". I should of knew better. At this point I didn't know who the scientologists were, and I couldn't of cared less, I wasn't going to pay money this way. So I told her I wasn't really interested.

Then she said, well, then do you want to buy some of our books, $9-10 each (Author Hubbard of course). Then I said err no. Then that's when she came out with it, "It's all about trust, you have to trust me".. "Have you noticed John Travolta has been doing alot of movies lately?". Then I started to think, oh, scientologists, I think I saw these guys on the news. I actually had them mixed up with National Geographic.

Then she really got aggressive... "Well, do you have any money on you?", I said, "No I got no money", then she said - "well do you have a card you can get money out of", again I said "No".

Finally, I thought, I gotta get out of this mutha fucker, so I said "Err how about you give me your phone number and I'll call you?", and she said, "No.", and I said "why not?", and she said, "because I know you won't call", then I said "Do you trust me?". Then I got my bag and left, fucking showed her.

As I was walking down the stairs I saw their posters and thought, oh yeah, I think I know who these fuckers are.

Anyway, I blame myself for going and not thinking. Be careful of so called "free" i.q tests - they're out to brainwash you.

Lately I've spotted a UFO cult in my neighborhood, the Raelians. These bitches are everywhere (cults) and you'll be surprised at their membership numbers, it's fucked up society we live in.

Re:Beware free I.Q tests..

[NoMaster]

Lately I've spotted a UFO cult in my neighborhood, the Raelians.

I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Raelians. Forgetting about all the cloning / genetic engineering / alien crap, I remember when Rael himself came out to Australia about 8 years ago.

The itineray went somthing like this :

• Melbourne : huge rally
• Sydney : huge rally
• Brisbane : Go-karting...

Now, if only we could get the Pope to do that...

Re:Beware free I.Q tests..

[zakezuke]

Then she said, well, then do you want to buy some of our books, $9-10 each (Author Hubbard of course). Then I said err no

I only remember this vaguely when this Dianetics was new. I remember some websites popping up offering free I.Q. tests, again without any details what so ever on the site. The web was new as this was circa 1992, and I thought to my self what the hell. The end result no matter what you answered was "you can benifit from Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard"

My impression at the time wasn't really negative or positive tward Dianetics, I rather thought that it was just a faux religion out of another Hubbard book for those sci-fi readers who wanted more background and insight into these fiction societies.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[Tokerat]

But isn't that the whole reason it's on their servers, out in the open? So anyone who wants to can access it at anytime? That is pretty much the point of the Web, after all...

Religion as a means of information management

[Laconian]

I prefer Neil Postman's view on the subject in that religion is a mechanism for providing order and context to information. Religion might seem like a crutch, but to most it is a means of imposing a comforting sense of order on to the perceived universe.

You could argue that Slashdot behaves much like religion, in that it ranks, orders, and provides emphasis on selected information. Just as Pat Robertson tells his followers that rock music consists of backwards Satanic rituals, Slashdot moderators dish out "-1, Troll" tags to me and put me below the posting threshold. Both of them have a major role in selectively sieving and censoring information.

Actually, I shouldn't compare Slashdot to religion. Slashdot IS a religion.

Re:Religion as a means of information management

[Oddly_Drac]

"I prefer Neil Postman's view on the subject in that religion is a mechanism for providing order and context to information. Religion might seem like a crutch, but to most it is a means of imposing a comforting sense of order on to the perceived universe."

Religion is the 'push' model of creating a comforting world view rather than the relative haphazard way that people build their perceived world view through experience.

Religion 'helps' people confused by the world they inhabit with a structure, even if that structure includes being in the 'family' with 'Unky Charlie' and going after people with knives.

Personally I steer clear of any belief system that wants me as a member. They really don't have a clue how bad I am.

Re:Religion as a means of information management

[swillden]

I prefer Neil Postman's view on the subject in that religion is a mechanism for providing order and context to information. Religion might seem like a crutch, but to most it is a means of imposing a comforting sense of order on to the perceived universe.

Good point. For example, consider Neil Postman's view, which imposes a comforting sense of order on the varieties of human philosophy we call religion, and places them in a simple and well-defined context.

It's useful to remind yourself from time to time that objectivist belief systems are also belief systems and have their own limitations.

Re:Religion as a means of information management

[zakezuke]

Blessed be the moderators, trolls, and the holy mockery. Blessed are we who enjoy their ranting.

Slashdot, i'm not worthy to preview, but only click submit and I will be reticuled.

Now it is time to pass out the jesus wafers(tm)

Who is this the work of?

[nimblebrain]

I can't resist...

"Hmmm, well isn't that special. Posting links to church secrets. Who could be behind this? I just can't imagine who...

Could it be... THETANS?"

Props to the Church Lady :)

yup...

[alexander m]

i second that. wish i lived in a country where common sense, not money, can triumph. certainly the UK doesn't cut it anymore... go the dutch!

Re:yup...

[msh104]

me too !!

xs4all ADSL is really cool, good support lots of linux support. ( compared to other ISPs here )

thanks XS4ALL !

Modern religion

[mabhatter654]

They're mearly making the best of what they can...After all, they are reletively young an all the teachings fall under those wonderful copyright extension we /. all love! You think that the Cathloics [nothing against them at the moment] haven't already tried this? Pre Gutenburg they were doing exactly the same thing!

It's one of those things..."Preists" need money to dedicate their lives to observing the faith, right. Houses, food, etc isn't free. If the worshipers don't support you with some kinds of offerings then you starve! Not good. The Scientologists happen to have a legal "lock" on the words they worship and are making due on business rather than "offerings". Most religions are guilty of falling into this spiral of corruption...look what happened to the Southern Baptists after Fallwell and Co fell.

This is the same thing going on since the beginning of humans. Religion comes from meaning, religion needs full-time help. Full-time help needs steady income and the steady income BECOMES the religion....nothing to see here, move a long.

That said, they are obviously using their "lock" to legally block out the detractors like a good business would....How often does MS do this [didn't we debate the .net EULA last week]...same thing here. Unfortunately, It's sad to see any religion take this route...American's just aren't used to it. Our culture was founded directly because of a profound hatred of actions like this...that's where most of the initial immigrants came from. That's why the response espically here for the fercily independant, is so sharp!

One other thing...I'm starting to dislike how quickly people confuse RIGHTS with RELIGION. While I don't belive Scientology at all, as an American I'm bound to at least give them consideration and respect their rights to have far-out views....after all, there's always someone out there who thinks I'm a quack too!

Re:Modern religion

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking moron then. RTFA. Look up all the info on this criminal enterprise (yes they have members doing jail time for big time law breaking) And give us this ignorant reply. These people are NOT a religous group They became one as a scam to keep L.Ron. Hubbard out of jail.
Thay are a fucking scam for weak suckers.

Re:Modern religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Claiming copyrights is of course valid, but Scientologists also try to sue anyone who dares reveal their secrets or for whatever reason they can find. They often get away with it (in the US, usually not elsewhere) because they have good lawyers.

Things like paraphrasing OT3 are protected speech, and valuable in order to warn people before they get involved with Scientology.

Scientology uses systematic brainwashing to keep their members. That's psychological abuse, not religion (while some may consider all religion psychological abuse, few use actual brainwashing techniques as effectively as Scientology). They don't let you know the really obviously kooky stuff until they determine that you're sufficiently brainwashed.

Please, read through the material on www.xenu.net before coming to the conclusion that Scientology is just about "having far-out views". Raelians are just people with funny beliefs. Scientologists are abusive and dangerously powerful.

It's either a religion or a business, but which?

[jamehec]

If it's a religion, it's nonprofit, and has no use for "trade secrets".

If it's a forprofit entity, it ain't a religion.

So which is it, Scientology? Can't very well have it both ways, now.

Re:Modern religion..after RTFA...

[mabhatter654]

I think the Judge was right on. After all, this ruling is akin to the MS EULAs about benchmark results and the like. As far as "deep" linking and linking in general to offending material, Deep linking is merely exploiting a hole in the system. Most deep links could be stopped thru more careful administration...setup to require hacking which is a different matter. Linking to copyright material is not infringement itself...let's point the blame where it belongs...and use the links to rat out the offenders, till the offenders start prohibiting the links on their own! The only other issue was weather or not the item was a legal document or evidence. The court chose to dodge the bullet and call it an important part of the case which wasn't "gaged" and already out of the bag.

As far as other claims, just like in slashdotter world, you have to be careful how you post things...most normal people have zero understanding of the subtlies of copyright law...how to make sure you can get your point without violation. The lawyers know people [and often Judges] aren't versed in the particulars. Again a case where the Law refuses to simplify rules, or publish "safe" useages without weeding thru piles of paper.

Of course to me [USA] this means jack squat. We still have to deal with this mess!

Scientology business model

[Anonymous Coward]

And for once, this is 100% accurate:

1. Join our church
2. ???
3. Profit

A cousin of mine once landed in these guy's hands. It took him and his parents four years to get him out, and he never really recovered.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[Shardis]

I totally agree with Tokerat.

If you want to restrict who accesses the information you are specifically setting up software to share to a public medium, the onus to track and authorize users should be completely your responsibility.

cathode licker.

[Anonymous Coward]

cathode licker. that's all i have to say. cathode licker.

Common v. Continental

[bacchusrx]

You might be interested in a couple of articles that appeared in Murdoch University's December 1998 Electronic Journal of Law:

Justice or Money? How to Save the Law from Contempt

Common v. Continental: A Reaction to Mr. Evan Whitton's 1998 Murdoch Law School Address

The former is an indictment of English common law (and its descendants). The latter is an introduction to the legal systems of continental Europe.

bacchusrx.

Re:Common v. Continental

[Mostly a lurker]

Excellent citations! I especially agree with the criticism that English derived legal systems treat the law as a game played by a cartel, whereas most continental systems (and their derivatives) are focused on establishing the truth.

I think one of the most eloquent critics of English law was Charles Dickens. For instance, in his preface to Bleak House he states in part

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.

...

At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun.

This is great writing, but it is depressing to note that, in 150 years, little has changed.

Re:Common v. Continental

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this stright you want all the coruption of the mexican justice system and you also want evidence gathered in bad faith or by torture to be admissable?

I'll stay with the common law system. Thanks anyway. People who are not guilty shouldn't have to wait in jail on some judge to get around to investigating the facts to see if a crime has even been commited. In no case should the police and the Judge be woring together. I am not sure even procecutors should be allowed to work with the police.

Re:Common v. Continental

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? We have had a very good experience since we adopted the Mexican system of law here in continental Europe. We are now thinking of adopting the Mexican economic system, which sounds like a nice blend of socialism and capitalism. In Europe we all look up to the great Mexican innovations in social organization.

Microsoft ad?

[michajoe]

Why is it that I get a Microsoft ad to go with this article on Scientology.

Strange, hmm ....

Re:Microsoft ad?

[Thing 1]

Why is it that I get a Microsoft ad to go with this article on Scientology.

Strange, hmm ....

Check out the chick in that ad: hot at first, but when you look at her face you see it's kinda old and wrinkled and not-so-hot.

Just like Microsoft products.

Googlebombing

[MichaelCrawford]

Please help make operation clambake the #1 search hit for "scientology" by posting a link like the following from any web page:

• The Church of Scientology

The way Googlebombing works is that Google also uses the text of links to a page for matching. For example, a search for "dumb motherfucker" used to bring up a page that was quite supportive of President Bush.

If Operation Clambake were the #1 search hit, then it would be the result for the "I'm feeling lucky" button on google.

Re:Googlebombing

[kobotronic]

Won't work. Ronbots have already created tens of thousands of fake 'homepages' for their victims, sorry - members - on which script generated Success Stories(tm) and links to every conceivable front and incarnation of the criminal organization are automatically posted. Here's a small sample, note the inconspicous domain name -- the whole site is in fact owned by Ronbots.

http://www.oursites.org/andreazastawny/
Now check out the 'contact me' part:
http://www.oursites.org/andreazastawny/cont act.htm
The form goes straight to the Scientology main organisation's lead generation department -- without as much as a hidden form field designating the pretend-person whom you were 'contacting'. But you can be ever so sure somebody WILL reply.

These tens of thousands of bogus and completely identical sites are designed precisely to spam the search engines, and regrettably it seems to have worked at least on Google.

http://www.xenu.net/

Scientology, google, and drug rehab

[Anonymous Coward]

The Church of Scientology knows what they're doing, at least in terms of getting their sites highly listed in Google.

I was doing research on drug addiction, and did searches for 'marijuana addiction', 'lsd addiction', 'cocaine addiction', and 'heroin addiction'.

The first (or second) listed sites for each of those searches turned out to be Narconon sites. Narconon is a Scientology front group. see http://www.crackpots.org/ for more info.

Narconon is not to be confused with Narcotics Anonymous, which is a legit organization. The name similarity is probably intentional (on the part of Narconon).

So the next time you're looking for drug addiction info on Google, keep an eye out for Narconon pages, and if you have no love for Scientology, don't link to them. They seem to be doing well enough already...

Re:Scientology, google, and drug rehab

[Mgormez]

If you did a Google search on cocaine addictive then the first link would be a critical one. On it is shown that former Narconon (Scientology front) President claimed that cocaine was not addictive. Weird guys, those Scientologists...

Re:Scientology, google, and drug rehab

[jdavidb]

Scientology is also doing something to make Earthlink (their ISP) come up high on many religious searches. Drives me nuts.

Re:Scientology, google, and drug rehab

[touretzky]

The ultimate expose of Scientology's Narconon scam was done by Chris Owen, and is available at
Narconon-Exposed.org, hosted at Carnegie Mellon. Scientology hasn't gotten around to complaining about this web site yet, but they surely will.

Re:Scientology, google, and drug rehab

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at the local ABC station, and just discovered that we run a 'PSA' for this Narconon shit. I wonder how some people here would feel if they knew they were furthering Scientology =P

Boogey man?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was the Boogey man that broke my embedded controller and DSDT table on my supposed ACPI-enabled laptop BIOS, which is why it's on the ACPI blacklist.

Now you're telling me he's after my lucky charms, too?

If Chewbacca lives on Endor, Scientology doesn't make sense. Look at the monkey.

Re:In case of slashdotting, violate DMCA with rot1

[Anonymous Coward]

When I ROT13 this, I get some garbage that certainly couldn't be described as a religious document. It's more like a badly-written short sci-fi story.

[T]he head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".

His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.

When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development. One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is
approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.

In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.

One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.

One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some
large, some small.

Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error.
Good luck.

I mean, I'd be very surprised if Hawaii even existed 95,000,000 years ago. There's no way this is a "secret religious document". I think the parent poster is trying to fool us.

But you could LINK to it...

[Benm78]

Off course, uploading an album in mp3 format and offering that for download is still as forbidden as it ever was.

However, if you would place a link to another website that has this album for download, you would not be infringing copyrights or doing anything illegal whatsoever.

It boils down to, more or less, the idea that you cannot be held responsible for what others place online... which sounds like a reasonable concept to me.

OT: Bleak House

[alext]

Highly recommend the BBC treatment with Denholm Elliott as Jarndyce and Diana Rigg as Lady Deadlock - not as widely known as Xmas Carol etc.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[twitter]

The idea extends to deep-linking cases. If deep-linking allows you to skip past the ads on a web page and is supposedly illegal because of that, why aren't pin-point citations (where you cite both the book and the page on the book where the quote is from) illegal?

Or, gasp, a reference to a specific page in an advert loaded magazine? I hate how magazines are putting more and more adverts before the table of contents. Paging through adverts for SUVs, cell phones batteries, M$ junk, and other stuff from people who want to screw everyone is particularly gauling when you are trying to make use of National Geographic magazine, which is obsensibly devoted to exploration and careful management of natural resources.

It's nice that someone somewhere is going to keep the web from being even more obnoxious and less useful than dead tree publications want to be. The question now is if the US will try to screw it's own citicens by declaring Holland an IP rouge state and having ISPs censoring the sites that will spring up there. We shall see.

Mind Control starts for the young

[Anonymous Coward]

The founder of Earthlink went to school here:

http://www.theschool.com/aboutus/indivprog.html

Not surprizingly the guy he started Earthlink with just got sentenced to 14 years in jail. Program THAT.

"The school owes a debt of gratitude to American philosopher and educator L. Ron Hubbard, whose extensive writings include many treatises concerning education and career preparation, as well as the development of responsibility and ethical strength."

This isn't offtopic :)

[blunte]

This is good comedy. Mod accordingly.

Fallout 2

[Anonymous Coward]

I killed the CoS in Fallout 2, it was fun :)

OT: Mormons

[Bios_Hakr]

What happens in the temples is not SECRET, it is SACRED. We do not, as a general rule, discuss sacred things with each other or with outsiders. There is no rule that says we cannot talk about it, so ask if you are interested. I'll answer anything I'm not uncomfortable discussing.

Before anyone is allowed into a temple, they have to be a member of the church. This extends from the people attendening all the way to the guy who works on the ventelation. We do make some exceptions, but then the temple has to be prepared before entry and then cleansed after they leave.

BTW, members who go are given classes that explain a lot of what happens in the temple.

As for a level system, I have never heard of that. We have a Prophet, 12 Appostles, 2 Quorums of Seventy (which have about 40 to 60 people each...go figure), Mission and Stake (state level) presidincy, District Presidency, then Wards (big churches) and Branches (small churches).

Inside an actual Ward or Branch, we have a Bishop or President (kinda like a preacher), Elders (men's) Quorum, Relief Society (women's thingy), and stuff for kids.

AFAIK, there is no level system. You don't get access to some special uber-secret book when you become $POSITION.

Anyway, I'm not ranting. Just bored and thought I'd settle your uncertianty. If you have questions, ask me.

Copyright [Re:A bad decision]

[Sphere1952]

I've no problem with copyrights as long as they are considered strictly commercial speech. As soon as copyright law steps even the slightest bit into the realm of private speech then I have nothing but condemnation for it. If an individual wishes to copy a book and give it with no monetary consideration to another then I say there ought to be no recource provided to the copyright holder, as this is a private non-commercial act.

When I first read this...

[brunes69]

I thought it said

Dutch court rules that thinking is legal in Scientology case

I was like "man, these whackos are nuttier than I thought".

It seems I was mistaken.. oh wait... nevermind.

Yes, but...

[Kjella]

...without copyright, the non-opensource product is also not covered by copyright, that is you could do what today would be considered pirating. That way, it would be very little incentive to do what you describe. Besides, you can already do this with BSD code, and it's not like that code disappears just because someone uses it in a non-open program.

Kjella

Re:In case of slashdotting, violate DMCA with rot1

[Anonymous Coward]

Tragically, he's not. That really is the core belief of scientology. bit mad, really.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[Alsee]

It's really more like offering to send people the document

No, a link says "You can GO HERE and ASK for something".

If someone around the corner from me is having a garage sale and giving away free lemonade there is no reason I can't put a note on my front door with the address saying that there is free lemonade there. Whenever someone comes to my house they are perfectly free to drive around the corner and ask for lemonade.

When someone clicks a link in their browser they are telling the browser to drive to a certain address and ask for a file.

-

YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!!

[purrpurrpussy]

I suggest you do some reading before describing them as Satanic!! Try "The Satanic Bible" (Anton Lavey) or "The Book of Law" (Crowley).

After this you will _truely_ see that these people are not Satanic at all.

"Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law"

Internet and International Law

[Johnny Mnemonic]

So what does "As a result, Karin Spaink's website,..., is entirely legal in the Netherlands." mean? That that site can be hosted in the Netherlands? If so, can/will foreign countries to the Netherlands prohibit linking or visiting his site? Doesn't this still beg the question--how are laws that are bounded by physical space impact the flow of information on the Internet that operates irrespective of physical definition?

Hold your horses...

[ThyTurkeyIsDone]

Am I missing something? All I can see in the ruling is that ISPs cannot be held responsible for what their users publish (yay!) and that a putative copyright holder has to substantiate their infringement claims before the allegedly infringing material has to be taken down (yay!). However, this whole "linking is legal" thing that the title of the Slashdot story refers to and that everyone here seems to be focusing on doesn't appear in the ruling at all. It is only mentioned briefly on the scientologywatch page, and without any explanation on how this ruling is supposed to apply. Does anyone have any more info on that?

Re:Hold your horses...

[whaley]

I also couldn't find anything about linking so far... earlier on in the case it has been established that the current home page of Karin Spaink does not infringe copyright and the quotes from Scientology's secret documents fall under fair r use. Also, providers are just providers, not publishers. But there's not much groundbreaking as far as I can see because most claims are simply denied since Spaink's site uses legal (as in, OK for the law) quotes.

Re:Hold your horses...

[whaley]

To correct myself, I did find something about linking in the Sept 4 verdict and it seems to be illegal to link to illegal stuff if you know it is illegal.

Attempt at a summary (IANAL)

[whaley]

Some comments while reading http://www.rechtspraak.nl/uitspraak/frameset.asp?u i_id=51205 (it's in Dutch, the ruling of Sept 4th 2003) combined with the things I read about the whole thing earlier.

Karin Spaink (the woman in question) has posted the Fishman affidavit in response to the Usenet debacle back then but when it became clear that it contained too much copyrighted work to be legal, she removed it and in stead posted a commentary on the whole case, including some quotes from the copyrighted (and supposedly highly secret and worth big bucks to Scientology) works.

Because she was quick enough to remove the entire Fishman affidavit and the court didn't think she would re-post it, the court only focussed on the article with quotes that was left on her site.

Scientology says OT II and III are illegal to publish and Internet providers should remove them immediately, also posting links to such copyrighted works is illegal

The court agreed that linking and publishing copyrighted works was illegal and providers should give out names and addresses of violators.

Spaink & providers claimed copyright was not with Scientology but that was not proven

Quotes are legal if they are from a rightfully published source

Court says some of the works are not rightfully published (i.e. not supposed to be public).

EVRM (European treaty on the rights of humans?) could overrule copyright in cases of great importance

Spaink's article is a serious article on a serious subject (-my words :) and non-commercial

Court thinks Scientology is not afraid to deny democratic values and the secrecy of the works are also meant to exercise power over its members and to prevent discussion. (!!)

Forcing providers to remove or make unavailable the articles by Spaink, is 'disproportional'.

Providers are providing the technical means for publishing, they are not publishers themselves (compared to e.g. book publishing companies)

It is not proven that the articles of Karin Spaink violate copyright.

Court does not rule about the whole Fishman affidavit, as Spaink has already stopped publishing it and shows no intent to do it again.

Again, just quick notes and IANAL. It's also worth reading earlier court decisions as this is a follow-up (appeal).

Re:Attempt at a summary (IANAL)

[ThyTurkeyIsDone]

Thank you for that. Sometimes it is really difficult to stem the tide of misinformation that is Slashdot.

The court agreed that linking and publishing copyrighted works was illegal and providers should give out names and addresses of violators.

Let me run that by you once more, crack-smoking submitter, crack-smoking editor, and crack-smoking moderators: The court agreed that linking and publishing copyrighted works was illegal, contrary to the sensationalist write-up with its sensationalist title! Spaink was acquitted because the material that she links to is in fact legal.

Whaley, how long until your posts and mine get modded up to where people actually read them? And how many Slashbots are going to walk away thinking "Yay! I can link to any illegal thing I want."?

Re:Attempt at a summary (IANAL)

[whaley]

Indeed, reading this again and reading the Sept 4 verdict I believe the court did rule that publishing AND knowingly linking illegal (for copyright reasons) material is in fact illegal. This goes totally against the article's subject but I believe it is the case here (again, IANAL)

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[Alsee]

The problem with a Trade Secret case would be that if it is already published on their web site, it can hardly be called a trade secret.

The things the Scientologists are suing over are NOT published on the Scientology website.

To summerize, CoS is suing websites that say Sicentology is a UFO cult, for posting that CoS teaches that millions of years ago an intergalactic overlord called Xenu solved an over population problem by rounding up billions of people, deep freezing them, hauling them to earth, laying them out around volcanos, and then setting off nukes in those volcanoes. He then magnetically trapped the spirits of the people he killed and "brain washed them" with movies of modern life, Job-family-WhitePicketFence-Consumerism-Obedience, etc. Our bodies are infested with these brainwashed spirits and they deceive and control us. They are colled BodyThetans. Anyone who has not been cleansed of BodyThetans is under Alien Mind Control.

Scientology is not attacking these statements because they are FALSE. They are attacking these statments because they are ACTUAL SECRETS of Scientology.

The reason Scientology is exceptionally dangerous is the idea that anyone who has not been cleansed of BodyThetans is under Alien Mind Control. Assuming you have ever watched any SciFi movies you should realize that it is OK to deal with people under Alien Mind Control by any means neccessary. Generally you just lie to them, but it is perfectly OK to kill them when they get in the way. CoS's other tactics include lawsuits, threats, and invented charges (such as pedophilia) to discredit their enemies.

It is "regrettable" that they have to do terrible and criminal things to people who are non-members of Scientology, but we are all under Alien Mind Control. It's like the Matrix, until we have been liberated we are all the enemy.

Another specific teaching - when someone says anything negative about Scientology they do NOT respond to what was have said (what they have said it most likely true), what they do is discredit the speaker. This is known as "dead agenting". They hire private investigators and even illegally invade government databases to find damning information about that person. If they can't find anything they MAKE IT UP. Instead of responding to charges against CoS they say that the speaker is a drunk/communist/ex-felon/pedofile, that he lied about X, or was wrong about Y. That speaker is then discredited - he is a "dead agent". His statements will no longer be believed even if they are true.

-

Re:You know what's a really odd religion...

[Anonymous Coward]

damn, how the fuck is that offtopic.
the article is about scientology, I compare another "successfull" cult religion to scientology, get moderated down to offfuckingtopic.

Offtopic was not a proper moderation, flamebait would've have been more appropriate. You were on a roll until you stereotyped a whole people as something.

Re:Why is this so new? OOPSIE!!!

[whaley]

Right, and the article linked to that is in English, is not the ruling of September 4th 2003. That one is not available in English yet. I couldn't find any definite answers on whether linking can be illegal, though. Just that Scientology has been proven to be bad and that the article by Karin Spaink is justified and the quotes are fair use.

P.S.

[Alsee]

P.S.
I forgot to mention that Scientology was founded by Robert A. Heinlein. Robert A. Heinlein was one of the most famous SCIENCE FICTION AUTHORS ever. That's why the Xenu story sounds like bad science fiction - that's exactly what it is.

Long before he founded Scientology he was quoted as saying "the best way to become rich is to start your own religion".

For in-depth information on Scientology go here.

-

CORRECTION!!!!!!!!

[Alsee]

Oops, I'm an idiot. I refferenced the wrong Science fiction author. Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard, NOT Heinlein.

-

Re:CORRECTION!!!!!!!!

[Maserati]

There's a story going around that Hubbard and Heinlein had a bet going as to who could start a successful religion. Hubbard won. Personally, I'll stick to rereading Stranger in a Strange Land every so often.

"Confidential" ....Ever hear of the Fatima Docs?

[FreedomOfSpea-MMNnnf]

The Catholic Church (one of the largest "legitimate" religions) has an entire Country (the Vatican) that isn't publicly open for viewing but once every 1000 years (the jubilee year was last year)... even then certain documents like the complete Fatima prophecies have been kept from Catholics because "they are not for our time" as stated by the current Pope.

This is not to say I aggree with one single tenet ofthe Church of Scientology, except that Travolta's Career has been ruined by it. That's one thing. UUUghhhh Battlefield Earth...

CoS docs and P2P

[popo]

Can't anyone just Kazaa all the Church of Scientology "teachings" these days?

Re:CoS docs and P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is, FREENET

Heh heh.

[BlackBolt]

I'm glad to see that justice is still alive SOMEWHERE in the world. (**sighs sorrowfully**)

I wonder what the courts would find HERE.

Artpolitic.org

[sik0fewl]

I ran across this site yesterday. It's a political art page. Here's one of the pieces related to Scientology: http://www.artpolitic.org/index.php?id=641

I thought I should share it.

here's a document they REALLY aren't going to like

[touretzky]

Last week I published a confidential Scientology document showing that the cult expects to kill other members the same way they killed Lisa McPherson. The document is a release form saying that Scientology cannot be held liable if they seize a mentally ill member, hold them in isolation against their will, and subject them to Scientology processing in lieu of emergency psychiatric care. Even if the member is injured or dies, Scientology cannot be sued. (These terms are probably unenforceable.)

Both scanned and HTMLed versions of the document are available on my web site at Carnegie Mellon.

For News picked up the story, as did the New York Post. But the local papers in Tampa and Clearwater, Florida (where a major Scientology bas is located) have not covered the story. I think they're afraid to touch it, even though their own readers' lives are at risk. Maybe someone should ask the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times why they've lost their nerve.

A common misconception of copyright law.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

For example, the film "Deep Throat" has been intriduced into court many times in obscenity trials. That does NOT make it public domain so that anyone can copy and distribute it at will. Same with "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and any other work.

Otherwise, anyone who wanted to get something into the public domain only has to scheme with a friend, cook up a cause of action relevant to the materials and file a civil lawsuit, attach the materials to an affidavit, and voilla! Public domain.

For example, I claim my neighbor is creating a nuisance by playing Michael Jackson albums. To show the extent of the nuisance, I include CD's of the offending songs. Now anyone can copy and distribute it?

Suppose I file suit against Hillary the Steatopygic over her new book, and attach the contents of the book to the complaint. Now can anyone copy it and post it to the Internet? Nope.

We need lawyer-only mod points so lawyers can mod down posts with inaccurate legal info.

Re:A common misconception of copyright law.

[AndrewRUK]

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

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

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

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

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

Or could you?

[ThyTurkeyIsDone]

Or was the submitter smoking crack, as so often happens? As I said in my other post, there is absolutely nothing in the ruling that says linking to illegal material is legal. Go read it again. That was a sentence thrown in by scientologywatch, with no explanation or corroboration whatsoever. Then the Slashdot submitter included it in the sensationalist title, and now we have a myriad Slashdotters cheering how great this is. Could we please have some confirmation of this important point first before cheering our asses off?

Numbnuts.

[HookedOnPhonics]

I seriously hope that English isn't your first language, otherwise you're a complete fucking moron.

copywrite

I think you mean copyright, as in rights.

attach

Here, I think you mean attack.

Obligatory 'Pulp Fiction' quote

[k98sven]

Another appreciator of the Netherlands..

Jules: "Oh man, I'm going, that's all there is to it. I'm f___ing going."

They were probably Catholics

[Pac]

It is the only logical explanation for such an advanced civilization being oblivious to family planning and gentler population control methods.

CO$ Astrotuffers hit slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thats one account. Now, what are your others?

Seperate the religion from the implimentation

[bluGill]

You need to seperate the religion from those who claim to practce it. Most people in the US will claim to be Christian, about half attend church regularly, and an even smaller amount live the christian life day to day. (I don't have any way to back the above up, but they are reasonable estimates)

Do you base christianity on the one guy I know who didn't attend church at all last year (not even christmas/easter), but did eat only fish on lent fridays? Do you base christianity on one of the churches that burned witches? Do you judge all priests on the couple [catholic] that turned out to abuse children? Or any of the thousands of other things done in the name of christianity that do not represent what God wanted? I hope not. Somehow you need to look past all the evil done in the name of christianity to find what christianity is.

The commandment: Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain. Refers to situations where someone claims the name of God for something evil, and it is commonoly violated. Contary to popular belief it does not refer to swearing! (which isn't to say swearing is right, only that it isn't important enough to be in the 10 commandments)

Don't rush

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things for your consideration, folks:

1) It isn't fair to compare a 50 yo "religion" with a 2000 yo one. Christianity may be a melted down version of itself now but its history is replete with horror and abomination: - killing, exploitation, inquisition, slowing down science, indians slaughter - you name it. Scientology is a piece of cake compared to Christianity when viewed from this perspective.

2) That I know, Scientology never attacked a web site for libel, and god knows the amount of Scientology bashing to be found on the net. It only had issue with violation of its copyright, especially for documents it deems confidential as a result of its belief that it could be dangerous for others.

Keep that in mind.

Re:Why aren't links just considered a citation for

[ananiasanom]

The reason sites don't prevent deep linking is that firstly, they're incompetent and don't want to bother, and secondly, doing so would cause problems with some browsers (very old ones by now, and it's not something companies worry about as a rule.)

The reason they make progress legally is that the companies complaining, the lawyers, and the judges really don't have any idea how the technology works. It's just magic to them. If they ever think about it, and they most likely don't, they probably think that when you click on a link on a web page you're telling that web site to send you the information in a link. 30 seconds thought would tell them that's rubbish, but that's at least 28 seconds more than they give it.

It's just the same with people who complain about web sites setting cookies. They think it's something imposed on the user by the web site, they don't realise it's something the user is actively asking for via the browser. It's just some "magic spell" that the EVIL web site is casting on them.

I'm getting carried away now, but I'm wondering if reading the Malleus Maleficarum would give me an insight into popular attitutes to technology....