Slashdot Mirror
Dutch A.G. Supports Scientology v. Spaink Verdict
bbc writes "ISP XS4All reports that the Dutch Attorney-General advises against reversal of the last verdict in the Scientology vs. Karin Spaink case (part of Scientology's War on the Internet). A series of court battles between writer Spaink and the Church of Scientology has changed the copyright landscape of the internet in the Netherlands. In an early case, linking to infringing documents was considered infringement itself. Later this was reversed, although by then several unrelated cases (notably Deutsche Bahn v. Indymedia) had been decided on the basis of this judgement. On appeals, the court held that free speech sometimes trumps copyright: even though Spaink may have infringed on the Church's copyright, she was allowed to do so to bring to light the doings of what she considers an evil sect.
According to the XS4All document, not only did the Attorney-General uphold the decision that Free Speech can trump Copyright, but concluded also that there may not have been infringement. The Attorney-General feels a work can be considered published even if publication happened against the will of the author. In the Netherlands, the Supreme Court can only reverse previous decisions by lower courts. Before it renders a verdict, it asks the Attorney-General for advice."
It should be noted that the Dutch AG supports Karen Spaink in the verdict. The story title makes it sound like the support is for $cientology, and the summary doesn't really clarify.
...to link to Scientology.
As always xenu.net has the dope on the ongoing $scientology vs. the 'net battle
The summary doesn't clarify? Did you even read the summary?
According to the XS4All document, not only did the Attorney-General uphold the decision that Free Speech can trump Copyright, but concluded also that there may not have been infringement.
I can understand not reading the articles, but not even bothering to read the complete article summary? Sheesh!
um, I think maybe all the countries that have always used '.' in place of ',' when mentioning numbers?
I think it's "stuff that matters" because it generally pertains to copyright law. I think it's "news for nerds," or at least for Slashdot nerds, because Scientology has well-deserved a bad rap here.
To the best of my knowledge, Slashdot has only deleted comments three times. Once at the request of the United States Secret Service (maybe that was kuro5hin, I can't seem to find a reference). Once under legal pressure from Microsoft. And once under legal pressure from Scientology.
Scientology threatened the Wayback Machine to the point where its maintainers deleted a bunch of archived content from a site critical of Scientology.
Scientology threatened Google and forced Google to remove listings for that same site which is critical of Scientology.
What Scientology's lawyers are up to is certainly news for nerds.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Xenu will be displeased indeed.
You know, I just went to the Church of Scientology's website and took their "How 'toxic' are you?" quiz.
Funnily, no matter what your score is, they give you the same results.
The effects of drugs and toxic residues can send your whole life crashing. These substances put you in a condition which not only prohibits and destroys your physical health, but prevents any stable advancement in mental or spiritual well-being.
Like a fresh stream of crystal clear water, the Purification Program gets rid of the devastating effects of drugs and toxins so they no longer block your clear thinking and enthusiasm for life. This breakthrough discovery by L. Ron Hubbard has helped hundreds of thousands lead happier, more perceptive and aware lives.
And even if you gave No to everything, they still try to convince you.
You answered "YES" to 0 of the 10 questions.
You still could have a level of accumulated toxins in your body which can affect your ability to think clearly.
Followed by Blah blah blah on how polluted your body is.
Just change the count=0 in the querystring and you can see for yourselves =)
Sheesh, what a bunch of kooks.
The following is from the Scientology FAQ. I think it explains very clearly why we don't like them. [/sarcasm]
----------------
Why do some people oppose Scientology?
There are certain characteristics and mental attitudes that cause a percentage of the population to oppose violently any betterment activity or group. This small percentage of society (roughly 2 percent) cannot tolerate that Scientology is successful at improving conditions around the world. This same 2 percent is opposed to any effective self-betterment activity. The reason they so rabidly oppose Scientology is because it is doing more to help society than any other group. Those who are upset by seeing man get better are small in number compared to the millions who have embraced Scientology and its efforts to create a sane civilization and more freedom for the individual.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
"Attorney-General" is a inaccurate translation of the Dutch term "Advocaat Generaal". An American Attorney-General is more like the Dutch Minister of Justice. An Advocaat-Generaal is more like a American federal prosecutor. The Advocaaten-Generaal are specifically the prosecutors who appear before the Hoge Raad (Supreme Court).
After a little googling I found this:h tml
http://seclists.org/lists/politech/2001/Dec/0017.
Appearantly he made a post which explained how smallpox could be spread.
This singular case is all about the right to publish and link to information on the internet. Is is about freedom of information above copyright. When this finalizes before the supreme court, this matters. The journalist Spaink with her ISP XS4ALL are close to winning a legal battle taking more than 10 years.
If she turns up dead from the Co$ nutters we /.'rs should unite and go military on thier asses:
The Church of Scientology (or: CoS; or: Co$, as some of their opponents call it) sells its followers expensive courses which, if students study them carefully, are supposed to set them free ('clear' them). A former Scientology member, Steven Fishman, was brought before court because he committed several crimes in order to get the money to pay for these courses. 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.
Thanks Karen.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Wrong. English speaking European countries do not use this system, and instead use the system adopted by the US.
Due to the inconsistency, the International System (SI) requires that narrow spaces are used instead of either commas or periods as grouping separators.
Like most other religions/cults, it tries to make people feel like their problems are not their own fault, but a horrible curse on all humans from an evil entity (or aliens in the case of scientology).
The difference is, that scientologists claim that problems can be solved, not by personal will and faith and all those other intangibles, but by Money. Meaning it attracts a lot of wealthy people, celebrities, etc, who like the idea of buying their way towards perfection/heaven. And, since money can be converted into power, the religion can maintain a fairly strong powerbase, despite all the absolutely ludicrous claims.
It amazes me that the members can simply overlook all the direct quotes from L Ron Hubbard where he discussed inventing a religion for the sole purpose of making money.
To be quite fair, it is common practice in Mystery cults to keep the secrets of the higher grades of Initiation from its lower members. In ordinary practice, there is no need to enforce this secrecy as the lower initiates wouldn't understand the material anyway, but sometimes for whatever reason a vow of secrecy is required from the higher Initiates (cf the Freemasons).
So, on the face of it, there is no reason to not respect Scientology's copyrights. There is however a major fly in the ointment: there is a strong suspicion that Scientology is not a legitimate Mystery cult, but in fact a scam operation that aims to extract the maximum amount of money from its members. As such it is possibly a criminal organisation, and publication of evidence pointing in that direction is in the public interest. Jurisprudence in most Western states says that the public interest trumps copyright protection (in fact, this was one of the arguments in this case).
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Surely the US adopted the English system, rather than vice-versa? At least, I can't see any reason why England would change their system to one that is incompatible with continental Europe.
"Who did what to whom and how does this matter?"
It's the latest installment in a soap, and as in any other soap, if you haven't seen the previous episodes you won't know what's going on. But as in any other soap, that doesn't really matter.
The Supreme Court is about to rule on whether Karin Spaink broke the law when she quoted from Scientology's secret teachings.
Complicating matters was that
- a lot of people linked to the secret teachings, and CoS wanted a verdict that linking is illegal
- ISP's were supporting Spaink, and they wanted a verdict that their responsibility is limited (in the meantime the law has changed in this respect to a DMCA type affair, but worse)
- Scientology claimed the documents were unpublished (you are only allowed to quote from legally published
- A new European law states that copyright can be trumped when you have legitimate claims that you want to expose something or someone.
This is mostly from my memory, follow the links in the article if you want to know more.
These things matter, because they set precedent on how copyright should be treated on the internet.
In a semi-related topic, I heard that Bush has said that he doesn't consider atheists as citizens and yet he has been elected, two times!
Wrong Bush; that was George Herbert Walker Bush, Dubya's daddy.
We can thank the CoS for the passing of what was a wonderful invention -- and probably the first of its kind ever on the net. For anyone who hasn't been on the net more than 10 years, here's a brief history of the penet.fi anonymous remailer:
s .h tml
p en et.html
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/sep/helmer
and
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/cos/rnewman/anon/
The CoS destroyed a part of net history.
*grumblecakes*
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I have karma to burn so I just want to correct a few errors from the previous posters:
w .html the berne convention no-one but the author and/or owner of the work has /ANY/ rights to it.
/. considering people seldom RTFA :P) should atleast give you a more balanced view about this story then anything elsa on this site.
The materials pertaining to this case have never been released. This means that according to the http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overvie
In regards to music it goes as far as that no-one but the sing/songwriter is allowed to even listening to the song (of course the sing/songwriter can give you that right if they want).
This means that the only way this material can be posted on the net is if it is illegally obtained (ie stolen and since scanned), which is also the case.
Thus the argument that if you have views against an organization you can then link to illegally obtained materials which the berne convention insists no-one but the owner has any rights to then it is also perfectly legal in the netherlands to link to the stolen source code for windows 2000 (if the argument is valid, and not just because the person saying this has a personal beef against the complaining entity).
Also some people don't understand why Scientology does not want to broadly disseminate this material - their claim is, that no-one would be able to fully understand this material unless they had been spiritually enlightened enough. The same argument that buddhist monks have for keeping certain texts secret. In other words if you don't agree with the scientologists on this you also say that it's fine to steal the sacred and secret texts of buddhist monks and put them on the internet (probably that is a bit of a worse crime since some buddhist texts only exist in 1 copy and thus you would also make the texts unavailable to the owners).
Some people mentioned that L. Ron Hubbard made a lot of money - however all copyrights and trademarks are not owned by any Hubbard:
http://www.rtc.org/
Some people ask if the organization can be deemed terrorist or illegal - well the FDA and IRS tried this and failed:
http://opposing.scientology.org/31-irs.htm
Of course xenu.net and others would have you believe something else, but do they produce links and scans for the legal documents going back from 1952? No, only the IRS agreement between the church, it's organizations and the IRS. In fact this agreement constitutes an acknowledgement of IRS wrongdoings, which in xenu speak is just "if there ever where any" [in other words, the forgot to actively check that...].
If anyone wants to know what Scientology is they should consult CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, which is an international network of associations of scholars working in the field of new religious movements.
They have the following 3 articles on scientology which could be of interest:
http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_davis.htm
http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_cowan.htm
http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_rigal.htm
Reading this post AND the links (guess thats too much to ask for on
Have they actually conducted any acts of terrorism that you know of, or are you just taking advantage of some very dangerous, loose law in your country that makes it easier to accuse someone of terrorist acts ("witch!") and have them arrested? In the latter case, shame on you for supporting that system by using it, and thus help diluting the meaning of the once properly used word "terrorist".
I think that terrorism is a very reasonable description of how they treat some of their apostates and critics. "Operation PC Freakout" was intended to drive early apostate/critic Paulette Cooper insane and leave her penniless with a trashed reputation.
This was not an anomaly.
Wikipedia defines terrorism thusly:
Terrorism refers to the use of violence for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or ideological goal through intimidation or by instilling fear.
Many of Scientology's actions against it's enemies percieved or otherwise can be reasonably construed as terrorism.
Having known a bunch of people abused in Scientology, I have to say that this sounds like par for the course - again www.xenu.net has a bunch of similar stories of families torn apart by Scientology