Scientology Injunction Denied Against "Anonymous"

Anonymous writes "A circuit court judge has denied the Church of Scientology's second request for an injunction against protests by the internet group "Anonymous." The Church sought to prevent Anonymous from protesting on the birthday of the Church's leader, the late Ron L. Hubbard. The petition filed by the Church listed twenty-six individuals allegedly affiliated with Anonymous, but "accidentally" included others who merely work near the location of the first protests held in February and did not participate in them, such as a Starbucks employee. Furthermore, the Church failed to show that any of those listed actually committed any wrongdoing."

Comments

Re:IRL raids

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, all those ex-scientologists coming out of the woodwork telling their tales of abuse because they felt empowered by the actions of Anonymous sure don't mean a thing. The mounds of leaked documents and emails exposing the illegal conduct of the "church" aren't worthy of comment. Or exscientologykids.org popping up to tell the tales of the children of cult executives who grew up inside the organization is kind of a pointless story. And the massive amount of public awareness of all of those things, all as a direct result of Anonymous showing support to those trapped inside a horrific cult is just a bunch of hooey. Oh, yeah, and those who have gotten out of the cult as a direct result? Pshaw.

Yup, you're right, might as well not even try.

Scientology playing dirty

[DKlineburg]

Here is what Wikipedia said:

This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
It needs sources or references that appear in third-party publications. Tagged since February 2008.
It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since February 2008.
It may contain improper references to self-published sources. Tagged since February 2008.

I would have a hunch, that the "Church" itself is causing the problems on the page. First The war starts. They impose there beliefs and pull web pages from Google. I have seen a few things that they have done to try and put "Anonymous" in a bad light. I wish I could find the link, and maybe someone out there knows it. It is of a group of protesters getting arrested. The "Church" said it was "Anonymous". This was quickly debunked they the comments around the article, and found that the pictures where taken from a real protest elsewhere, and not an "Anonymous" protest. All and all i think the "Church" is a bunch of bull and don't play fair with others.

I'm now prepared to get buried by the "Church" for my negative comments against them.

Re:Germany got it right...

[Ai Olor-Wile]

First: Anonymous is not protesting the beliefs of Scientology. Anonymous is protesting their actions, and the amount of money they make off of their religious stuff. For these reason, Scientology is often classified as akin to pyramid scheme or something similar (obviously not an actual pyramid scheme) rather than a cult. Most so-called cults tend focus their effort on enslaving their followers to perform menial labour rather than spending time farming their members' current sources of income.

Second: The technical, traditional meaning of "cult" strictly refers to the priests and priestesses of a god or goddess in a pantheon. Aphrodite had a cult, Isis had a cult, and, at one point, your friend and mine, Jesus had a cult (he had about three hundred followers on a commune at one point, if I recall.) By contrast, a religion may include more than one god and encompasses those who simply believe as well. The media term "cult" generally refers to what academics call a "dangerous NRM" (new religious movement). "Dangerous NRM" supports your statement that it is a real religion and not something fundamentally different, but it is important to note the "dangerous" part. Wicca is a non-dangerous NRM. Heaven's Gate is a dangerous NRM. The difference is best related through a number of techniques that dangerous NRMs frequently use:

• Physical barriers or a social hierarchy which prevent leaving.
• Financial dependence (and exploitation) of members.
• Isolation (especially physical) from non-followers.
• Sometimes, psychological control tactics, such as never allowing an individual member to be alone (where they might think for themselves and realise that This Is A Bad Idea) or hypnotic controls that encourage a trance-like state (physical exhaustion + certain rhythms = bad)

Another strong indicator of an NRM is the presence of a single, charismatic leader figure, like David Koresh or Jim Jones. (Both of whom eventually killed most of their followers, but were extremely well-respected by them. Jim Jones was even respected by main-stream Christian religion during his life time.) For this reason, and possible other reasons, Christianity actually satisfies both the traditional and modern definitions of "cult" (although whether that is a dangerous or non-dangerous NRM is another topic entirely.)

Books are great like that.

..because they are against everything "geek"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on the net since gopher was cool and I'll tell you that the Scientology virus is the *worst* infection it's ever gotten. The hell with RIAA or the MPAA, they've done nothing compared to the trampling of net ideals the Scientology jerks have done.

They started by taking down anon.penet.fi, and they've been getting worse every year. The hell with all their supposed abuses, and cult like activity. It's messing with the geek stuff that pisses me off.

Get off my f*ckn net! On my f*ckn net we don't tolerate: censorship, copyright abuse, trademark abuse, bogus DMCA notices, intimidating lawyer letters, or stripping our anonaminity for no good reason.

People have been scared to fight back for nearly 20 years. No more!

* Posting anon not because it's cool, but because these jerks still scare me enough not to use my nick.

To support the ides of March from your desk..

[Anonymous Coward]

check out this firehose story, and click the + top left to give it your support so the /. editors write it up!

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=573326 "Church of Scientology violates Federal Law"

You'd never guess who might be voting THAT one down ;o)

Re:IRL raids

[BlackCreek]

Actually, it is quite OK to mock the scientology "religion". It's even allowed to ridicule Christianity and Jesus.
There is nothing magical about religion that makes it exempt from attack and ridicule.

It is NOT good that you can't attack something because it is a "religion" and would ONLY for that reason deserve respect. People's deeply held beliefs are not OK just because they are deeply held beliefs, they can just as well be ridiculous, and wrong. The fact that you ridicule them isn't even necessarily respectless, not challenging people's delusions, and leaving them with these ridiculous beliefs can be much more respectless.

I agree with your post. I assume you live in the US. Since the majority of the Slashdot seems to be there. I found it interesting because it touched an issue that is hot right now in The Netherlands. Where there is a law that makes an offense to mock religious belief. People are right now, trying to strike it down, but the "Christian parties" are against.

Since the prime minister of the country belongs to one of these Christian parties, it is still uncertain whether this will work out.

I found it quite funny to discover that, since it makes ridiculously hypocritical all the talk about having Mohammed in comic cartoons that took place in Europe. I mean, everybody was "pro" support for freedom of speech, but now two major political dutch parties (including the prime minister) seem to see this law as an entirely different story.

Funny, eh?