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4,000 Anti-Scientology Videos Yanked From YouTube
An anonymous reader writes "From the EFF webpage: 'Over a period of twelve hours, between this Thursday night and Friday morning, American Rights Counsel LLC sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, all making copyright infringement claims against videos with content critical of the Church of Scientology.'"
this could be highly amusing... just think of all those perjury charges...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I don't know the content of these videos, but yeah.. a DMCA notice is a sworn statement. If the information is false then potentially it could be regarded as perjury.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
From the article: "YouTube users responded with DMCA counter-notices. At this time, many of the suspended channels have been reinstated and many of the videos are back up."
Good for those YouTube users for responding with the counter notices.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Yes, DMCA takedown notices are supposedly sworn, under penalty of perjury, to be from a person/organisation with a good claim to owning the copyright.
Where this gets tricky is proving they were used to quash criticism and not in good faith. IE if they say "we thought we owned it and had a good claim", that may be enough to get them out of it. Depending on how blatant they were, of course.
YouTube most likely knows, yes.
However, YouTube is required by law to heed these takedown notices, no matter whether they're justified or not; it's up to the videos' submitters now to file counternotices (at which point YouTube will be required by law to heed these counternotices and reinstate those videos, no matter whether they're justified or not). At that point, it becomes a matter for the courts.
The whole point of this part of the DMCA is to allow places like YouTube to stay out of judging content altogether and simply have a simple algorithm to follow mechanically that will shield them from legal responsibility. Whether the mechanism is really good or whether it's flawed is another question; but for a site like YouTube that mostly cares about not getting involved in proxy fights over copyright, it's a blessing.
So it's not really a fine line for YouTube to walk. They just do what they are legally required to, and anyone who doesn't like that and complains about YouTube is barking up the wrong tree - they should work to get the law changed instead.
For those who don't know about Scientology, this AFP news article summarizes the typical non-Scientologist's view of Scientology activities: The controversial Church of Scientology will be tried in a French court for "organised fraud".
This WikiNews report explains more about the current story: the alleged "rights group" does not exist as a physical entity.
Scientology might own the copyright to their works, but the Dutch supreme court ruled that copyright infringement can be acceptable if it is of interest of the general public. Of course, they have no jurisdiction in the US, but if the copyrighted material can be hosted in the Netherlands, it can be made accesible to anyone.
The perjury issue with the DMCA is something that confuses a lot of people, obviously including yourself. There are two cases where perjury is cited in the DMCA. First, a person must be authorized to work on behalf of the owner of the infringed property:
(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: .... (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Note here that they sign that the information is accurate, but not under penalty of perjury. The perjury statement follows the 'and' and only refers to authorized representation.
On the other hand, if you claim that the material was uninfringing, you have to sign under penalty of perjury that your information is accurate:
(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
This double standard isn't by accident. The record and movie companies knew what they were doing when they were writing this act up for Congress.
Scientology might own the copyright to their works, but the Dutch supreme court ruled that copyright infringement can be acceptable if it is of interest of the general public. Of course, they have no jurisdiction in the US, but if the copyrighted material can be hosted in the Netherlands, it can be made accesible to anyone.
I don't know a thing about Dutch law, but in US law the first of 4 possible factors which determine if fair use applies is:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
Which would seem to cover the situation you mentioned.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Everyone who had a video taken down because of this needs to form a class-action suit and counter immediately. You can't have a video taken down in this manner without it (a) violating many nation's free-speech laws; and (b) violating perjury laws. Hit 'em where it hurts.
Try visiting whyaretheydead.net, it will tell about the people Scientology has killed.
Try googling Operation Snow White, you'll find out about how Scientology infiltrated the IRS and shortly afterwards gained tax-exempt status.
Try visiting Tory Magoo's website, she's an high ranking ex-Scientologist. Read about how she was denied her epilepsy medicine by Scientology.
Want to know what they've done to me personally? I'll give you a clue, us non-Scientologists give a damn about each other.
If you can read this you've gone too far.
The 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.
You wouldn't happen to be a Scientologist (or recently taken a free personality test), would you?
If examples of scientology hurting others (or just being evil) is what you want, here's a few:
According to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. Brian Ash, Harmony Books, 1977: "... [Hubbard] began making statements to the effect that any writer who really wished to make money should stop writing and develop [a] religion, or devise a new psychiatric method. Harlan Ellison's version (Time Out, UK, No 332) is that Hubbard is reputed to have told John W. Campbell, 'I'm going to invent a religion that's going to make me a fortune. I'm tired of writing for a penny a word.' Sam Moskowitz, a chronicler of science fiction, has reported that he himself heard Hubbard make a similar statement, but there is no first-hand evidence." Hubbard himself was also quoted as driving his people toward financial results.
Here's a quote by the founder himself:
Aside from the above, if Scientology teaches purification of the body, why is Christie Alley so damn fat?
YouTube itself actually has a very good guide in its help section on how to file a DMCA counter-claim, linking to Chilling Effects' Java applet for generating a counter-claim letter:
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=59826
It's been one of the few times when a help section somewhere has actually been of some help.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
I'm not sure of the details, but the church of scientology holds copyrights and trademarks on all its "works." It does this to prevent unauthorized usage of them. Its content is no more or less protected than that of an individual or corporation.
No, you aren't aware of the details. In none of the four thousand instances was material from the Church of Scientology (technically, the Church of Spiritual Technology, their front corporation that's set up to hold all their copyrights for them) used in any video.
And CST was NOT the claimant. They used at least five different false claimants to have the videos taken down. When YouTube found out through the counter-claims and various other complaints that these claimants didn't exist, YouTube put the videos back up. Unfortunately, that took as much as sixteen hours from the time of the original takedown.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
I would wager that Scientology sees this as a win-win situation. Either the videos come down without reprisals, or the video creators have to file charges/suits using their real names, opening them up to being 'fair gamed'.
Bingo. This actually started a week ago courtesy of porn baron/Scientologist Oliver Schaper. At the time, the possibility of DMCA counter-claim was mooted among Anonymous, and shot down due to this exact reason. Scientology monitors Anonymous message boards, and for this reason, some of us think that they came to the conclusion that they had the green light to do this.
What Scientology didn't gamble on was the fact that there are some Anonymous whose identities are already known and who were willing to take action. I was one of them.
I delved back into my Slashdot experiences for this purpose and used the old sysop trick for catching spammers: set up a honeypot. I created a YouTube account and uploaded certain videos which seemed to have a good chance of getting taken down for specious reasons. Sure enough, one of them was. Within thirty minutes, I filed a counter-claim.
We can only hope they use Thunderdome rules. Two men enter, one man leaves!
There is a very good reason why we in Chanology call our out-of-control playpen at Enturbulation.org the Thunderdome...
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
Are scientologists required by their beliefs to silence all criticism no matter what the cost is? My respect for Hubbard will increase a lot if they are... adding a self destruct commandment to his cult in case it ever got out of control.
Actually, yes, they are. I don't have the exact HCOPL at hand to quote from it, but Google the phrase "always attack, never defend".
There are numerous instances where Scientology has gone out of their way, at great expense, to silence critics. Just to cite one example, in 1991, Time Magazine published a cover story critical of Scientology. Not only did they sue Time for over ten million dollars (and lose), but in order to mitigate the damage, they published full-page ads in USA Today for a week (very expensive then as today).
They kept ex-Scientologist and critic Lawrence Wollersheim in court for over a decade after he won a suit against them for nine million dollars. The official line from Scientology, which was spread to their members, was "Not one thin dime for Wollersheim." All they did was get the judgment downgraded to two and a half million, and they eventually paid up.
So, yeah, they'll spend any amount of money necessary to silence people.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
I agree - the US government does intervene on pyramid schemes masquerading as religions as well as groups that brainwash members, both of which are illegal. They also sometimes intervene on groups that they consider dangerous without proof of illegal activity, which I believe the Branch Davidians (Waco) fell into.
Actually, it's a fascist political organization masquerading as a criminal racket masquerading as a cult masquerading as a religion hiding behind about 150 front groups. See the talk given by lawyer Graham Berry at a conference in Germany held to investigate them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvMoSsuRVW8
France has announced that Scientology will be tried for fraud and illegally prescribing medicine.
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL820153620080908
Not sure what they actually expected to gain from doing this. They will likely be in legal trouble and now they have just made the anti-Scientology videos more popular than ever. What asshats.
I'll tell you why, but it'll be a little tl;dr:
1) Scientologists are required to attack any criticism of the Church, by holy writ of Hubbard.
2) The timing was critical. On September 3rd, a large, well-publicized anti-Scientology conference was held in Hamburg. A whole boatload of high-powered Scientologists were sent there to try to stop it, and failed. They tried to get into the conference, and failed. They knew that Anonymous was attending with their video cameras. They knew that these videos would be going up as quickly as possible. This was a preemptive strike to a) take down as many popular anti-Scientology YouTube channels as possible and b) create an atmosphere to make Anonymous members afraid to upload those videos.
2a) They did this once before recently. Actor Jason Beghe left the Church and was ready to speak out in full to popular critic Mark Bunker. A teaser of the interview was released on YouTube. A few days before the full interview was to be released, Bunker's YouTube account was taken down, and it took over a week, with a lot of effort by Bunker and the critic community (including Anonymous) to get it back up. That's when Anonymous discovered Vimeo.
2b) Speaking of Vimeo, the takedowns also affected some videos there too. They didn't limit themselves to YouTube, but they did concentrate their efforts there.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
In order to be a pyramid scheme, the cult members would need to be selling the courses themselves,
This happens. You do get commission on it as well - a sale is a sale.
as well as recruiting new members to sell courses; or they'd get paid according to how many new members they were able to bring into the cult.
I don't think either of these applies, so it's not really a pyramid scheme.
On the contrary, so long as the person buys a course or material (such as the dianetics book, which was common when I was into this cult), the ronbot gets commission.
By your definition, scientology fits both as a pyramid scheme and a cult.
Tbh I tend to think of it more these days as a pyramid scheme, simply because there is nothing religious about it. It was and is a means to dodge tax.
Posting anonamously as I have no intention of making it easy for them to initiate their fair game doctrine on me.
Scientology will be taken to court in France
for "organised fraud":
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/7604311.stm
Wasn't there a recent court decision that stated that an entity that submits a DMCA takedown notice must make a reasonable effort to determine whether the allegedly infringing work is non-infringing under the fair-use doctrine? This hasn't been through an appeals process yet, so the ruling may not stand, but it could have interesting effects on the CoS situation.
We are the 198 proof..