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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.'"
That is a damned good question. A quick search on Google will show that we've been here before. www.xenu.net Had no end of trouble with this. I think that if they attempt to link all anonymous videos as being from one source it will be MORE than interesting.
FTFA:
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. Whether or not American Rights Counsel, LLC represents the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology is unclear, but this would not be the first time that the Church of Scientology has used the DMCA to silence Scientology critics. The Church of Scientology DMCA complaints shut down the YouTube channel of critic Mark Bunker in June, 2008. Bunkerâ(TM)s account, XenuTV, was also among the channels shut down in this latest flurry of takedown notices.
It sounds like Google did what is required of them by law, becoming just the bullets used by both sides to fire at each other in a war that I hope ends up in court. Flagrant misuse of DMCA takedown notices should be punished. CoS is proving once again just exactly why it is they deserve legal status as a church. You know, one of those organizations of compassion and love. hmmmm, then again Tammy Fae Baker wasn't too happy with some of the public comments about her either.
It's kind of a shame there is no particular way to make CoS leaders 'fair game' though I'd like to see someone find a way in court to fair game them there.
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I'm curious. Has this ever actually happened with a single one of the vast number of DMCA notices ever issued?
Money is required to fight injustice. Most people aren't willing to retain a lawyer over something that isn't feeding their families.
I did notice the giant shield that Scientologists are using. Did you notice the LLC tag?
"Principle" and "sorry" are the two most expensive words in the law. Arguably, in that order. That said, 4,000 videos may mean enough plaintiffs for a class action, which could have some hope of compensating a lawyer for fighting this on principle whereas the 4,000 individuals couldn't afford it on an individual basis. The EFF has also filed lawsuits over DMCA abuses in the past, so at least be sure that someone over there has a way to get in touch with the people adversely affected by this one.
They have an explicit doctrine of destroying critics through the legal system. They also believe that if a person is deemed "Suppressive" to the cause of Scientology, they have the right to lie, deceive, or even kill the person with impunity.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
The perjury statement for the take-down notice requires a statement "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed". As I read it, that requires that the notice contain some other allegation that an exclusive right is infringed, and that the work and the exclusive right be identified accurately. If the notice does not accurately identify a work (and right) that the complainer is authorized to act on, the complainer might have answer for perjury.
Do the lawyers from the CoS get the info from those counter-notices, and do said notices contain personal info on the YouTube users?
If so, this may be an elaborate ruse to get 4,000 names of the "enemies" of the so called church....
*Edit* OMG, the captcha is "Canonic"...wtf?!
Yay! I was wondering when Scientology was going to wield a big wad of cash to make this go away. Good for them, they are only proving the videos have information they do not want seen. I just hope the Anonymous movement against the church of Scientology can use this to pick up some momentum.
And this has been another installament of Captain Obvious!
You've not seen what the Church of $cientology can do in a court room lately, have you? They have so many judges in their pockets that they are able to do crap like this and never see the inside of a court room.
Ooh, let's see...
There's the fact they separate their adherents from their families and then extract money from them.
There's the whole forced labour, separation from family and cruel punishment of children in their care thing (particularly look up Jenna Miscavige-Hill, neice of the current head of the CoS)
Umm, there's the fact that people have died in their care whilst being locked up and denied medical care
There's the fact that they have managed to get some state and national backing for their joke of a rehab scheme. Which, by the way, they claim is the most successful rehab scheme on the planet (without providing figures or evidence), whereas in fact its techniques basically involve a lot of the same psychological breakdown and cod science as scientology itself. This is sick, IMHO.
There's a lot of other stuff.
This is NOT about freedom of religion, or who believes what. This is about a dangerous organisation that have comitted felonies to try and wipe their record from government agencies and generally display a lack of respect for laws and lives, and yet is still in many coutries treated as a tax-exempt, legitimate religion.
Believe what the fuck you like, but you can't support the continued existance of the church of scientology.
Consider the possibility that the main aim of CoS was not simply to remove those videos, but to gather information about the people who posted them. Google DMCA Counterclaim information: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59826
2. Provide your full name, address, telephone number, and email address, and the username of your YouTube account. ...
What happens next?
After we receive your counter-notification, we will forward it to the party who submitted the original claim of copyright infringement. Please note that when we forward the counter-notification, it includes your personal information. By submitting a counter-notification, you consent to having your information revealed in this way.
CoS files false takedowns, Anonymous critics file counter-claims, CoS gets all of their personal information.
And yes, they do collect personal information and do exploit it to threaten and silence their critics. See, for example, the case of G. Allen. Allen was a regular guy who stopped by to look at the Anonymous protesters in February, with no real interest in the group, and then received a threatening letter from CoS because they ran his license plates and dug up his information to harass him.. and harass him they did. http://blackfish.biz/allen/?p=246
present day... present time... hahahaha...
Note that this doesn't invalidate the notice. Fair use in the USA is an affirmative defence. It doesn't say that copyright infringement hasn't taken place, it says that infringement has taken place but that society has decided to permit this specific case. This rather nasty bit of law means that you can file a DMCA notice against something which falls under fair use without committing perjury, but when you receive a counter notice and then take the original recipient to court you will probably lose.
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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.
I, for one, wouldn't want to see the law changed so that it would make ISPs like YouTube more responsible for copyright infringment than they are now. The only changes that might make the law more palatable would be penalities for abuse of the process as others have already mentioned. Applying the perjury standard in an even-handed way would be a good start.
I agree with you that the way issue gets framed here on Slashdot often makes it sound like YouTube or other ISPs are somehow intentionally stepping on the rights of uploaders. There are lots of things to dislike about the DMCA, but the take-down provisions are not high on my list. I've seen people complain here that their material was removed and act like they have no recourse. Not only do you have recourse, you don't even really need an attorney to protest a take-down notice.
In short, they are terrorist.
Church of Scientology is a terrorist group. They can be called that correctly. They terrorize people, make threats and even silence people.
This is not the first time that CoS has done this. But it is a time for the U.S government to arrest the top of CoS and ban the cult. They are dangerous and have been for a long time.
CoS is also structured like a military organization, they have troops, generals and so on. I guess that they have the weapons too.
I guess that CoS troops (plenty on Slashdot already) with mod points will rate this as a flame bait.
If that's true, then it would seem the perjury bit actually has merit...
I wonder if we can talk anyone into going after the claimants?
You would have to find them first. Whoever did this, whether it was Oliver Schaper or Scientology's Office of Special Affairs, used sockpuppet companies that don't exist (seriously, when this started, we checked, first using Google and then using state corporate record databases). How do you sue someeone who doesn't exist?
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
I studied Scientology when I was a child and Ron Hubbard was still alive. And it WAS NOT a religion, there were many texts (I am sure they disappeared all of them) which explained how you could have your own religion and be a scientologist, plus they were very clear that Scientology was an applied philosophy, never a religion. It was turned a religion to avoid paying taxes. And as a (happy for them) side effect is that now they can continue cheating people on the so-respected credo freedom.
Reading the (reasonable) YouTube rules for countering a takedown, a possible motive arises.
The material taken down is blatantly non-infringing. Any actual takedown attempt, for takedown sake, would just be minor harassment.
However... the act of countering a takedown ultimately requires that the video's poster actually identify themselves, for the purpose of further legal discussion/action. Any anonymity is lost at that point.
That is just a possible motive. It's a damned suggestive one, though.
The DMCA needs to be overhauled. Badly.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".