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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.'"
I did notice the giant shield that Scientologists are using. Did you notice the LLC tag?
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.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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".