Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Aren't DMCA notice senders supposed to be legally responsible for the accuracy of the notice? Where is the consequences for blatant abuse?
It's really simple - critique =/= infringement.
Correct me if I'm wrong but it's a big no-no to use the DMCA knowingly falsely, right? Not that I think anything will come of it...
By abusing the DMCA they can get slapped pretty heavy. Especially in light of the latest ruling that copyright owners must explicitly consider whether a suspected violation is fair use. Certainly if any of the folks that got harassed decide to litigate back they may well have a decent case.
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.
They got thetans to do it, using their special powers.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Will we see DMCA Takedown notices claiming news stories like these infringe on the property of the lawyers who issued the original DMCA Takedowns? :P
Actually... I really shouldn't joke about that. It may just happen...
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
You can't win, Hubbard. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
unless they already had someone on the inside...
rewriting history since 2109
Of the clear abuse the law has provided.
More examples like this and the DMCA may get repealed, castrated, or at least altered to require judge approval of each takedown notice....
We should handle this like the Romans did. Let the Scientologists plead their case for their "religion" in a Colosseum in front of a jury of their peers*.
*Slight change in programming, "a jury of your peers" will now be played by lions. Enjoy the show!
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.
Legal expenses? Their lawyers are probably scientologists and doing their work for free in exchange for moving up the ranks.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
Out of curiosity, why is it that people get bent out of shape about this 'religion'?
I got to witness an anonymous rally in San Diego about a year or so ago and it was just silly. Yes, you and I may know the whole thing is a crock, but isn't there supposed to be freedom of religion?
Not looking to start a pissing contest, I'm just wondering where people get their priorities.
Just go to http://www.xenu.net/ and all will become clear.
pi = 2*|arg(God)|
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.
We think Disney is bad? Imagine if the bible were copyrighted. It'd run the eternal life of the author plus 75 years. But with a religion so blatantly a business like scientology, what will copyright be like _next_ century?
Here's a short breakdown.
If you go to a group of Christians, and ask questions about their beliefs, they may engage you in a debate on Christian theology, they may give you a Bible to read, and so forth, but you can generally access these materials for free. If you go a group of Muslims and do the same thing, you will likely get the same results. Same goes for the Jewish religion, or Mormonism, or Hinduism.
If you go to a Scientology center and ask questions about their beliefs, what it will come down to is "Here are some classes you can take, they cost many thousands of dollars". Scientology is not willing to give away their beliefs just as every other major religion is willing to do so. Scientology is not willing to discuss their beliefs in an open and free environment, as the other major religions are willing to do. And Scientology hides many tenets of their beliefs behind copyright and trade secret laws.
That last one is the big one. You don't officially learn about their secret beliefs until you have paid many thousands of dollars and been sufficiently indoctrinated into the Church of Scientology.
Compare that to the other religions. To the best of my knowledge, there is no super-secret ultra-eyes-only version of the Bible that only the elite Christians get to read. There is no "not for the viewing of non-believers" version of the Qu'ran that only the most devout Muslims get to read. But there are secret Scientology documents which explain core beliefs of Scientology that the general rank and file of the CoS do not have access to.
And then, when people try to promulgate that information, it irks the CoS leadership. Because, for some reason, they don't want it spread that they believe that a galactic overlord named Xenu did all the wacky poor-scripted science-fictiony things he did many millions of years ago, here on Earth. (Excuse me, it was called Teegeeack then, according to these docs.) Because then people would go, "Wow, this reads like it was written by a hack science fiction author." (Which, you know, is what the guy who founded Scientology was.)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
With members like Tom Cruise and half of Hollywood's stars, I doubt they'll run out of money to defend themselves and counter-sue our middle-class asses.
slashdot rocks
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
... leaving them with 250,000 more to send.
I say go to it. The only way these jokers can know which videos to hit with a DMCA is to watch them. Maybe if they're exposed to anti-CoS messages enough, it'll start to crack through the brainwashing, and they'll free themselves.
So keep posting those videos, folks! It's good karma.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
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!
How is this not a blatant abuse of the system in order to silence free speech? By this logic, it is perfectly within the legal rights of Google to shut down websites which oppose their ideals and corporation. Nice try Scientology... but ultimately an epic fail. Good job jacking up the PR (again).
"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
This isn't religious, though. Scientology as a religion is a scam to make money. There might be people who believe in Xenu, but the people filing these DMCA notices are worried that negative press about Scientology might hamper their revenue streams.
Do the anti-Scientology posters to youtube have to reveal information about themselves to Scientology Inc. through their counter-notices? Isn't this just a way for Scientology to get the identities of the posters?
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
We should handle this like the Romans did. Let the Scientologists plead their case for their "religion" in a Colosseum in front of a jury of their peers*.
*Slight change in programming, "a jury of your peers" will now be played by lions. Enjoy the show!
Yeah, that worked so well the first time... -_-;
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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.
It's my view that the people complaining most are the same Christians who hate Jews, Muslims and any other religious believers that don't follow their God.
I have no religion* and they hate me too.
*not strictly true, I told the government I was a Jedi, so I must be.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
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...
Soon they'll be breeding us like cattle! You've got to warn everyone and tell them! Scientology is made of people! You've got to tell them! Scientology is people!
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
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.
Calling $cientology a cult is like calling the Spanish Inquisition a mild theological disagreement.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
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?
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Also trap their souls with a soul trapping contraption and deposit them on a different planet where their brain washed souls will attach themselves to future life forms.
I'd like to think we were a stronger democracy than this too.
But I gotta believe my eyes. We The People are allowed to play our little game of self rule so long as we don't get in the way of Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Telco Gang, and the *IAAs, and so on. Which leaves us precious little to play with.
--MarkusQ
Where have I seen this before? Hmm.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'd like to mod you "+1 Infinite Loop" but I can't find the option.
I haven't seen anything where this religion or cult or whatever you want to call it has done anything to hurt anyone.
Then you haven't learned much about the cult. Scientology has ruined lives and gotten people killed. For the latter, they dispense dangerous medical information (especially in psychiatry) that is entirely based on their beliefs. See the Wikipedia article.
Yes, they have very silly beliefs, which is why it is so popular to make fun of them. But if that's all they were, then you wouldn't see these protests or all the news about it. Their beliefs alone (involving aliens, volcanoes, space ships, nuclear bombs and etc.) are harmless. It is what they do about their critics, whom they harass with both legal pressure and some not-so-legal tactics. See Fair Play.
There is a reason you see all those people in the protests wear masks, and that is because of policies like Fair Game. If they didn't wear masks, their lives and their families lives would be in danger, or at least risking serious harassment.
In fact, Slashdot has suffered the wrath of the cult of Scientology: Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot. Someone posted some of the cult's "scripture" in a comment, and Slashdot was forced to remove it on claims of copyright. There's one way that Scientology has negatively affected you. They already attacked an online community you participate in. They have also put legal pressure on search engines, including Google and Yahoo, to have results critical of Scientology removed.
See also, The Unfunny Truth About Scientology
Or the YouTube version.
Here's a short breakdown.
If you go to a group of Christians, and ask questions about their beliefs, they may engage you in a debate on Christian theology, they may give you a Bible to read, and so forth, but you can generally access these materials for free. If you go a group of Muslims and do the same thing, you will likely get the same results. Same goes for the Jewish religion, or Mormonism, or Hinduism.
Minor nitpick - The Mormon church has fairly significant secret doctrine that you have to join and climb the heirarchy to find out about. Mormons I've talked to who are still members of the church will generally deny this, many of them sincerely because they aren't 'initiated' enough to know about it. But many ex-Mormons left the church over secret doctrines and ceremonies that disturbed them.
Not to say that Mormonism is as poisonous as Scientology though.
this whole karma thing is overrated ;)
Just say whatever you want and ignore the karma.
MP3 Search Engine
The fact that it was necessary to display "This is what scientologists actually believe" on the screen while parodying the cult of scientology on Southpark speaks volumes. This is the show that puts a nuke up Hillary Clinton's snatch and a hamster up Mr Slaves ass in front of a class of school kids.
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?
Legal expenses? Their lawyers are probably scientologists and doing their work for free in exchange for moving up the ranks.
Most of Scientology's lawyers are Scientologists, but they aren't doing what they do for barter. They charge the Church, then use some of that money to pay for Scientology services. When they do Scientology services, that is. Kendrick Moxon, Scientology's chief attack dog, hasn't done any services in years, just like David Miscavige.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
All religions believe that.
That's the dumbest thing I will have read today. When was the last time you heard of, say, the Quakers declaring jihad against unbelievers?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Because it has practices like "Fair Game", which basically means an organized harassment campaign against its critics.
They are free to believe in their bullshit, that's not an issue. However, immoral things done in the name of religion are still immoral, and scientology is amongst the nastiest religions on the planet in that regard. It's not that they are necessarily more malicious than, say, Islam; it's that their style of abuse is well suited for the modern world.
Well, I'd say that preventing a bunch of lunatics who've demonstrated their willingness to abuse their power numerous times from gaining any more power is a pretty high priority.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think that the sanest alternative, given the separation of church and state and that the church does not pay taxes, is that materials published by any non-profit or charitable organization should not be copyrightable.
This is my sig.
By presenting to the court a pleading, written motion, or other paper - whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating it - an attorney or unrepresented party certifies that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:
(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation;
(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;
(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and
(4) the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on belief or a lack of information.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
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?
Scientology will be taken to court in France
for "organised fraud":
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/7604311.stm
"Aside from the above, if Scientology teaches purification of the body, why is Christie Alley so damn fat?"
Too many thetans?
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7604311.stm
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
The ebst way to fight this is to post videos that praise Scientology.
"Are you FRIKKIN' crazy?" you ask?
Nope.
If Scientology doesn't issue takedown notices for the videos praising them, they eventually lose their copyright power over the material. If they do issue takedown notices they look even more ridiculous.
And no, I'm not trying to secretly elicit praise for Scientology. There's no reason why you can't throw in a bit or sarcasm in with the honey. :)
Let me open a can of best worms....
The original US constitution didn't give monkeys about religion, it had to be added in later. Which points out the fundamental flaw in the 'do not fuck with freedom of religion' argument. There is no natural law that suggests that this should be guaranteed, and I would imagine that these guarantees were enshrined by people with a religious point of view. Since then this right has been abused in attempts to impose religious nonsense on society.
Now personally I don't have a problem with anyone believing any old nonsense they want to, but when it comes to filling children's heads with this crap and forcing restrictions on one group in society over another, that's another thing.
(I'm not talking about the freedom of assembly right - if someone has a problem with that let them deal with it).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Compare that to the other religions. To the best of my knowledge, there is no super-secret ultra-eyes-only version of the Bible that only the elite Christians get to read. There is no "not for the viewing of non-believers" version of the Qu'ran that only the most devout Muslims get to read. But there are secret Scientology documents which explain core beliefs of Scientology that the general rank and file of the CoS do not have access to.
Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than that. Esotericism is, at least historically, a common religious practice. Gnosticism, Mormonism, at least a few Buddhist sects, and arguably the Masonic tradition all spring to mind. All of these have the idea that there are truths which should not be made available to the uninitiated, as they are not prepared to receive them correctly.
So this is the complicated problem: there are no really good grounds for condemning Scientology as a religion. The problems arise, rather, from the Church of Scientology as an institution. Letting aside the heavy-handed tactics used to recruit new members and to protect the Church, the fees charged for initiation seem to shift the practice from esotericism to exploitation. It's worth pointing out that very few people have objections to the Free Zone, emphasizing that the primary objection to the Church of Scientology is fundamentally organizational, rather than religious per se.
No, they don't. Copyright is termed, it doesn't have to be vigorously enforced. Trademark has to be enforced or lost.
Did anyone else get the advertising banner from Scientology at the top of this post? It said to click the link to see a video that told the real truth about Scientology. I tried clickin but it seems my employer has blocked scientology.org - I can't imagine why!
/. has with them and censorship I'm surprised they agree to show their ads or maybe Cowboy Neal is now a member of their "church"
Considering the past history
I AM A SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR!!!
according to this news article (ansa is the major news agency in Italy), Scientology has been put into judgment for fraud (sorry for the rough translation, but I have no knowledge of english legal words).
google translation (to english) here.
That's a good news for europe
Wikinews did an in-depth report and interviewed the accused behind the attempted removal: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Alleged_'rights_group'_tries_to_have_4,000_anti-Scientology_videos_removed_from_YouTube
With all the activity this has generated, it seems like there would be an open source alternative to Scientology?
Don't know why I never noticed this before but Xenu backwards is Unex. Maybe a thinly disguised reference to Unix? Was L Ron a programmer, well obviously, I mean computer programmer? Perhaps he was forced to use Unix which he thought was evil and that's how he came up with Xenu?
He couldn't possibly do more in twelve minutes to discourage people from joining Scientology himself.
wrong, they have money for the right kind of lawyers that make the right kind of legal motions that Branch Davidians didn't have.
The whole point of this behavior from CoS is to get to court first and often so they have the judges ear as the "injured" party. That lets them make their arguments of religious persecution first, let's them hide behind freedom of religion to conduct their business and courts tread VERY lightly when freedom of religious practice pops up. At that point alphabet agencies have to tread very lightly because the courts are already thinking that the general public might "harm" CoS. Courts then consider warrants and such much more carefully than they did at Waco or Ruby Ridge.
Money at the highest levels helps too, as the are more of a weird social club of powerful people among the rich and famous, so they can't be "that bad". Rich are used to squashing "little people" all the time so this kind of legal attack is just seen as normal business.