Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Scientology Site Shut Down
Mirele writes "The owner of www.xenu.net, the most comprehensive anti-Scientology website on the Net, reported on alt.religion.scientology that the site was shut down after the ISP received a letter from Scientology's Religious Technology Center alleging trademark infringement. The heart of RTC's complaint is that xenu.net uses their trademarks, the words 'Scientology,' 'Dianetics,' and 'Hubbard,' in the metatags." A look at the
legal history
shows that all the cases that were won involved trademarked terms in meta tags that did not appear on the webpage; that
does not appear to be the case
here. When Playboy unsuccessfully sued a Playmate for metatagging the term "Playmate," she
countersued; does anyone know what the result was? Update: 11/19 03:00: The site's back up.
I've happened on this site before, it may have been posted to memepool or something similar. There was a lot of information on Scientology that Scientologists wouldn't find too flattering. A lot of it seemed so paranoid to me that I hoped it wasn't true, such as a list of ex-scientologists who later turned detractors and also later met an untimely demise. Given the rabid nature of a lot of the scientologists defending their cult I wouldn't be so sure however.
I don't see this as anything different than a review or expose however. This is no different than if George Lucas went after any bad Star Wars: The Phantom Menace reviews and had them yanked because they referred to LucasFilms or ILM's trademarks. For that matter its no different than if restraunts threatened legal action over poor restraunt reviews (or poor health department ratings).
What's so amazing to me is how incredibly stupid the scientologists and their lawyers are. There's a page that says all kinds of unfavourable things about them, the least of which is that they bully people who don't agree with scientology, and they bully them into being shut down. Nothing like providing proof of peoples opinions of you.
For a 20/20 expose on Scientology go here, here, here or just click this for a Google search
The dangerous thing about this as far as rights go is that while many think of the internet as the last bastion of freedom its really not even close. ISP's routinely take the easy way out when faced with any legal action or even public pressure.
While we were all distracted, arguing over whether or not Bill Clinton should be impeached and admiring the off-color stain on Monica's dress, congress quietly, and with no opportunity for public debate or comment, passed the Digital Millenium Copyright act into Law. They did this on a voice vote, so that no individual congress person had to go on record as having supported this legislation.
The result? Broad, sweeping, and hitherto unprecedented powers and rights were granted to so-called intellectual property holders, at the expense of individual rights of expression.
In this context, the first amendment to the US Constition (the right of Free Speach) has been effectively made null and void on the internet. This serves both the interests of government and large corporations, as it effectively silences undesirable speach in the one mass medium which they, prior to enacting this law, could not control.
Now, if anyone speaks out against any entity (government, corporate, or private) with money, the mere threat of litigation against them and their ISP is enough to silence them. With the new, broad rights this law grants, the litigation has much greater potential to succeed (though one would hope juries and judges would be smart enough to overturn the law were it to ever go so far). No individual, with house payments to make, children to feed, and a job to attend to, can afford this kind of risk, either monetarilly or in terms of time lost and possible effects on their career. The result: any entity with money now has an easy, well-defined, institutionalized method for denying the "average" (read: not wealthy) person of their constitutional right to freedom of speach, with any recourse and appeal denied to that individual through financial leverage.
Mirroring is a nice, feel-good short term solution to this (and it does do good, don't stop!), but realize this: there is similar, pending legislation in many countries we currently think of as "friendly". What will the net be like when there is no longer any place to run and mirror?
Our top priortiy should be the repeal of the Digital Millenium act in the US, the even more draconian legislation in the UK, and the prevention of such bills becoming law elsewhere in the world. This attack of speach is more subtle, more dangerous, and much more effective than the CDA ever was, and has effectively made the right to free speach on-line a farce of the worst kind.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This software, described in http://www.xenu.net/archive/events/c ensorship/ (www.xenu.net is back on the air BTW), has been variously dubbed 'clamnanny' or 'scienositter'. It only works on Windows systems and is believed to be a purloined copy of CyberSitter (who's owners denied any knowledge of it). Co$ members had it slipped into their systems under the guise of a tool to help them create personalised web pages - as part of a larger attempt to create so many 'scientology' web sites that the critical sites like xenu.net would be drowned out in the search engines.
I was one of the scientology critics that cracked the encryption on the work lists (with help from some of the other anti-censorware people) and produced the list of words and names that are banned. Who knows maybe slashdot will be on the next list :-)