It doesn't even require knowledge by any party of another's existence, much less collusion, just the aggregation of a large number of privileged parties acting entirely in their own interest.
So, does anyone want to join my preemptive class action lawsuit against every record company in the United States?
After all, certainly they're all going to release shitty albums in the future with only one good track on them, then conspire to fix prices and sell them at outrageous prices. That's completely certain to occur. After all, similar events have occurred in the past, and the record companies settled out of court for tens of millions of dollars.
We need an injunction to stop this in the future.
And triple damages under RICO, as well as attorney's fees. Fair's fair after all.
Yes, it's abuse of process, and it's a swindle on the taxpayers. While preemptive Doe suits are not per se frivolous, if one has some reason to believe that a specific unknown person is likely to harm one, they are not an excuse to treat the Article III federal courts as a sort of free mall cop at the taxpayer's expense.
Otherwise, any business, such as a mall, could simply file a preemptive lawsuit against Doe shoplifters, alleging that every store in the country gets shoplifted from at some point, so the state or the feds should step in and provide them free security. For that matter, any company about to release an album could file a Doe suit against a few hundred million Does, demanding an injunction against well, everyone in the United States. They could file a suit against everyone in the United States enjoining them from pirating albums they haven't even decided to release. After all, certainly they will release albums in the future.
This lawsuit is also unconstitutional. The Article III federal courts, as has been pointed out, only exist to decide actual cases or controversies, not imaginary ones. Then there's due process. Nobody has been served with this imaginary lawsuit. So the injunction is meaningless, since nobody had any notice of it. Then, the injunction also violates separation of powers. Article III courts aren't law enforcement, there to patrol for possible future violations of the law. They don't have jurisdiction to act as free mall cops for businesses who fear that some unknown person, in the future, will commit a shoplifting offense.
And to come back to the original point, it's an abuse of process: that is, the use of a lawsuit to obtain an improper collateral advantage. They're suing unknown people for precrime, in order to get free mall cop services from an Article III court, at the taxpayer's expense. Unfortunately, abuse of process is usually pursued by people on the other side, who allege their rights have been violated by the abuse of process. Since these crooks are only ripping off the taxpayer, nobody would have standing to challenge their thievery.
This lawsuit should be dismissed sua sponte (by the court on its own motion), with prejudice so that they can't even file it again in the future, as a sanction. The lawyers (and I'm using that term loosely) should be sanctioned under Rule 11 and reported to their state bar associations. Since we're talking about fantasyland here, they and their clients should also be slowly boiled in oil, while bootleggers videotape their thrashing and screaming for immediate distribution over the Internet via streaming video.
Since we're living in reality, they'll probably be given a profile in the ABA Journal for innovative new legal strategy, and make partner in record time.
Thanks. I missed this when I searched the thread before posting a stupid question as to whether anyone had a copy of the suit.
I'm going to keep track of any particularly interesting filings in this case, unless Netster is archiving them all. For the present, I'll put them at this entry on my blog, along with other PACER material. While they claim to have filed this, it hasn't yet appeared on the PACER site for the Middle District of Florida.
I searched PACER, but it's not listed in the U.S. Party/Case Index yet. I have, however, for amusement, put up all the litigation to date involving VeriSign at http://buttersquash.net/archives/verislime1.htm.
Obviously we need to shut down CNN, too. What's funny is CNN themselves have often aired hysterical rants about how irresponsible it is to distributed bomb-making instructions on the Internet, while hosting such information themselves.
My major gripe with Freenet to this date is while it is marketed toward "weblike" applications, it often loses content more than a click or so in (note the front page of my freesite there works almost perfectly but if you click in the performance is significantly degraded).
I think its killer app might ultimately be the distribution of large 'splitfiles' with FEC encoding. I don't want to nuke Freenet right now by suggesting downloading huge pirate AVIs, but if you find one and try it, you'll see what I mean.
Either this guy is a troll or a kook. He is proposing the crypto equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. Either you're trolling us with this nonsense or you've been trolled.
Claiming it was not susceptible to a known plaintext attack and that it was a style of pad that could be used many times is ludicrous on its face.
In recent news, Keith Henson had his home invaded just yesterday under pretext of bankruptcy asset investigation, because he has been bankrupted by Scientology litigation.
IANAL, but it seems that you bring up a couple of legal issues that are by no means clear-cut in forming a successful attack of this law. First, to the best of my knowledge, there is no Constitutional guarantee of fair use. Fair use rights have been at times granted by Congress (e.g. the Audio Home Recording Act) and at other times courts have decreed that current American law regarding commerce dictates that certain uses of copyrighted material are in fact legal.
IANAL either. However, note that fair use is something guaranteed by the First Amendment--particularly, the four-part balancing test of Fair Use is a court-designed solution to the way in which First Amendment rights are necessarily in conflict with the grant of copyright. Hence, fair use may not be explicitly guaranteed, but fair use is the means by which First Amendment rights are weighed in a copyright claim.
Only the name and telephone number of the attorney who wrote the letters have been removed from the copies on chillingeffects.org.
Oh, you mean these?
Ava Paquette
Moxon & Kobrin
3055 Wilshire Boulevard
Suite 900
Los Angeles, California 90010
Tel: (213) 487-4468
Fax: (213) 487-5385
Re:How to Google Whack...
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 2
To make the game challenging, you can't quote the words (making them into a phrase). And they both have to be actual English words which Google itself recognizes (I think Google uses dictionary.com's dictionary, so you can doublecheck yourself there).
If you actually checked [google.com], you'd find that while that's mostly true, the #4 result returned is Operation Clambake [xenu.net] (Bearing the description: "The fight against Scientology on the Net"), which is probably the biggest and most comprehensive anti-scientology site around.
That's true. When I originally put together this page, though, it was at #11. People apparently reacted fairly quickly to this, hence the current higher ranking of xenu.net. The ranking of xenu.net has generally fluctuated between #4 and #11 for the past few months, usually only popping up to #4 for a few hours at a time and then dropping to #11. This time it appears to be stable, though.
I just checked again, and at least as of 8:39 AM this Friday, it is still at #4.
This search on Google Groups pulls up a lot of threads concerning the previous situation.
What do you expect from an ISP run by members of the criminally convicted cult of Scientology?
Just yesterday, the FBI raided Scientologist co-founder of Earthlink Reed E. Slatkin over his role in the biggest Ponzi scam of all time, detailed at the http://slatkinfraud.com site.
That's not to mention the somewhat questionable affidavit of former Scientology agent Robert J. Cipriano. Now according to Earthlink they stood up for privacy against the FBI. By the rule of thumb that anything a Scientologist says is the complete opposite of the truth, they just did that becuase they prefer to do all the spying themselves.
37. On or about March 26th 1998, Mr. Moxon and I talked about my re-entering the work force. Mr. Moxon suggested Earthlink Network, Inc., in Pasadena. Earthlink Network is a Church Of Scientology company. Mr. Moxon contacted Mr. Sky Dayton, Chairman of Earthlink, who referred him to Mr. George Williams, Director of Dial-Up Sales. An interview was arranged, and I was hired March 27th 1998, even though they were not hiring at that time. Earthlink created a new sales management position for a girl named Jennifer so they could move her up creating an opening for me in the sales department. On March 28th 1998, I sent an email to Mr. Moxon thanking him for the introduction (See Exhibit 11 & 12).While at Earthlink Network in Pasadena, California, I had access to the Internet Service Provider's internal operations.
38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."
39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.
40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.
They caved.
Why did they not do the same thing when MicroSoft threatened them?
Microsoft, as evil as it is, when presented with a threat of extreme public humiliation and embarrassment, and while in the middle of extremely ugly antitrust litigation, can be beaten into submission when it is made clear to them that they are being completely unreasonable and that future activities of that sort might damage shareholder value and even harm them in ongoing litigation.
Scientology has no such ability to make a sane and rational decision and will gladly throw millions of dollars into the toilet for no other reason than to show that they can. Furthermore, they were actually right on the issue of law. Furthermore, see RTC v. Netcom. They sue over that, they win, Slashdot loses, and a few hundred thousand dollars of Andover's money disappears into thin air with no positive effect whatsoever.
I don't like that situation, but they made the right choice from a legal perspective. If the post they removed had been even remotely defensible as fair use, the argument for yanking it would be weaker; however, the article in question was blatant copyright infringement, the exact same material has been found in numerous courts to be a copyright infringement, and the case would be completely unwinnable. Any lawyer who did not advise their client to remove the material in question would be guilty of malpractice, and anyone who ignored their lawyer giving such advice would be a fool.
Retaining the article would just have been a typical rebellious Slashdot action, no different from saying no to Microsoft, and would have generated relatively little interest. Removing the article was a total bombshell and created one of the busiest threads in Slashdot history, linked to a damning article filled with virtually every major link to Scientology-critical material, including essentially the same material hosted by Karin Spaink, who has won a court case in the Netherlands allowing her to retain a fair use of the materials without quoting them in their entirety.
This created a huge amount of public awareness of Scientology that had only sporadically been aired on Slashdot prior to that. This damaged Scientology's credibility even further and represented a very successful blow against this fascistic cult, and made very clear that they were behaving unreasonably and in a silly fashion, and not only not defending any important interests of theirs, but actually acting against their own interests. This is called "Operation Footbullet," when Scientology graciously agrees to do outrageously malicious and stupid things to damage its own reputation.
There is a principle known in hierarchical structures as "malicious compliance." The Slashdot guys gave a brilliant demonstration of the concept. Did they back down? Sure. Did they cave in? I don't think so. They used their own "reasonable compliance" as a weapon with which to strike back at the enemy, while availing themselves of the invulnerable protection against civil liability given by the DMCA.
Attacking and damaging the enemy while yourself remaining unexposed to attack is the height of strategy. They did good. Anyone who criticizes good strategy as cowardice misses the point. There's no such thing as "bravery" or "cowardice" against a malicious entity like Scientology that wants to destroy freedom of speech in toto. There is winning, and there is losing, and that is all. Slashdot won that round, by ducking and letting the opponent punch himself out.
No, they sent nothing whatsoever to the email account I had registered for that site. I assumed that they simply yanked it for a bandwidth spike, though I have a sneaking suspicion that Scientology yanked it on some bogus claim. I'm not even going to bother. Whatever caused them to do it, they are fucking idiots and worthless even as free services go.
I will not only never use them for anything ever, but will badmouth them at every available opportunity.
What if the FBI/BATF got an annonymous tip that your cult, the CoS had automatic weapons, wouldn't that be interesting?
There's already an on-the-record non-anonymous declaration sworn under penalty of perjury to that effect. The Declaration of Andre Tabayoyon, a Vietnam veteran and their former security chief at Gold Base, attests to the literal armory they have there, including guns and explosives. The Feds aren't interested. This is the same base that claims to be "terrorized" by a 57 year old engineer with a picket sign 300 yards away, across a barbed-wire fence with motion detectors and armed guards. They also run and scurry whenever anyone else shows up with a picket sign, even little old ladies, other computer nerds, and his wife Arel.
Incidentally any BATF involvement in a raid on Scientology would be disastrous. Not because the Scientologists would be likely to display armed resistance (though it's possible as they're getting crazier lately), but because the BATF are poorly-trained idiot goons who would screw up the raid so badly that Scientology's army of lawyers would eat them for breakfast.
From http://www.lsuc.on.ca/cgi-data/legal_members_en.sh tml
Law Society of Upper Canada
"Mamann & Associates provides a full range of services for temporary
and permanent immigration to Canada and the United states. Guidy
Mamann is a former immigration officer and is certified by the Law
Society of Upper Canada as a Specialist in Immigration Law. Mamann &
Associates is conveniently located in the same building as the
Immigration and Refugee Board at 74 Victoria Street in Toronto."
Keith Henson is seeking Refugee Status after having been
made a Political Prisoner of Conscience. His "crime" was to peacefully
picket and criticize the internationally infamous Cult of Scientology.
Unfortunately for Mr. Henson and the reputation of the United States,
these protests occurred near Hemet California. Scientology has an
extraordinary level of political influence upon the local government.
This extralegal influence was clearly demonstrated by the open
collusion between the Scientology Corporate lawyers and the District
Attorneys Office of Riverside California.
Mr. Henson chose to seek refuge in Canada as that nation has
previously criminally convicted corporate Scientology for Breaches of
the Public Trust. Mr. Henson also has extensive personal contacts
amongst consumer and religious activists opposed to Scientology abuses
in Canada.
[Libellous smears from an anonymous cultist or troll deleted.]
His ex has denied these charges since then, and the only occurrence of them in a court record is hearsay from a third party entirely. Whatever claims were made, his ex was asked about them after the Scientology smears started, and recanted the claim.
His ex incidentally is Caroline Meinel of Happy Hacker fame. Why not ask her yourself?
A man convicted in April of oppressing Scientologists because of their
religion has fled to Canada to apply for political refugee status, the man
said Wednesday.
Keith Henson, 58, of Palo Alto, was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday
morning in court but didn't show up. A judge immediately issued a warrant
for his arrest.
Henson's conviction on a charge of interfering with a religion stemmed
from his picketing at the Church of Scientology's Golden Era Productions
in Gilman Hot Springs.
Henson said in a phone interview Wednesday night from Canada that he went
there to protest a Scientology event. He then decided he would stay after
talking to an immigration lawyer.
Henson said his human rights have been violated because of a recommended
sentence that could put him in jail for 200 days and subject him to five
years' probation for a misdemeanor crime. He said the sentence would be
too harsh.
Probation officer Garry Davis recommended that sentence to the court.
Henson had said he did not want probation because he believed it would
give Scientologists a chance to keep an eye on him through the government.
Despite his conviction, Henson doesn't believe he was a threat to the
Scientologists. He said Wednesday that he just wants them investigated for
one death in the compound and one near it last year.
Court records include handwritten and typewritten letters from some of the
Scientologists who work at Golden Era expressing their fear that Henson
might harm them. They requested sentencing terms similar to Davis'
recommendation.
Friends of Henson don't believe that he deserves the treatment he has
received, because they say he would never hurt anyone.
"He is a kind and gentle man," Ida Camburn said. "He is a decent human
being."
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert Wallerstein issued a no-bail
arrest warrant for Henson. The judge postponed the sentencing until Henson
is arrested and can explain where he has been and why he didn't come to
court.
Deputy District Attorney Robert Schwarz said Henson took pictures of him
and posted the names of district attorney support staff on the Internet.
Schwarz said in court Wednesday that he believes the moves were an attempt
to intimidate him from prosecuting the case.
"He needs to come back here and face up to his charges," said Muriel
Dufresne, public relations director for Golden Era. "He can't flee from
justice."
Erin D. Randolph can be reached by e-mail at erandolph@pe.com or by phone
at (909) 487-5229
The hell they caved. They just obeyed the law. The DMCA basically forced their action and I suggest you read it to understand why they did what they did. Incidentally their action, and their full report in the thread caused more bad publicity for the cult of Scientology than leaving the article up would have, and was completely legally protected, so if Scientology sued, they'd lose and get slapped with costs and fees. Slashdot used effective tactics and won.
As for Tripod, what can I say. They're fucking morons. Apparently they either got a bandwidth spike and croaked the site, or a bogus complaint and yanked it without notice. That's fine. Now the site is sitting on top of two T3s at http://www.operatingthetan.com thanks to the nice people at http://www.dis.org. Thanks Don NOTS.
http://freehenson.da.ru is the *permanent* URL for the site wherever it goes. That is what I have always used when referring it to people, so that if they linked, the links would not be broken when some dip-idiot temporary free host yanked it. However, people insisted on pointing to Tripod instead. http://freehenson.da.ru will *always* work even if the site gets croaked at one or another location.
Apologies for rant and thanks to the mirrors and dis.org
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't even require knowledge by any party of another's existence, much less collusion, just the aggregation of a large number of privileged parties acting entirely in their own interest.
Apparently, they took the list of keys offline. So how do I know if my key is compromised?
It's possible the entire concert doesn't occur, because the entire board of AEG is arrested for molesting children.
In fact, they should probably be arrested for that just to be safe. After all, they might do it.
So, does anyone want to join my preemptive class action lawsuit against every record company in the United States?
After all, certainly they're all going to release shitty albums in the future with only one good track on them, then conspire to fix prices and sell them at outrageous prices. That's completely certain to occur. After all, similar events have occurred in the past, and the record companies settled out of court for tens of millions of dollars.
We need an injunction to stop this in the future.
And triple damages under RICO, as well as attorney's fees. Fair's fair after all.
Yes, it's abuse of process, and it's a swindle on the taxpayers. While preemptive Doe suits are not per se frivolous, if one has some reason to believe that a specific unknown person is likely to harm one, they are not an excuse to treat the Article III federal courts as a sort of free mall cop at the taxpayer's expense.
Otherwise, any business, such as a mall, could simply file a preemptive lawsuit against Doe shoplifters, alleging that every store in the country gets shoplifted from at some point, so the state or the feds should step in and provide them free security. For that matter, any company about to release an album could file a Doe suit against a few hundred million Does, demanding an injunction against well, everyone in the United States. They could file a suit against everyone in the United States enjoining them from pirating albums they haven't even decided to release. After all, certainly they will release albums in the future.
This lawsuit is also unconstitutional. The Article III federal courts, as has been pointed out, only exist to decide actual cases or controversies, not imaginary ones. Then there's due process. Nobody has been served with this imaginary lawsuit. So the injunction is meaningless, since nobody had any notice of it. Then, the injunction also violates separation of powers. Article III courts aren't law enforcement, there to patrol for possible future violations of the law. They don't have jurisdiction to act as free mall cops for businesses who fear that some unknown person, in the future, will commit a shoplifting offense.
And to come back to the original point, it's an abuse of process: that is, the use of a lawsuit to obtain an improper collateral advantage. They're suing unknown people for precrime, in order to get free mall cop services from an Article III court, at the taxpayer's expense. Unfortunately, abuse of process is usually pursued by people on the other side, who allege their rights have been violated by the abuse of process. Since these crooks are only ripping off the taxpayer, nobody would have standing to challenge their thievery.
This lawsuit should be dismissed sua sponte (by the court on its own motion), with prejudice so that they can't even file it again in the future, as a sanction. The lawyers (and I'm using that term loosely) should be sanctioned under Rule 11 and reported to their state bar associations. Since we're talking about fantasyland here, they and their clients should also be slowly boiled in oil, while bootleggers videotape their thrashing and screaming for immediate distribution over the Internet via streaming video.
Since we're living in reality, they'll probably be given a profile in the ABA Journal for innovative new legal strategy, and make partner in record time.
You cheer, because BOTH OF THEM WILL LOSE.
I'm going to keep track of any particularly interesting filings in this case, unless Netster is archiving them all. For the present, I'll put them at this entry on my blog, along with other PACER material. While they claim to have filed this, it hasn't yet appeared on the PACER site for the Middle District of Florida.
When possible, I'll try to get the lawsuit itself. When I do, I'll link it from http://buttersquash.net/archives/000058.php.
That is, unless someone else has done it already.
Obviously we need to shut down CNN, too. What's funny is CNN themselves have often aired hysterical rants about how irresponsible it is to distributed bomb-making instructions on the Internet, while hosting such information themselves.
I've mirrored some normal web content to Freenet . This freesite (only available if running Freenet) is a mirror of http://www.operatingthetan.com, my normal website on Keith Henson v. Scientology.
My major gripe with Freenet to this date is while it is marketed toward "weblike" applications, it often loses content more than a click or so in (note the front page of my freesite there works almost perfectly but if you click in the performance is significantly degraded).
I think its killer app might ultimately be the distribution of large 'splitfiles' with FEC encoding. I don't want to nuke Freenet right now by suggesting downloading huge pirate AVIs, but if you find one and try it, you'll see what I mean.
--
http://buttersquash.net Home of the Buttersquash Conspiracy
Claiming it was not susceptible to a known plaintext attack and that it was a style of pad that could be used many times is ludicrous on its face.
In recent news, Keith Henson had his home invaded just yesterday under pretext of bankruptcy asset investigation, because he has been bankrupted by Scientology litigation.
IANAL either. However, note that fair use is something guaranteed by the First Amendment--particularly, the four-part balancing test of Fair Use is a court-designed solution to the way in which First Amendment rights are necessarily in conflict with the grant of copyright. Hence, fair use may not be explicitly guaranteed, but fair use is the means by which First Amendment rights are weighed in a copyright claim.
Oh, you mean these?
Ava Paquette
Moxon & Kobrin
3055 Wilshire Boulevard
Suite 900
Los Angeles, California 90010
Tel: (213) 487-4468
Fax: (213) 487-5385
botulin wasabi
If you actually checked [google.com], you'd find that while that's mostly true, the #4 result returned is Operation Clambake [xenu.net] (Bearing the description: "The fight against Scientology on the Net"), which is probably the biggest and most comprehensive anti-scientology site around.
That's true. When I originally put together this page, though, it was at #11. People apparently reacted fairly quickly to this, hence the current higher ranking of xenu.net. The ranking of xenu.net has generally fluctuated between #4 and #11 for the past few months, usually only popping up to #4 for a few hours at a time and then dropping to #11. This time it appears to be stable, though.
I just checked again, and at least as of 8:39 AM this Friday, it is still at #4.
This search on Google Groups pulls up a lot of threads concerning the previous situation.
ptsc@nym.alias.net maintainer of operatingthetan.com
Just yesterday, the FBI raided Scientologist co-founder of Earthlink Reed E. Slatkin over his role in the biggest Ponzi scam of all time, detailed at the http://slatkinfraud.com site.
Not to mention their vicious actions against free speech on the Internet.
That's not to mention the somewhat questionable affidavit of former Scientology agent Robert J. Cipriano. Now according to Earthlink they stood up for privacy against the FBI. By the rule of thumb that anything a Scientologist says is the complete opposite of the truth, they just did that becuase they prefer to do all the spying themselves.
From the Cipriano affidavit:
37. On or about March 26th 1998, Mr. Moxon and I talked about my re-entering the work force. Mr. Moxon suggested Earthlink Network, Inc., in Pasadena. Earthlink Network is a Church Of Scientology company. Mr. Moxon contacted Mr. Sky Dayton, Chairman of Earthlink, who referred him to Mr. George Williams, Director of Dial-Up Sales. An interview was arranged, and I was hired March 27th 1998, even though they were not hiring at that time. Earthlink created a new sales management position for a girl named Jennifer so they could move her up creating an opening for me in the sales department. On March 28th 1998, I sent an email to Mr. Moxon thanking him for the introduction (See Exhibit 11 & 12).While at Earthlink Network in Pasadena, California, I had access to the Internet Service Provider's internal operations.
38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."
39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.
40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.
Karin Spaink's website is at this URL. http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink
They caved.
Why did they not do the same thing when MicroSoft threatened them?
Microsoft, as evil as it is, when presented with a threat of extreme public humiliation and embarrassment, and while in the middle of extremely ugly antitrust litigation, can be beaten into submission when it is made clear to them that they are being completely unreasonable and that future activities of that sort might damage shareholder value and even harm them in ongoing litigation.
Scientology has no such ability to make a sane and rational decision and will gladly throw millions of dollars into the toilet for no other reason than to show that they can. Furthermore, they were actually right on the issue of law. Furthermore, see RTC v. Netcom. They sue over that, they win, Slashdot loses, and a few hundred thousand dollars of Andover's money disappears into thin air with no positive effect whatsoever.
I don't like that situation, but they made the right choice from a legal perspective. If the post they removed had been even remotely defensible as fair use, the argument for yanking it would be weaker; however, the article in question was blatant copyright infringement, the exact same material has been found in numerous courts to be a copyright infringement, and the case would be completely unwinnable. Any lawyer who did not advise their client to remove the material in question would be guilty of malpractice, and anyone who ignored their lawyer giving such advice would be a fool.
Retaining the article would just have been a typical rebellious Slashdot action, no different from saying no to Microsoft, and would have generated relatively little interest. Removing the article was a total bombshell and created one of the busiest threads in Slashdot history, linked to a damning article filled with virtually every major link to Scientology-critical material, including essentially the same material hosted by Karin Spaink, who has won a court case in the Netherlands allowing her to retain a fair use of the materials without quoting them in their entirety.
This created a huge amount of public awareness of Scientology that had only sporadically been aired on Slashdot prior to that. This damaged Scientology's credibility even further and represented a very successful blow against this fascistic cult, and made very clear that they were behaving unreasonably and in a silly fashion, and not only not defending any important interests of theirs, but actually acting against their own interests. This is called "Operation Footbullet," when Scientology graciously agrees to do outrageously malicious and stupid things to damage its own reputation.
There is a principle known in hierarchical structures as "malicious compliance." The Slashdot guys gave a brilliant demonstration of the concept. Did they back down? Sure. Did they cave in? I don't think so. They used their own "reasonable compliance" as a weapon with which to strike back at the enemy, while availing themselves of the invulnerable protection against civil liability given by the DMCA.
Attacking and damaging the enemy while yourself remaining unexposed to attack is the height of strategy. They did good. Anyone who criticizes good strategy as cowardice misses the point. There's no such thing as "bravery" or "cowardice" against a malicious entity like Scientology that wants to destroy freedom of speech in toto. There is winning, and there is losing, and that is all. Slashdot won that round, by ducking and letting the opponent punch himself out.
Rob, did Tripod tell you what happened?
No, they sent nothing whatsoever to the email account I had registered for that site. I assumed that they simply yanked it for a bandwidth spike, though I have a sneaking suspicion that Scientology yanked it on some bogus claim. I'm not even going to bother. Whatever caused them to do it, they are fucking idiots and worthless even as free services go.
I will not only never use them for anything ever, but will badmouth them at every available opportunity.
What if the FBI/BATF got an annonymous tip that your cult, the CoS had automatic weapons, wouldn't that be interesting?
There's already an on-the-record non-anonymous declaration sworn under penalty of perjury to that effect. The Declaration of Andre Tabayoyon, a Vietnam veteran and their former security chief at Gold Base, attests to the literal armory they have there, including guns and explosives. The Feds aren't interested. This is the same base that claims to be "terrorized" by a 57 year old engineer with a picket sign 300 yards away, across a barbed-wire fence with motion detectors and armed guards. They also run and scurry whenever anyone else shows up with a picket sign, even little old ladies, other computer nerds, and his wife Arel.
Incidentally any BATF involvement in a raid on Scientology would be disastrous. Not because the Scientologists would be likely to display armed resistance (though it's possible as they're getting crazier lately), but because the BATF are poorly-trained idiot goons who would screw up the raid so badly that Scientology's army of lawyers would eat them for breakfast.
For Immediate Release:
May 17, 2001
Toronto Ontario Canada.
Keith Henson today retained the services of Canadian Immigration Lawyer and Specialist:
Mr. Guidy Mamann gman@migrationlaw.com
of Mamann & Associates. http://www.migrationlaw.com
(416) 862-0000
74 Victoria Street, Suite 303
Toronto, Canada M5C 2A5
From http://www.lsuc.on.ca/cgi-data/legal_members_en.sh tml
Law Society of Upper Canada
"Mamann & Associates provides a full range of services for temporary and permanent immigration to Canada and the United states. Guidy Mamann is a former immigration officer and is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a Specialist in Immigration Law. Mamann & Associates is conveniently located in the same building as the Immigration and Refugee Board at 74 Victoria Street in Toronto."
Keith Henson is seeking Refugee Status after having been made a Political Prisoner of Conscience. His "crime" was to peacefully picket and criticize the internationally infamous Cult of Scientology. Unfortunately for Mr. Henson and the reputation of the United States, these protests occurred near Hemet California. Scientology has an extraordinary level of political influence upon the local government. This extralegal influence was clearly demonstrated by the open collusion between the Scientology Corporate lawyers and the District Attorneys Office of Riverside California.
Mr. Henson chose to seek refuge in Canada as that nation has previously criminally convicted corporate Scientology for Breaches of the Public Trust. Mr. Henson also has extensive personal contacts amongst consumer and religious activists opposed to Scientology abuses in Canada.
Wm. Gregg Hagglund
Press Secretary
Refugee Committee,
Temple of At'L'An (TM)
Free Keith Henson http://freehenson.da.ru
No his X is not a Scientologist.
[Libellous smears from an anonymous cultist or troll deleted.]
His ex has denied these charges since then, and the only occurrence of them in a court record is hearsay from a third party entirely. Whatever claims were made, his ex was asked about them after the Scientology smears started, and recanted the claim.
His ex incidentally is Caroline Meinel of Happy Hacker fame. Why not ask her yourself?
Protester is subject to arrest1 701/hhens.shtml
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Thursday, May 17, 2001
BY ERIN D. RANDOLPH
http://www.inlandempireonline.com/news/stories/05
A man convicted in April of oppressing Scientologists because of their religion has fled to Canada to apply for political refugee status, the man said Wednesday.
Keith Henson, 58, of Palo Alto, was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday morning in court but didn't show up. A judge immediately issued a warrant for his arrest.
Henson's conviction on a charge of interfering with a religion stemmed from his picketing at the Church of Scientology's Golden Era Productions in Gilman Hot Springs.
Henson said in a phone interview Wednesday night from Canada that he went there to protest a Scientology event. He then decided he would stay after talking to an immigration lawyer.
Henson said his human rights have been violated because of a recommended sentence that could put him in jail for 200 days and subject him to five years' probation for a misdemeanor crime. He said the sentence would be too harsh.
Probation officer Garry Davis recommended that sentence to the court.
Henson had said he did not want probation because he believed it would give Scientologists a chance to keep an eye on him through the government.
Despite his conviction, Henson doesn't believe he was a threat to the Scientologists. He said Wednesday that he just wants them investigated for one death in the compound and one near it last year.
Court records include handwritten and typewritten letters from some of the Scientologists who work at Golden Era expressing their fear that Henson might harm them. They requested sentencing terms similar to Davis' recommendation.
Friends of Henson don't believe that he deserves the treatment he has received, because they say he would never hurt anyone.
"He is a kind and gentle man," Ida Camburn said. "He is a decent human being."
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert Wallerstein issued a no-bail arrest warrant for Henson. The judge postponed the sentencing until Henson is arrested and can explain where he has been and why he didn't come to court.
Deputy District Attorney Robert Schwarz said Henson took pictures of him and posted the names of district attorney support staff on the Internet. Schwarz said in court Wednesday that he believes the moves were an attempt to intimidate him from prosecuting the case.
"He needs to come back here and face up to his charges," said Muriel Dufresne, public relations director for Golden Era. "He can't flee from justice."
Erin D. Randolph can be reached by e-mail at erandolph@pe.com or by phone at (909) 487-5229
The hell they caved. They just obeyed the law. The DMCA basically forced their action and I suggest you read it to understand why they did what they did. Incidentally their action, and their full report in the thread caused more bad publicity for the cult of Scientology than leaving the article up would have, and was completely legally protected, so if Scientology sued, they'd lose and get slapped with costs and fees. Slashdot used effective tactics and won.
As for Tripod, what can I say. They're fucking morons. Apparently they either got a bandwidth spike and croaked the site, or a bogus complaint and yanked it without notice. That's fine. Now the site is sitting on top of two T3s at http://www.operatingthetan.com thanks to the nice people at http://www.dis.org. Thanks Don NOTS. http://freehenson.da.ru is the *permanent* URL for the site wherever it goes. That is what I have always used when referring it to people, so that if they linked, the links would not be broken when some dip-idiot temporary free host yanked it. However, people insisted on pointing to Tripod instead. http://freehenson.da.ru will *always* work even if the site gets croaked at one or another location.
Apologies for rant and thanks to the mirrors and dis.org