[UFO Chicago] Google gets censored by Scientology

[Vitaly McLain]

Heh, old news. It was even in the "In the News" section on the front page of
Yahoo.com, and all over Slashdot, if anyone actually still reads that site.
;)

---
Vitaly McLain <vitalym@attbi.com>
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
     -- Howard Aiken

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Pement" <pemente@northpark.edu>
To: <ufo@ufo.chicago.il.us>
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 11:08 PM
Subject: [UFO Chicago] Google gets censored by Scientology


| In light of the discussions on UFO about copyright and censorship, I
| think this item might be of interest to some readers.
|
| The following article is excerpted from "Apologia Report", vol. 7,
| no. 13 (April 8, 2002), an electronic newsletter. If this type of
| thing interests you, please visit their website at
| http://www.apologia.org/   Thanks.
|
| SCIENTOLOGY
|
| "Google Yanks Anti-Church Sites" by Declan McCullagh -- "the Church
| of Scientology has managed to yank references to anti-Scientology
| websites from the Google search engine.
|    "Citing the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act
| [DMCA], Scientology lawyers are claiming that Google may no longer
| include anti-Scientology sites that allegedly infringe upon the
| church's intellectual property."
|    Until recently, "anyone typing in 'Scientology' on the wildly
| popular search engine found references to the Xenu.net site in the
| first page of results.
|    "Now Xenu.net and clambake.org have virtually disappeared from
| Google's database. ...
|    "Last November, Scientology used the DMCA to pressure a U.S.
| Internet provider to remove the church's secret scriptures from the
| scientology-kills.org site."
|    As Scientology searches out its critics, McCullagh reports that
| "DMCA threats from the church seem to be becoming so common that
| Dave Touretzsky, a scientist at Carnegie Mellon, has even drafted a
| form letter that can be sent in reply. ...
|    "One Internet executive in the Netherlands reported this week
| that Scientology 'harassed' him and his upstream providers for years
| because he hosted an anti-Scientology site.
|    The late founder, "[L. Ron] Hubbard's secret scriptures teach
| that 75 million years ago, an evil galactic overlord named Xenu
| solved the galaxy's overpopulation problem by freezing excess people
| and transporting the bodies to Teegeeack, now called Earth. After
| the hapless travelers were defrosted, they were chained to volcanoes
| that were blown up by hydrogen bombs - and their disembodied spirits
| continue to haunt mankind today." Wired News, Mar 21 '02,
| <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51233,00.html>
|    A related story, "Cult forces Google to remove critical links" by
| Matt Loney, explains that "Andreas Heldal-Lund, Webmaster of the
| Xenu.net Web site, said in a Usenet posting that Google was removing
| links to the site, which bills itself as Operation Clambake: The
| fight against the Church of Scientology on the Net. The term
| Operation Clambake comes in part, according to Heldal-Lund, from
| Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's claims that humans evolved from
| clams. ...
|    "Google did not remove links to the Xenu.net site that were not
| covered by the DMCA notification." ZDNet UK News, Mar 21 '02,
| <http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t412-s2107088,00.html>
|    Google reverses itself overnight and restores the links! USA
| Today, Mar 22 '02
| <http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/03/22/google.htm>
|
| Preceding article copyright 2002 by Apologia (www.apologia.org)
|
| --
| Eric Pement - pemente@northpark.edu
|
|
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| Free Software Rules -- Proprietary Drools!
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