Google vs. DMCA and Scientology 383
Uebergeek writes "This article at the NYTimes (free registration, blah blah) details how google is dealing with the many complaints it gets from organizations when one of its links potentially violates a copyright (or just irritates the copyright's owner).
Specifically, it talks about how Google is dealing with the Scientologist's complaints about the list of the Operation Clambake site... now Google features a prominent link to another site that shows the complaint that the Scientologists filed, along with the delisted links."
Just awful (Score:5, Insightful)
Link to the page? (Score:2, Insightful)
-Berj
Scientology (Score:1, Insightful)
How bout a kibosh on the "free reg" links... (Score:1, Insightful)
Hey! I learned something from this! (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, Xenu.net (the site in question here) is based in Norway. I highly doubt they could use the DMCA to have the links removed legally. Luckily for Google, however, this incident has put the DMCA on the spotlight. Now, more than just geeks care about it, especially when it ends up in the New York Times.
Re:Spineless (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this what chillingeffect.org was founded to do? I thought that it was some academic lawyer types who were looking for problems, and google was just helping them out.
Google is practicing Tai Chi (Score:2, Insightful)
Google is IMHO doing more to keep ideas flowing than they would in a head-on confrontation.
Re:Scientology (AMEN!!) (Score:2, Insightful)
But of course the Scientologists aren't the only ones in this game. Just look at the Christian Right. It amazes me (especially as a practicing Christian) that these bozos think that a religion that has managed to resist the efforts of the Romans, the Communists, etc. to stomp it out now requires the protection of the US Government in order to flourish.
Whose fault is this? (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Someone (Clambake, et al.) takes that information, and makes it public.
3. A search engine picks up on the webpage, and posts links, without censoring or otherwise screening the information.
Suddenly, DMCA is invoked, and it's the... search engine's fault? Why is the DMCA used to attack the avenue in which the information is distributed (Google, Napster, Slash^H^H^H^H^H informative news/opinion sources), when the actual "culprits" (Clambake, evil stereotypical teenage anarchist MP3 downloader) are left alone? Clambake's outside US jurisdiction (and technically, it's also just another avenue for criticism), so we go after search engines that are just doing their job? It's like the RIAA suing the Post Office for allowing someone from Canada snail mail Celine Dion's latest bootlegs to someone in Idaho.
There's GOT to be a point when the US legal system is going to get tired of the abuse, not the use, of the DMCA in the spirit in which it was written.
(My apologies for the pontificating. It's a Monday.)
Re:Spineless (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's the government action? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Yes, this is probably flamebait. No, I don't care.)
One last request of google- (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are the thought police? (Score:4, Insightful)
The US government is not supposed to be in the business of "labeling" or "dealing with" cults; or small, emerging religions, to use an unbiased term. I like to think that the government shouldn't be "labeling" or "dealing with" anybody.
Scientology, which is no more of a scam than many well established religions, is as entitled to exist without government persecution as any other group. I may not like them, in fact, I despise them, but a line has to be drawn - the government has no business applying any other investigative standard to the Scientology cult than has been applied to the Roman Catholic church.
In Russia, and in much of Europe, where controls on government intervention in the religious/ideological sector of the economy are not so stringent, the government is free to oppress scientologists, and does so. Read about it at the OCRT website. [freefind.com] Other governments use these same powers to quell political dissent, which is why in our society we have had the good sense to deny the government these powers.
There is no way to grant the government the right to protect scientologists from themselves without granting the government the right to offer the same "protection" to other dissidents or nonconformers.
Re:Spineless (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't a exhaustive, comprehensive fix for all of the woes ... just my thoughts on the issue.
What about the Usenet archives. (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole thing seems to be going in the direction of the MS case, abortions rights, and campaign finance reform. A lot of time and money put into both ends but nothing coming out. The winner will be the one that had largest resource pool.
Re:Where are the thought police? (Score:2, Insightful)
Clealry the tenets of freedom dictate that we don't want the government labeling groups as cults and burning their members alive (*cough*Waco*cough*).
But also there are groups that use the shield of religion to mask some pretty dubious activities -- Jim Jones anyone? Isn't in the people's best interest that the FBI or whoever at least kind of kept an eye on some of the more fringe groups? I think its probably possible for the government to monitor these groups without necessarily infringing on anyone's right to worship as they see fit.
Few reasonable people seem to think that their freedom to pursue commerce is affected by the SEC, and most people want the SEC to monitor business on an ongoing basis. I don't see why religious groups should be all that different.
Spineless? Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I call that a clever legal hack. It is legal and imagistic judo at its finest; the more the CoS tries to chill free speech about their actions, the better this technique works (using your enemy's strength against your enemy) and it is all specifically allowed under the current DMCA rules.
Furthermore, it is a technique which even the least-funded pointer site can use. If and when challenges to this method of fighting for free (linking) speech hit the higher courts, I have no doubt that Google will contribute financially as well to the cause, if only through self-interest.And so will I, through the EFF.
Re:Where's the government action? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Christians don't try to subvert the legal process to their own ends, at least not in an organized way.
That's silly. Of course they do. There are many different shades of Christianity, but the evangelical crowd would be quite happy to see the United States become a Christian nation, and frequently espouse their wish for laws that would establish this. More frequently than not, their tactics are just as unethical as the Scientologists are. From stealth candidates [ifas.org] to pushing for so-called "intelligent design" [world-of-dawkins.com] theories, they are well versed in using the political system to achieve religious ends.
Read up on the rise and fall of the Christian Coalition for more information on this.
The rest of the world (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Spineless (Score:4, Insightful)
If you'd read the whole article, or informed yourself about the DMCA, you'd know that delisted sites can file a countercomplaint and be added back into the listing. The countercomplaint just says that the posting site (not Google) is legally responsible for the content. So there is a mechanism for the real protest sites like xenu.net to shoulder responsibility for their content, rather than letting Google shoulder it all.
This case is a little weird, since the site proprietor is saying that filing the counterclaim would put him under U.S. jurisdiction. I'm not sure if that's a legal interpretation, or if the DMCA says that, or what. I don't see how just affirming that the contents of your site do not infringe on the DMCA somehow automatically renders you liable to suit under U.S. law, but maybe that's just me.
Really, Google is showing a lot more spine than most ISPs/publishers/etc. - at least they are informing people about the DMCA and the complaints at the same time that they are following their legal responsibility to delist the items. Most publishers would just drop the whole thing without a trace and go on with their lives.
Re:Where are the thought police? (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk to a few ex-scientology 'church' members and you'll find some of them fear for their lives. The US government is in the business of protecting its citizens, even if from themselves and against their will. I fully support investigation of any illegal activities by any "religious" organization, regardless of its name or popularity. All citizens are equal under the law and therefore deserve the same protections, whether from a sadistic killer, or from a "church" member/leader. Calling yourself a church does not give you an impeneratrable shield with which to beat your members, even if they ask for and accept it.
What silliness (Score:5, Insightful)
First, if Google's management has any sort of head on its shoulders it's not going to compromise its integrity as a web-searching tool in such a way.
Second, if they ever did that to /., say, in response to disparaging comments about them, we'd all scream bloody murder.
Why would you want to advocate "disappearing" scientology websites? Like our civil liberties, what you let them do to the scientologists, you let them do to us. Fight their misuse of the DMCA and the injustice of the DMCA itself to preserve our freedom to speak, don't advocate shutting them up because they want to shut us up.
Re:Where's the government action? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've never seen someone who's locked in a cult, then you have no idea to what an incredible degree of control they're under.
I've seen Muslim fanatics, and I've seen christian fanatics... but they don't begin to compare to someone who's in a cult.
Re:Spineless (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought you Americans had a constitution... (Score:1, Insightful)
Offtopic rant (Score:4, Insightful)
More info here [canoe.ca] for those of you who aren't familiar with the case. Short story: Canadian citizen living in the US was convicted of the horrible crime of selling water filters to Cuba.
A damn shame. If only he sold guns to South American terrorists, he'd have been fine.
I used to have sympathy for you Americans. Sept 11 was a terrible crime, and hurt so many people. But between the Cuban embargo, crippling our industries for being too efficient and too high-quality [bbc.co.uk], and violating the basic human rights of our citizens because they're not Americans [www.ocap.ca], continuuing to use anti-personnel land mines [iansa.org], and basically pissing all over the Kyoto treaty [bbc.co.uk] and anti-ballistic missle treaty [cnn.com], you're doing your damnest to screw the world. You can all go fuck yourselves. (For those of you who actually vote and try to change how the US government acts, I apologize. But you're in the minority [fairvote.org].)
And that's not even mentioning the DMCA and SSSCA, which have gotten plenty of airing here and don't even need explaining.
Do your worst moderation, you jingoistic sheep. I've got plenty of karma to burn.
Re:Google should use their power (Score:2, Insightful)
It is the Church of Scientology's right to complain about the links without any harmful repurcussions (such as discrimination...exactly what you are proposing). Delisting all those that oppose or threaten to oppose Google is basically a form of discrimination purposefully meant to harm their business. IANAL, but that sounds like it might just be illegal...if not just a shoddy business practice. Although I think they're showing that they aren't very secure with themselves as a religion, the Church of Scientology is well within their rights to complain to Google, ESPECIALLY since they did it in a manner that is following the process of the law. I don't like the fact that it's the law, nor am I proud of my country for passing such a law, but it is and they did. Deal with it, but don't suggest solutions that violate others' rights in the name of upholding the rights of others.
Re:When will it end? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
However, if a law were passed by Congress that absolutely prohibited time shifting of television programs, it would probably pass constitutional muster with the courts unless it could be proved that time-shifting materially affected individual Constitutional rights such as the right to free speech, bearing arms, being free from unreasonable searches and seizures, etc. I do think that there is hope of Congress guaranteeing additional fair use rights. Even the Crap-BDTPA would have ensured time-shifting were legal; there are still some in Congress that would be in favor of guaranteeing additional, more important rights like the right to excerpt copyrighted materials in derivative works. The main issue is Congress has been rather slow in awarding additional fair use rights to U.S. citizens, and that laws like the DMCA are being used by technology companies to prevent people from using content in ways that were commonly thought (by both the public and policy-makers) to be fair use but in fact had never been made expressly legal or illegal by previous law.
The second, and more disturbing point, is that large portions of the DMCA may be exempt from constitutional challenges. Aricle VI of the Constitution includes the statement "This Constitution...and all treaties made...under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." I tried some searches on Google, but could not find any good evidence one way or the other to determine whether treaties could override the Constitution. If treaties can in fact take precedence, anything in the DMCA that parrots language in the WIPO treaties that it was meant to implement would be exempt from constitutionality reviews. If it turns out that such language in fact conflicts with the first Amendment, then in effect the First Amendment's scope will have been reduced. In this case, there would be only two ways to overturn the DMCA: (1) pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing rights taken away by the DMCA, or (2) withdrawing from the treaty as was done several months ago by President Bush with the ABM treaty. Neither of these actions would be easy, and would be even more difficult than having a court nullifying a unconstitional standard law.
Are there any lawyers out there that could either support or rebut the concerns I made in this post? Hopefully my concerns about the WIPO effectively amending the constitution turn out to be just paranoid ranting. Like I said, I don't mean to imply that getting together and fighting this DMCA in the courts would be useless. It's just that people should understand that there may be legal hurdles to overcome in addition to financial ones involved in lawsuits, and that we should be prepared to do other things in addition to giving money to groups like the EFF in order to get offensive parts and interpretations of the DMCA overturned.
It's more than that.... (Score:2, Insightful)
But yeah, putting that notice ("you can find the censored links here...") at the top of the page would be the icing on the cake.
a prediction (Score:2, Insightful)
But I spoze in that case Google could just pretend the complaint didn't exist, wait for the scientologists to file a complaint with the court (read: in public) and then link to that document as they comply with the request to remove the links.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Re:Whose fault is this? (Score:2, Insightful)
In the years since I've had http://laugh.at/scientology, I've received quite a colleciton of complaints from the 'Church' of Scientology myself, all of them barratrous, many of them against images that had previously received DMCA complaints which had *failed*, and in a couple of cases, abusive uses of the DMCA to complain about images for *Trademark* infringement, as well as images which are in no way based on anything that conceivably could be considered 'intellectual property' of the 'Church' of Scientology.
Scientology can get away with this because it almost always attacks those it considers financially unable to fight back, and the so called 'Church' doesn't hesitate to reach to 'extra legal' means of harassment to 'assist' its case.
As L. Ron Hubbard himself said in what is still current church doctrine:
(fair use quote follows)
"The purpose of [a lawsuit] is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."
"A Manual on the Dissemination of Material" L. Ron Hubbard
(further quotes at: http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/CoS/g
The problem with the DMCA is that such harassment against someone publishing Scientology material for the express purpose of fair use commentary is unlikely to involve 'financial' damages, which are granted by the DMCA against fraudulent claims, *because* the purpose of the publication is non-commercial.
And that's what's so disappointing about Google's weak-kneed response to Scientology's barratry.
Google *does* have a financial and commercial stake in any attack against the use of 'hyperlinks', and a very important vested interest in protecting its right to publish hyperlinks without taking responsibility for the content it links to.
The referral to http://chillingeffects.org is a welcome but less than adequate response.
Scientology has had numerous opportunities to sue http://www.xenu.net for copyright infringement, but has failed in every case. The attack on Google is specifically an attempted 'end run' around legitimate copyright law, ignores any right to fair use or commentary, and is specifically merely a continuation of Scientology avowed goal to control *all* discussion of Scientology.
Zinj
Re:Where's the government action? (Score:1, Insightful)
Jesus was not a cult leader, he did not turn his followers into robots. He did not throw out the traditions of the Jews, he was there to renew their beliefs. He spoke about love and service to all.
I know that there is quite a few folks here that don't believe in religion, that's fine, that's your choice. Spreading FUD makes you look pretty lame.
Re:Hey! I learned something from this! (Score:2, Insightful)
Scientology and copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'm wondering is if official religous writings should even be entitled to copyright protection. Society is providing a benefit to the churches in making them tax-exempt. Thus I think that their beliefs and official exegesis of those beliefs should automatically be in the public domain, open to scrutiny, discussion, publication and criticism.
Spirituality seems to be a fundamental need for many, if not most, people and liberal democratic societies have set up strong constitutional protections and freedoms for the expressions of spirituality. But those protections and freedoms must go in both directions by organised religions or we wind up with abuses such as Scientology.
Interesting Scientology Secrets (Score:2, Insightful)