Mormon Church Goes After WikiLeaks

An anonymous reader writes "The Mormon Church has instructed its lawyers to gag the Internet over WikiLeaks' release of the 1968 and 1999 versions of its confidential handbook for Church leaders. Apart from attacking WikiLeaks, legal demands were sent to Jimmy Wales of the WikiMedia foundation for a WikiNews article merely linking to the material, and scribd.com has also been censored. WikiLeaks has (of course) refused to remove the documents."

"Gag the Internet"

That would be as easy as pushing water uphill with a sharp stick :-)

Re:"Gag the Internet"

That would be as easy as pushing water uphill with a sharp stick :-)

"Dum, dum, dum, dum, DUM!"

Re:"Gag the Internet"

That would be as easy as pushing water uphill with a sharp stick :-)

John Lennon said it:

Like trying to shovel smoke
with a pitchfork
in the wind

Re:"Gag the Internet"

Step 1: Place stick in water. Leave enough to hold on to with both hands poking out.
Step 2: Freeze the water.
Step 3: Push the frozen water uphill with the stick.

Re:"Gag the Internet"

"Gag the Internet" I had no idea Mormons were so kinky.

How come nobody ever learns from this?

You'd think after the Swiss bank debacle it'd be pretty well known that trying to suppress this kind of information (particularly when it's distributed by an international organization), just guarantees that it will be more widely disseminated than it'd otherwise have been.

Someone circulate a memo about the Steisand effect to the lawyers of the US.

Re:How come nobody ever learns from this?

See, the thing is, everyone thinks money=intelligence. "If you're so damned smart, why ain't you rich?"

But there is no real correlation between intelligence and wealth. The wealthy can afford better schools, but education != intelligence.

These people are used to getting their own way, they're used to the law ALWAYS working for THEM and can't imagine that there's the slightest possibililty that they, spoiled brats that they are, can't have things exactly as they want them to be.

To quote Mr. T: "I pity the foo's".

Re:How come nobody ever learns from this?

Everyone is trying to limit information on an unlimited information supply. They can't understand what the word unlimited really means.

You mean they all work at comcast?

Re:How come nobody ever learns from this?

Yah, but what is so sad is that the LDS church has a HUGE online presence, uses the internet on a frequent basis to distribute media and is an early adopter of a lot of technology.

Secondly, these books aren't secret. Any member can walk into any LDS distribution center and pick up a copy. I've got a copy. 95% of the book is on how meetings run, proper activities for youth, how to distribute tithing and how to put in requisition forms for repairs.

However, there are sections on church doctrine and rules. These are more solid rules than what is generally liked in the church. It gives hard and fast examples of improper conduct and what the church response is to them.

The basic idea is that people should govern themselves. If you give them a hard and fast rule, some types of people will see how close they can get to that rule without breaking it. Not a good way to live a christian life.

As a lifelong member of the LDS church, I'm extremely disappointed in how church lawyers and officials are handling this. It's not SECRET. It's PRIVATE. There's a big difference that some church members just don't seem to get.

The standard tactic

When heretics try to disperse reading material that the religious deem unsuitable for the public to read, the only choice that comes to mind is to burn and censor.

Silly Lawyers...

As a lifelong Mormon and legal professional, I would just like to note how disappointed I am in the "business arm" of the Church, including its lawyers. This is an unnecessary stab at keeping "secrets" that haven't been secret for decades. When you have a lay clergy, there's always someone willing to discuss ostensibly "proprietary" information about church administration.

These handbooks contain nothing more "damaging" than can be found all over the Internet, in most bookstores, et cetera. I hope the Church's spiritual leadership is swift to address what was likely a foolish bureaucratic decision.

Re:Silly Lawyers...

1. * Religious
2. * Lawyer
3. * Rational and reasonable

Something is very wrong with you!

Re:Silly Lawyers...

Great Scott! It's almost as if the religious == irrational meme is not 100% accurate.

Re:Silly Lawyers...

Unless they actually wanted 1000's of unconverted heathens to download and read the document in the hope that a few might be converted.

A weird kind of inverse spam :

• Church : "We don't want you to read this"
• Wikileaks : "Hey everybody, they don't want us to read this"
• Geeks : "Gotta get a copy of that"

What else would cause 1000's of geeks and nerds to actively seek out and read a church document.

Where is wikileaks?

Is wikileaks run outside the USA? How are they able to withstand legal injunctions based on USA copyright law?

Don't get me wrong. I love wikileaks. I'm just wondering how it is set up to withstand the long haul of attacks that will keep coming from powerful people and organizations who get their nose bloodied by documents there.

Order of the Arrow

I'm no fan of the LDS, either as an institution or as a theocracy, but they have as much right to privacy as any other group or individual. Another organization often under attack by the societal, self-elected correctness monitoring crowd is Scouting USA which sponsors an organization known as the Order of the Arrow. OA also has self published, private material that it wishes remain so. There is also an article on Wikipedia about the Order in which editors have come to a consensus about not publishing those private details in accordance with that groups request, which is within their rights. I suggest the same courtesy be extended to the LDS, it's an issue of fundamental importance to anyone who values freedom of expression in all its forms, internet or otherwise.

Please explain

This is just a normal case of copyright infringement. Somebody holds the copyright and does not want somebody else to publish the book. Whether it is this book or a bestselling novel does not matter.
I wonder how those who talk about "gagging" here would actually want copyright laws to work? Abandon them alltogether and let anyone publish whatever they like? Or just allow the publishing of something when some group decides it is "evil"?

Of course, news media should have the right to publish excerpts from anything that is news or relevant and in most countries this is legal (i do not know about the US). So if you want to report about some weird/dangerous,/ridiculous issues in this book, provide a write-up (your own words of what is in there: legal) and support it with facsimiles of excerpts of the original (small parts: legal).

What would be the problem with that?

Re:Cult.

If you even have a "confidential handbook", you're a cult, not a religion...or maybe a good old fashioned pyramid scheme.

There is no difference between a religion and a cult. Well, a minor one: religion is a popular cult.

Egypt

Interesting, I never thought of the old Egyption religions as pyramid schemes, but I suppose they were the first too.

Re:Cult.

Not really. Most of the major religions will allow you to leave their churches/temples without any problem. You can even convert to another religion with minimum fuss. For example, I'm Jewish. There's nothing to stop me from leaving my temple and joining another. (My wife and I have even discussed this very subject recently.) There's also nothing to stop me from leaving my temple, becoming Christian, and joining a church. (Beyond the fact that the Church's religious beliefs don't match with my own, of course.)

In a cult, leaving the church is unthinkable and anyone who expresses a desire to do so is forcibly kept from doing so. Were I a member of a cult, expressing a desire to leave the group would likely result in my detention for "re-education" or perhaps in my "disappearance."

You are kind of right about religions being popular cults, though. Most religions start out as cults and the either die out or ease up on the cult-like behaviors and merge more into society. Christianity was a cult when it first started, but over the years it integrated more into society to the point that it isn't considered a cult now.

Re:Cult.

I dunno. To some extent, I believe any corporation (church, business, whatever) has the right to some privacy about its inner workings. The Masons protect the privacy of their rituals. Businesses keep private how a product is made. And though I don't even consider it a church, the Church of Scientology even has the right to of privacy with their documents. Not everything has to be transparent and openly available. Even in a church. Those documents are accessible to members of the church, but not outsiders.

Re:Cult.

I believe any corporation (church, business, whatever) has the right to some privacy about its inner workings

Not being persons, they have no such inherent right, only the rights that we the people choose to bestow on them. Since you've voted "for some", I'll register my vote as "for considerably less than persons".

Re:Inevitably..

The funny thing is, from a quick look at the Wikileaks summary (I didn't read the handbook itself), the handbook doesn't even seem that bad. Pretty standard Christian stuff, the Catholic church generally sticks to the same standards.

Re:Inevitably..

I concur. The manual seems fairly well thought out, and doesn't have any really good secret stuff I was hoping to read. I don't know why LDS wants it concealed. In fact, I'd argue that manual is strong evidence to the rest of the Christian world that LDS is not an out-there weird cult.

Perhaps LDS wants it publicized? Threatening Wikileaks is the perfect way to do it!

Re:Inevitably..

...Which makes you wonder if they wanted it to Streisand. When was the last time you think they got so many non-Mormons reading about them. Another poster said it is rather innocuous. On the heels of the FLDS blowup, I think lots of people reading stuff that shows your church in a good light is a great plan.

Well played, sirs.