[free-sklyarov] Google Yanks Anti-Church Sites

[Vladimir Katalov]

Hello all,

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51233,00.html

> WASHINGTON -- 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,
> Scientology lawyers are claiming that Google may no longer include
> anti-Scientology sites that allegedly infringe upon the church's
> intellectual property.
>
> A letter from Google to the Xenu.net Scientology-protest site says:
> "We removed certain specific URLs in response to a notification....
> Had we not removed these URLs, we would be subject to a claim for
> copyright infringement, regardless of its merits."
> [...]
> As far back as August 1995, Scientology sued one of its former
> members for posting anti-church information to the Internet and
> persuaded a federal judge to permit the seizure of his computer. The
> church then sued The Washington Post for reporting on the computer
> seizure and quoting from public court records.
> 
> 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. 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.

Now not only the links to other sites can be considered to be illegal,
but even indexing some pages is prohibited!!

Btw, could someone forward that link to 'dmca_discuss' mailing list,
too?

-- 
Sincerely yours,
  Vladimir

Vladimir Katalov
Managing Director
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