🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3ilmfm$q3h@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> you wrote:

: Wow!  I just read the most recent EFF newsletter regarding the efforts of 
: The Church of Scientology to censor (control) the content of discussion 
: on the internet.  It's actually a quite disconcerting trend and something 
: which we must be vigilant in stopping.  It seems that at least part of the
: problem lies in the fact that a good percentage of the public (including
: judges) still do not fully understand the net in general and newsgroups
: in particular.   Hopefully as this changes with time, attitudes regarding
: censorship will also follow.

Yes, the activities of the Church of Scientiology officials have been my 
second choice for the net.crisis.of.the.month for two months running now. 
They have been quite draconian in their attempts to prevent the 
dissemination of what they claim is copyrighted materials of the Church.  

They started by filing cease and desist orders against sysadmins and 
remailers for traffic going through their sites, asserting that the 
system had an obligation to screen and weed out any copyrighted 
materials.  Interestingly, the lawyers for the CoS couldn't tell the 
judge in the pre-trial hearings which documents were actually 
copyrighted!  They even had a list and they couldn't tell without 
extensive verification, yet Netcom, the CoS argues, should be able to.  
It's just an unrealistic attempt to place liability on sysadmins.

The trial I refer to is the net.crisis.runner-up for February -- a former 
CoS minister who was heavily engaged in posting criticisms of the Church 
ended up the recipient of a search and seizure raid.  

Now I don't know whether the CoS actually believes and follows the 
teachings in these "secret documents" but I do know they are embarassed 
by them.  You can't read them without thinking the CoS a bunch of wacko 
kooks (aliens from other planets seeding Earth, huge pre-human battles in 
what's now Hawaii, it's bizarre).



--
David Smith	          *  Calendar of way cool e-things:   
bladex@bga.com            *  Mar 15-17    SXSW Multimedia
President, EFF-Austin     *  Mon Mar 20th EFF-Austin General Meeting
Board of Directors, CTCLU *  April 1-2    Robofest