Google vs. DMCA and Scientology

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."

Re:Spineless

In otherwords, Google has shuffled responsibility for the fight onto someone else. If they believe it should be listed, they should have the courage to list it themselves.

Are you going to financially back a lawsuit if one is filed?

THIS is what Google is attempting to avoid.

They may be the best search engine around, but like everyone (sans Microsoft) they have very limited "off-topic" funds to fight "pointless" lawsuits.

Re:Spineless

As I see it, several precidents need to be set.

1. Linking to another site is ok. Unfortunately, the MPAA v 2600 was bad for this one
2. Linking to another site absolves the linking site from liability of the content to the linked site. This would be where Google would be protected
3. Fair Use is not limited, however, possibly a limit of the amount of material may need to be implemented. IOW, don't paste all 144 pages up to make your point, take selected phrases .. this may keep the copyright lawyers at bay.

Another problem is the current Copyright / Fair use debate. This one is much larger than any of the aforemented possible solutions to the problem.

This isn't a exhaustive, comprehensive fix for all of the woes ... just my thoughts on the issue.

Re:Spineless

If they believe it should be listed, they should have the courage to list it themselves.

I disagree. Google has the correct proceedure. I don't want individual companies taken down simply because they can't afford the legal fight...

If it was just google doing this, I would have a problem. However I think google has shown other companies how to handle these type of issues....

Spineless? Nonsense

Spineless would be to roll over and simply accept that they couldn't link to the Clambake site. Instead, Google have used the provisions of the DMCA against itself, by linking to the very documents which try to censor Google.

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:Spineless

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.

Just awful

God Forbid that Google should accurately reflect what's on the internet. People should attack sites if they have a problem, not take other user's right to find the page away from them. This impedes everyone from having an idea of free speech on which the internet was built on. Awful.

Re:When will it end?

" How long will the DMCA be used to trample freedom of speech, expression, and fair use, until Congress gets it into their thick skulls that this is BAD LEGISLATION, and repeals it?

Maybe the overwhelmingly negative response to CBPTBA (or whatever) will act as a wakeup call."

All I can say is that if these sorts of laws continue to be passed and abused, methinks the IP hoarders will be "the first against the wall when the revolution comes" (to "fair use" some Douglas Adams).

The fact that the DMCA *IS* most definately being used to stifle free speech, in the terms of POLITICAL speech (as $cientology IS a religious lobby), should ALONE merit review....

But, alas, so long as the RIAA/MPAA/$cientologists, et all, get to INITIATE the cases, they will continue to get to handpick the judges and courts.

Which will get us more sham trials like the DeCSS case.

What is needed is for us to somehow file a CLASS ACTION against those enforcing the DMCA, on a first amendment basis, and based on the copyright/fair use provision of the Constitution.

I had such high hopes for the Felten case, because for once our side would be the initiator, instead of the defendant... I beleive it was a mistake for him to go ahead and GIVE his speech, because to not do so would have made it easier to show that he was INTIMIDATED into silence by DMCA saber rattling.

Re:When will it end?

I agree that the DMCA is being used to unfairly trample free speech and is being distorted to attack those that the law itself was supposed to exempt (e.g. reverse engineers working on interoperability and ISP's). I also agree that we Slashdotters need to ally with whoever we can to make a strong a legal challenge as possible to this law. However, obviously it won't be easy to do financially, and even if we were to gather enough resources to defend ourselves, victory would be by no means guaranteed.

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.

Re:Scientology

Scientology isn't really much of a religion at all, really. It's an MLM scheme that has found posing as a religion to be highly conductive to its fraudulent business practices.

Re:Scientology

[Scientology is] an MLM scheme that has found posing as a religion to be highly conductive to its fraudulent business practices.

I suspect Multi-Level Marketing was copied from proselytizing religions rather than the other way around. I'd match my grandparent's Jehovah's Witness study group of about a dozen fanatics against an entire Amway marketing convention. (Of course, there's no financial payback for recruiting more JW's, but it gets you higher in the queue for those 144,000 seats in heaven, and JW's should be so focused on heaven they don't mind a little poverty now...)

From what I've heard of the origins of Scientology, it began approximately 1950 as an alternate form of psychotherapy (Dianetics) invented by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. The medical profession tried to get it banned. I don't see any scientific basis to Dianetics, but then I don't see any scientific basis to the medically approved psychotherapy of that era either, nor anything to indicate that Dianetics was more harmful than orthodox treatments of that time such as lobotomies, electroshock, or endless discussions of the patient's toilet training. So it's possible the MD's just didn't like the competition...

When L Ron Hubbard found out he wasn't going to be able to beat the AMA in court, he reconstituted Dianetics as a "religion", making it untouchable by the law. The problem is twofold:

To make it qualify as a religion, Hubbard apparently felt it had to have beliefs just as wacky as Christianity (Noah's ark, for instance). So he tossed in a bunch of science fiction about ancient alien civilations (like running the worst of Doc Smith through a blender 8-). The problem: some people actually _believe_ this bull****.

As a religion, Dianetics doesn't need any scientific research to back it, and AFAIC no research has been done. The only obvious change in 50 years was more sophisticated versions of the "e-meter" (sort of a single-channel lie detector) used in "counseling". Meanwhile, psychiatry has done a lot of real experimental research, and is much more effective than it used to be. In 50 years, medically approved psychotherapy has gone from the equivalent of leeches (just 200 years ago the leading doctor in the USA thought bleeding cured _everything_, but at least he didn't do lobotomies), to the equivalent of sulfa antibiotics (pre-penicillin, dangerous and only sometimes effective, but a hell of a lot better than nothing). Meanwhile dianetics has pretty much stood still.

Hey! I learned something from this!

It really makes you ponder after you read this article about why Google did what they did. I'm sure it was just to pass the buck, or lower publicity about it.

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.

no need to register, just generate a random login

http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html [majcher.com]

hyperlinking

It's rather Ironic that the NYT article discussing the right to link in such a balanced and enlightened manner, itself contains no hyperlinks to any of the sites that it is discussing.

Karma Whoring

From news.yahoo.com [yahoo.com] is the same story, no registration required.

Re:No freedom to link?

"I think if they want to get people's cooperation, then they should refute Operation Clambake's information in an orderly and intelligent manner. "

What you fail to realize is that there's no information in the entire church which can be presented in an orderly, intelligent manner. They're claiming that we humans are Gods and that a cosmic warlord has fooled us all into thinking we're not. But we have a science fiction writer (Hubbard) to the rescue, as he's recently discovered the truth and is battling the evil warlord from his plush multi-million dollar mansion, while his followers learn to use their mystical powers.

If you could, please show me how that can be presented in an orderly, intelligent manner. I would suggest a comic book for guidance, but I don't think you'll be able to make it work.

Where's the government action?

Seeing as Scientology fits all the classic signs of a cult, why has it not been properly labled and dealt with? Simply reclassifying it properly would give law enforcement agencies much greater access to investigate and prosecute abuses within the "church" of Scientology and would serve to protect the members from themselves.

The only people who lose when you call Scientology what it is - a cult - are the profiteering people who run it.

Re:Where's the government action?

Creepy people.

Leaders who wear sunglasses.

Guys who sit in big chairs.

Vats.

Re:Where's the government action?

Cults are just religions with fewer members. In the US, it's not really the government's job to deal with religions unless they're a threat to something - they've ignored the big religions for this long, why not ignore Scientology? How is what they do different than what Christianity and Islam do?

(Yes, this is probably flamebait. No, I don't care.)

Where are the thought police?

I'm having trouble believing that you really wrote that.

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:Where are the thought police?

"I find it funny to read Americans spout this kind of stuff. From the outside, American society and law seems much less forgiving about people who have different viewpoints that many other countries, such as Russia and European countries. A good example is that girl who was recently thrown out of school for opposing what the US has been doing in Afghanistan. How intolerant does a society have to be to throw a young girl out of school for being anti-war?"

Well we didn't hear about that, nobody talked about it in the US but it wouldn't surprise me. Censorship is alive and well around here.

Re:Where are the thought police?

When a "church" endorses or causes harm to members and critics, I say to you, they deserve zero protection from the government. I'm a major fan of free speech and seperation of church and state, but their free expression ends when it causes harm to another.

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.

Re:Where's the government action?

> Seeing as Scientology fits all the classic signs of a cult, why has it not been properly labled and dealt with? Simply reclassifying it properly would give law enforcement agencies much greater access to investigate and prosecute abuses within the "church" of Scientology and would serve to protect the members from themselves.

I believe the only reason they were awarded "religious" tax-exempt status with the IRS is because of a denial-of-service attack against the IRS, using individually-filed spurious tax claims as weapons.

Overview: $cn vs. IRS [uni-wuerzburg.de]

One analysis [uni-wuerzburg.de] is particularly revealing.

As I understand the story outlined in the pages I linked to above, "individual $cientologists" (that is, cult members, under directions from superior officers) filed thousands of lawsuits (that is, individual lawsuits, not a class action suit) against the IRS. The cost to the taxpayer of defeating each of these suits, one by one, would have been prohibitive. As a result, the IRS granted the cult tax-exempt status in a deal whose details are, shall we say, ethically-suspect.

The tactic of using a DDoS-by-lawyer is straight out of cult doctrine: "The purpose of a lawsuit is to harass, not to win".

Google's ad policy is worse.

We are not able to run the following ad you have created using the Google AdWords Advertising Program:

Headline: The c99 standard must go!
Line one: The committee has failed to provide
Line two: a usable standard. Boycott it now!
Home Page URL: biodome.org/~qg/fairuse.html
Link to URL: http://biodome.org/~qg/fairuse.html

Thank you for advertising on Google. We review ads on a case-by-case basis and reserve the right to not run certain ads, or certain categories of ads. Due to our current ads policy, we are unable to run your ad on Google.

Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring search results. At the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site, as noted in our advertising terms and conditions. We do not accept advertising that advocates against any individual, group, or organization. Please note that the decisions we make concerning advertising in no way affect the search results we deliver.

Please feel free to email us at [e-mail] with further questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Neither the guidelines [google.com] nor the terms and conditions [google.com] say anything against "advocating against" any individual, group, or organization. So basically google reserves the right to censor any ad they feel like. Adult content is A-OK, but anything remotely opinionated goes.

Link to xenu.net

One point the article made is that the original controversy caused lots more people to link to xenu.net [xenu.net], pushing it up from 4th in the Google results for "Scientology" to 2nd. I'd like to encourage everyone who hasn't already done so to also do this - maybe it can be pushed up to 1st :-)

One last request of google-

Move the "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed one result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the D.M.C.A. complaint for these removed results." notification to the TOP of the page.

In related news...

The notice includes a link to Scientology's complaint on chillingeffects.org, which lists the Web addresses of the material to which Google no longer links. The result is that a complaint could end up drawing more attention to the very pages it is trying to block.

In related news the sales of bullet proof boots has skyrocketed dramatically...

What about the Usenet archives.

The most recent complaint [chillingeffects.org] given to Google from the COS deals with Googles own Usenet archive. The process of transferring the burden over to the original web site owner works for web pages. What about the potential for copyrighted material in Google's own Usenet archive? Do they have to contact the original author of the messages which in turn would have to file a counter complaint to keep it in the archive?

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.

don't blame google

It is no ones responsibility to single handedly take on an injustice. Everyone who sees the injustice is responsible for fighting it. Also, it serves no purpose to taunt fellow members in the struggle for justice. There are times when others need to pull back, either because they are tired or because they can more be more effective using other means. At these times, an opportunity opens for someone else to enter the fray. Google has decided what it can do best, and is doing it.

This also illustrates why we need many search engines. Google, whose size and popularity makes it a prime target, also makes them a prime place to publicize the censorship. Other engines can still link to the articles. For instance, it is still possible to find these links.
http://www.scientology-lies.com/
http://www.primenet.com/~cultxpt/cos.htm
http://www.xenu.net/
If we have many search engines, and other places to find links, it will be difficult for the oppressor to squash the resistance.

Offtopic rant

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.

Google should use their power

And they do have power -- a lot more than they're using right now.

They're the premiere web search engine right now, with multiple companies (like Yahoo) using them as their own search engine.

What kind of power does Google have? It can make a web presence disappear.

Think of it like this: how do most people find sites on the internet these days? Search engines, right? Sometimes they'll find them indirectly but that's only by chance. When they're actually looking for something, they'll use a search engine. Which usually means they'll use Google.

So by removing all references to a particular site, Google can essentially make that site disappear.

And so Google should do exactly that to any web site that belongs to any entity that threatens Google with a lawsuit.

It should prove especially effective against companies, which rely more and more on their web presence.

What silliness

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.

I have a idea

Let's revoke the church of scientology's tax exemption.

Silly? I don't think so; consider:

Churches in America don't pay taxes. They're recognised as non-profit, socially befeficial institutions and as such, it's historically been seen as worthwhile to afford them tax free status (given that they meet certian requirements).

The Church of Scientology is tax exempt. This despite the fact that they charge for their teachings and venomously attack those that provide these teachings for free (unlike other religions). This makes them more like corporation than a religious organization. Thus, they should be treated as one. Require them to file tax documents like any corporation and be subject to audit by the IRS.

The CoS is a cult; and there's nothing wrong with that. Cults have existed for years throughout the world, and the distinction between "legitimate" and "cult" beliefs is at best a tenuous one. But the behaviour of the church of scientology is that of a corporation (evil and vindictive, but a corporation). Let's let them have their trade secret teachings and go after people with lawsuits for publishing secret teachings and critical views of their religion; but let us also not passively fund this corporation by making it tax exempt.

Scientology and copyright

Irrespective of the validity or not of their claims (clams? :-) Scientology claims to be a legitimate religion. And I'm wondering what might be (or should be) the implications of that. As far as I'm aware, churchs in the US, Canada and Britain enjoy a tax exempt status. Scientology also claims copyright over their beliefs and writings and uses copyright as a weapon to silence their critics and apostates.

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.