Via VoidStar. This is bad. Google pulls anti-Scientology links. "Digital rights advocates said the Church of Scientology's takedown request is noteworthy because it underscores potential conflicts between the DMCA and free speech. "The danger is that people will attempt to silence critics under the guise of copyright infringement," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation. In the Xenu.net case, the removed links led to pages that contain material copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. On his site, Heldal-Lund defends this use of copyrighted material, saying that he believes Scientology survives "through the protection afforded it by copyright laws in a way that copyright laws were not designed to address.""
It astounds me more than any other religion (even more than Mormonism) that people would be so stupid as to believe in Scientology. It is so widely known to be a cult that you'd have to want to be in a cult to believe in it.
Update, looks like Google finally gave in and relisted sites it unlisted. Here are two Slashdot posts covering what happened, here's an awesome screenshot from someone who took out an ad on Google in protest, and here's the news log for Operation Clambake, the most prominent site being censored.
Davenet: Scientology and Google
Thursday, March 21, 2002
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