--------------------------------------------------------------This story was printed from ZDNet UK,
located at http://news.zdnet.co.uk/
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Location: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2107088,00.html
Cult forces Google to remove critical links
Cult forces Google to remove critical links
Matt Loney
Google was accused on Wednesday of effectively removing a Web site that
is critical of the Scientology cult from the Web, after it told the site
that it was deleting links from its search engine.
Andreas Heldal-Lund, Webmaster of the Xenu.net Web site, said in a Usenet
posting that Google was removing links to the site, which bills itself as
Operation Clambake: The fight against the Church of Scientology on the
Net. The term Operation Clambake comes in part, according to Heldal-Lund,
from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's claims that humans evolved from
clams.
The move could have huge implications for other Web sites, particularly
those that criticise large organisations. The Church of Scientology asked
Google to remove the links under a controversial US law called the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is the same law that was
used to prosecute Russian programmer Dimitry Sklyarov for exposing
weaknesses in Adobe's e-book encryption software, and hacker Web site
2600.com for linking to other another site that published details of how
to decrypt DVD movies.
"They (Google) inform me that Operation Clambake is removed from Google
because of a DMCA notification from the cult," wrote Heldal-Lund. He said
the complaint demanded that Google take down a large number of references
to different parts of Xenu.net. "The complaint mentions a ridiculous list
of addresses, which successfully removes the whole site from their
engine," he said.
In its email, Google said it removed specific URLs "in response to a
notification submitted by the Religious Technology Center and Bridge
Publications under section 512 (c) (3) of the DMCA."
However, Google did not remove links to the Xenu.net site that were not
covered by the DMCA notification.
Section 512 (c) (3) of the Act that Google refers to deals with removing
links to material that may infringe copyright. It the case of Xenu.net,
the Google links are 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."
Heldal-Lund contends that "much important information is withheld from
the public by the Church of Scientology. If the full information about
the teachings of the Church of Scientology were made available to the
public then perhaps many people who would join it would never become
involved with it in the first place. I think people have the right to
know."
However, these arguments have not swayed Google. "Had we not removed
these URLs," said Google, "we would be subject to a claim for copyright
infringement, regardless of its merits."
Google said that under the relevant section of the DMCA, Xenu.net could
submit a counter-notification, in which case the search engine could
reinstate the material, but Heldal-Lund said this would require the
services of a lawyer and would be prohibitively expensive.
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