Scientology made Google disconnect from anti-Scientology pages
According to a March 22, 2002 Russian language article from Compulenta (www.compulenta.ru)
the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has continued to prove its universality and effectiveness. This time, the article stated, Scientology used the DMCA to get Google to remove xenu.net and clambake.org from its data base because the sites had inflicted damage upon the intellectual property of their organization, asserted Scientology lawyers.
Compulenta said that the "Scientology Church" spread its - to put it mildly - controversial religious teachings rather widely in the USA and Europe and that its founding father was science fiction writer Ron Hubbard. It cited "Wired" as saying that, according to Hubbard's secret scriptures, 75 million years ago an evil galactic overlord by the name of Xenu solved the problem of overpopulation by gathering up the human inhabitants of the galaxy and shipping them off in frozen form to the planet Teegeeack, which is now called Earth. There the frozen victims of the galactic ruler were dumped into volcanoes, and blown up with the aid of hydrogen bombs, so that their disembodied spirits are wandering among humans.
Of course, for all Compulenta reported the Wired article saying about Scientology, it did not tell how to get a copy of this teaching. Outside of that, the article remarked on the word "Scientology" itself, and said it was clearly divided into English and Greek words, each of which meant approximately the same thing. The word was said to be typical of Ron Hubbard himself, who was cited as saying, "Writing for a penny a word is foolish. If you really wanted to make a million dollars, found your own religion." And that is exactly what Hubbard did, dying incredibly rich. His cult found its way to the souls of many rich people who were interested in this sort of "exotic" thing. But belonging to the Scientology Church was an expensive pastime, with the most well-known adherents being Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
Naturally, the activity of this organization causes considerable irritation in society. Scientologists are accused of using all sorts of manipulative methods, of living only for the sake of money, as well as many other transgressions. In the system will be found some anti-Scientologist pages against which Scientology actively fights - with the help of the courts and the DMCA.
Scientology targeted the pages on Xenu.net and clambake.org, on which are displayed in detail a variety of internal church documents, along with the case of a certain Lisa McPherson, a former adherent of the church who, according to some reports, was forcefully held by this organization and who eventually died under unclear circumstances. Neither were the Scientologists pleased with the photographs of Ron Hubbard placed side-by-side with pictures of Adolf Hitler. All this material, according to the claims of the cult lawyers, was the intellectual property of the Church of Scientology. In as far as from these pages are not so easily controlled with the help of the American DMCA, Scientology used other methods. It drafted a court threat for Google if they did not remove Xenu.net from their index pages. The basis they gave was a point of the DMCA, where it says that Internet service providers do not bear responsibility for violations of copyright law if, after being notified of the fact, they remove links to the contraband material. Google yielded and removed Xenu.net and Clambake.net from its search machine reference base.
This was not the first time that Scientology has concealed its fight against its enemies by making claims on intellectual property. In 1995 they got a court order on former fellow campaigners for publishing material on the Internet by which computers of the former CoS members were confiscated. Then they sued the Washington Post for printing the details of all these events, which included citing some of the material from court documents. In past years, Scientology also used the DMCA to compel American Internet service providers to remove Hubbard's secret scriptures from scientology-kills.org.
Finally, news about Google excluding links on above-mentioned pages from its base has elicited huge feedback. Apparently, because of this in Google decided to put the links back, and now, as a visitor to Slashdot has said, a search on the words Scientology and Xenu bring up xenu.net first thing.