Talk:Scientology and the Internet/Archive 1

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Question and Answer link

Recently the following link was added:

This was actually the best defense of the church's actions I'd read. However, recently I had occasion to take a trip and stay in a hotel, and the hotel room had a Gideon Bible in it. I checked the preface for the copyright note that the Q&A assures us is in the Revised Standard Version of the Gideon Bible:

"Because of unhappy experience with unauthorized publication in the two decades between 1881 and 1901, which tampered with the text of the English Revised Version in the supposed interest of the American public, the American Standard Version was copyrighted, to protect the text from unauthorized changes."

There was no such notice in the preface or anywhere. Upon my return from the trip, I tried to research this further, including by contacting the Gideons, from whom I received this reply:

Thank you for your message and question. The early Bibles placed by the Gideons were the American Standard Version. However, we have not used this version for many years. In looking through one of these old Bibles, I could not find the statement mentioned in your message.

Furthermore, in Googling on the language used in the notice, I discovered that the contents of the Question and Answer page are the official responses of the Church of Scientology -- with all that entails -- although this is not disclosed by the original URL.

In short, while I do not claim to know how the problem should be resolved, I think there is a problem in linking to material that is both factually dubious and presented by a materially interested party, without warning of those two factors. Antaeus Feldspar 16:16, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wow Antaeus, I think that is the finest analysis I have ever seen you post ! Have a good one! Terryeo 21:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


The TIME article

For the last time, a.r.s. was not created in response to the Time article. Please do not reinstate this falsehood. --Kelly Martin 04:23, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Evidence for the dull-headed: 

Our reasons for creating the group were varied.  We believed that it
was important for there to be a place for people to be able to find
the truth about Scientology.  The Church of Scientology is notorious
for suppressing attempts to criticize it, and a newsgroup is much
harder to suppress than many other forums.  We also hoped that the
group would provide a channel for people who might otherwise go into
the Church, or who are already in it, to find out about the true
nature of Scientology and thus not get involved or even leave.
History has shown that it has served this purpose admirably.  Finally,
it was created at least in part in response to harassment my now-wife
received from her ex-husband (a Scientologist) in response to her
filing divorce papers.

Nothing about the Time article in there, neh? --Kelly Martin 04:29, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nice quote. Where's it from? If it's from the newsgroup charter or anywhere else relevant to the creation of the froup, maybe it belongs on our article about alt.religion.scientology. --FOo 04:58, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It's from my old web page about a.r.s. Hasn't been online since the late nineties, but I still have an archive on my computer. Unfortunately the page is not on wayback; I think they have an exclusion for Indiana University's student home page server. --Kelly Martin 05:21, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In regards to Kelly Martin's claim that he (or she?) created the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, I suggest the reader follow these links:

Even Scientology admits that Scott Goehring created the newsgroup. Their hate site, "Religious Freedom Watch," states so right here:

Now kindly abstain from making untrue edits to this article. Thank you. --Modemac 12:57, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • I am going to revert this nonsense once again. Please talk to Dave Touretsky about this issue before you revert again. He can explain the whole story to you. I am uniquely qualified to know what my motivations were at the time; while you are laboring under several incorrect assumptions. Please contact me by email or IM (or visit #wikipedia on freenode; I'm "karynn") to discuss this if you can't get an adequate answer from Dave Touretsky. By the way, the answer you seek is in the Google Groups search you linked above, if you look diligently enough. (no, it's not, the articles have been removed.) --Kelly Martin 17:24, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I agree that you are uniquely qualified to know what your motivations are. I do not think that anyone doubts that. However, are you Scott Goehring? It would seem that he is more qualified to know what his motivations are than you, I, or Rev. Modemac. --FOo 21:26, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • For questions on the motivations behind the creation of a.r.s there are three people qualified to comment. One already has. I am one of the other two. I am the wife referred to above. My ex-husband was a Scientologist. I had been warned against Scientology by many people, but didn't believe the stories I had gotten until I went to the Library of Congress and found what they had on Scientology and had the information confirmed by my (then) Scientologist husband (with appropriate Scientology slants). A group of three of us were discussing Scientology one night and I suggested that the best way to disuade people from Scientology was to create a newsgoup for Scientologists to speak their mind in a public forum. The idea was mine. The implementation of the idea was not. If Kelly Martin's statements of the creation of the group are not convincing enough for Modemac or FOo, I would suggest that my statements of my motivation for the proposal of the group and the actions that I know were taken as the result of the discussion that took place less than 12 hours before the group creation should settle this question. There are enough posts on the web that should be able to verify that I have posted on this question previously and that I am one of the three people that would know of the true reasons for the existance of a.r.s.--Christi 22:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Actually, Kelly and I settled our differences over this subject back in January, and I posted an apology on her talk page. --Modemac 11:43, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
My apologies then. I hadn't looked at Kelly's talk page, only the discussion here. --Christi 02:01, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


Operation Clambake

I'm surprised that xenu.net wasn't listed on this article; it's one of the focal points of this controversy. I figured that it was gone due to some lengthy debate on the talk page, but there's almost no one here. I've added it to the #See_also section, since we already have an article on it. --Ardonik.talk()* 17:44, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)


Other External References

Other external references: my article with Jeff Jacobsen in Skeptic magazine, Ron Newman's website, and Wendy Grossman's book "net.wars". --Jim Lippard July 24, 2005


Link to Dutch? site

Hi,

recently there has finally an outcome in the long dreaded subject. You can read the English translation here: http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2003/09/13600.shtml

Although i'm not interested into editting this into the subject, nor in contributing on Wikipedia, nor learning it's format, i wanted to share my translation/news subject since it wasn't listed here. I also linked to it at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry.

Best regards,

Edits by Marbahlarbs

I added some more about Scn trying to shut down a.r.s. and restructured the article somewhat. Still needs some work. Marbahlarbs 23:35, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

If someone would like to a section about anti-Scientology websites, and Scientology's online campaign (including all those lame "personal pages" for Scientologists), that would be great. Marbahlarbs 23:38, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Alleged?

Why does this page refer only to "alleged" criminal activity, when the Scientology controversy page notes that:

"Eleven church staff, including Mary Sue Hubbard and other highly placed officials, pleaded guilty or were convicted in federal court"

Ojw 18:26, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's right. But that's the only criminal activity and since then the Church of Scientology has removed certain policies and created others so Church members can no longer do criminal activity and say they did it in support of the church. Besides, shouldn't that be in Scientology and the legal system?Terryeo 21:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
In that specific case, criminal activity is not merely "alleged". However, there are many other allegations of criminal activity by CoS or by Scientologists acting in its interests. What phrasing would you prefer? --FOo 05:10, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Would something like "...to expose both its real and alleged criminal activities?" cover both cases? I assume that "the internet" is as interested in publicising the proven cases as it is in revealing new ones. Alternatively, put something at the front of that paragraph to explain that part of the reason why "the internet" believes scientology is a scam is based on actual court findings. Or just link to the page which explains the legal decisions? Ojw 10:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Possible future strategies against free speech

DMCA-like internet censorship statutes could be used to harass a free speech website to remove "offending" content. Along with no criminal penalties for wrongful or "mistaken" take-down notices, this would permit harassment with impunity.

Content freezing of wikis, followed by coercion to change content to suit demands.

Watch for "test balloons" or legislative proposals, then check the campaign donor list. Has the Church of Scientology used a wealthy member to buy and pay for one or more legislators?

Scientology and freedom of speech

"It should be noted that the seventh paragraph of the Creed of the Church of Scientology states: "That all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others;" Paragraph ten of the Code of a Scientologist states: "To work for freedom of speech in the world." In theory then, the Scientology hierarchy should support free speech and freedom of the press."

I think this is non-neutral as it implies that it is not legitimate for the CoS to resort to copyright law. AFAIK every democratic country has some Bill of Rights or something which guarantees freedom of speech but, in the same time, enforces intellectual property laws, or other laws which restrict freedom of speech (does each WP article about intellectual property laws or libel laws say "In theory then, this country should support free speech", implying that these laws infringe the country's constitution ?). Apokrif 22:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Aren't you confusing an artist's right to create and copyright his works with the desire for "free speech?" Without copyright protection, the right to publish and sell is useless, no one would create fiction because they could not sell their book without copyright protection. It is a trade off. It was the Church of Scientology which, when attacked, defended itself by taking the case to the Supreme Court (USA) and established the landmark decision "Copyrights apply to webpages" and "links to copyrighted webpages themselves infringe on the copyrighted works". Its not all one way, Scientology defends freedom of speech and religion all over the place. That it defends itself against slanderous attackers shouldn't be unexpected. Terryeo 21:49, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
The point is not whether copyright laws are useful, but whether the paragraph quoted above is neutral. IMHO it is not because:
  • it implies that the CoS should do something
  • it (or Wikipedia as a whole) applies a double standard to laws which limit free speech, depending on whether these laws are used by the CoS or by somebody else.

Apokrif 14:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

But at what point do you differentiate between "slanderous attackers" and "legitimate criticism?" FVZA_Colonel 14:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
When the "legitimate criticism" is against Scientology, it becomes "sladerous attacks," of course. But seriously, the difference is that slander/libel is when someone says something that they know to be true, or they say it with careless disregard for the truth of the matter. ---DrLeebot 15:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I think you mean "that they know to be untrue"? Good explanation, though. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Removing merge tag

Someone threw a merge tag on this a month ago or so. We discussed it on the other page, Scientology and the legal system. Consensus was that merging was inappropriate. I'm removing the tag.--CastAStone 00:42, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


Beginning/Begun/Began

"________ in the early 1990s, the debate centers largely around the publication of internal documents written by its founder L. Ron Hubbard." There are three possibilities for the missing word: beginning, began or begun. The first and the last are the correct choices, because they are a descriptive clause about the debate: we might start a sentence about a building "Towering into the sky, the mighty skyscraper..." or "Started in 1925, the construction..." But what is incorrect is treating what comes before the comma as an alternate verb phrase rather than a descriptive clause. It would make perfect grammatical sense to say "The debate began in the early 1990s and centers largely..." But would we say "Centers largely around blah blah blah, the debate began in the early 1990s"? No; "centering largely" or "centered largely" would work, but not "centers largely". In the same way, "beginning in" or "begun in" works, but not "began in". -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:48, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Published/Published/Published

As a point of information, "published" means "published to the public". Any large organization will have internal communications, i.e. a Ford executive directs its engine plant to instill quality control for the steel it uses. The church too has internal documents, notes, post-its, directives, etc. Those are not published to the public, those are internal. Wikipedia's policy, WP:V states "unimpeachable sources" and understands that "published" means "published to the public". As editors we aren't in the business of expose' editing, instead we weed through a lot of information to present easily read information for readers. Terryeo 21:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

As a point of information, just because a large profit-making organization might want certain of its internal documents to stay forever internal-only, and never revealed to the public, or to law enforcement, does not mean they will always stay that way. You seem to be having a great deal of difficulty grasping this concept, because you keep making arguments in the form of "this is a document that the Church wanted to be internal; therefore there is clearly no unimpeachable published source for this information." -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:34, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Uhm, what? Where does WP:V say that published means "published to the public", or states such a thing as "unimpeachable sources"? I find neither of those two text phrases in WP:V. Are you mentally adding meanings or words to policy that simply aren't there? Ronabop 14:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
It's actually Terryeo's own phrasing. See here. Tenebrous 18:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

you gotta admit

It took some balls to do that ! heh! I didn't know that until I got on here, whatta tickle ! lololololol. Terryeo 08:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Has the Church tried anything against the Wikimedia Foundation yet?

With the amount of material about Scientology available on Wikipedia, I'm surprised the Church hasn't tried anything against the Wikimedia Foundation at this point. Or has something happened that I haven't heard about? --138.28.140.198 19:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are certain rabid pro-Scientology editors who seem to be able to edit articles around the clock, all day, every day, so either they're being paid to do it, or they really need to get out more. One in particular was recently busted for Sockpuppeting. wikipediatrix 00:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
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