IT WAS WITH some astonishment that I read this week that a Dutch court ruled on September 4 that writer Karin Spaink could keep the Scientology materials on her Web site. The original case, in which this is the third ruling, began in the Pleistocene era in Internet terms — nine years ago. I had no idea it was still doing the Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce thing. I spent much of 1994 — when the Web was Usenet, the king was CompuServe, ...

Rick Sanchez thought the bright folks at Mensa International would agree that his Pets or Food Web site was a joke. He was sure that the site's offers of "freshly clubbed" frozen baby seal meat and "a dozen Doberman flank steaks for a Super Bowl party" were a dead giveaway. If not, then surely the site's frisky description of fictional CEO Sydney Zwibel–a "former animal disposal technician," Mensa member and alternate member of the 1984 Olympic Fencing Team–smacked of parody. So ...

The apparent campaign by the Church of Scientology to stamp out criticism on the Internet resulted in the ISP that hosts a Web site targeted by the Church for its critical standpoint having its upstream connection cut off. Netherlands-based ISP Xtended Internet said its connection to the Internet was terminated by its provider after threats of legal action from the Church. Paul Wouters, managing director of Xtended Internet, said he believed this was the first time an ISP had suffered such ...

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 ...

Google was accused Wednesday of effectively removing from the Internet a Web site that is critical of the Church of Scientology after it deleted links to some of the site's pages from its search engine. The popular search company said it removed the links after it received a copyright-infringement complaint from the Church of Scientology. Andreas Heldal-Lund, Webmaster of the site Xenu.net, said in a Usenet posting that the complaint demanded that Google take down a large number of references to ...

Nick Ryan on the holy wars fought in cyberspace between religious movements and their critics Religion in the UK: special report August 12 1995 was a Saturday much like any other in the urban sprawl of Arlington, Virginia. Except that an alert went out over email and on Usenet groups to say that 10 people - including two federal marshals, two computer technicians, one a former FBI agent, and several attorneys - were raiding the home of former Scientologist Arnaldo Lerma. ...

The Church of Scientology takes up a new weapon — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — in its ongoing battle with critics. Susan Mullaney is not a fan of the Church of Scientology. A longtime poster to the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, she spends much of her energy online exposing what she feels are the Church of Scientology's repressive activities. Her two-year-old Web site contains a library of short audio excerpts from L. Ron Hubbard speeches and a "secret" Scientology questionnaire, as ...

Raising new issues about anonymity on the Net, the Church of Scientology is invoking a law passed last year to force AT&T to disclose the identity of an Internet service subscriber who allegedly infringed the church's copyrights online. Scientology's Bridge Publications, which four years ago helped to forge new law when it sued Internet service provider Netcom, claims the anonymous author "made two unauthorized, verbatim Internet postings" of the church's copyrighted works on the "alt.religion.scientology" Usenet group. Invoking a provision in ...

Around the clock, from Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and every corner of the United States, the critics of Scientology discuss the controversial organization and its practices. A court decision in Sweden is quickly posted to the news group, followed quickly by a full translation. Daily transcripts of a trial in Northern California are up before daybreak the next day, and news accounts from all over the world are quickly translated and reproduced. Many of those who post messages to the central ...

In response to the July 24 Post-Gazette news articles "Scientology Comes to Town": As a 60-year resident of Pittsburgh and a 20-year member of the Church of Scientology, I am compelled to set the record straight on your July 24 articles about Scientology. The article missed the help the church and its members are extending to millions around the world, including residents of Pennsylvania. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a rude awakening for everyone. For many of us, ...

The war between Scientology and its online opponents may have no visible end, but victory in the latest skirmish goes to the Net. Last week, a judge dismissed a request from Bridge Publications (one of the countless subsidiaries of the Church of Scientology) for summary judgment against FACTNet, a nonprofit online anti-cult group that Scientology had accused of duplicating its copyrighted material. FACTNet claims that the copyrighted material — church documents by L. Ron Hubbard that reveal secrets Scientology members normally ...

If you are a Scientologist, your church is hoping that you'll get online and build a Web site endorsing your religious beliefs. In fact, the Church of Scientology will give you a Web starter kit to do just that. It will even host your site for you, alongside those of thousands of fellow Scientology members. But if you want to visit alt.religion.scientology, the Web site of Operation Clambake or just about any page that mentions the word "Xenu," you're out of ...

The Church of Scientology International is accusing two Web sites of trademark violation and is taking action to stop it. The church has threatened to see legal recourse against a Colorado Web site owner if he continues to run a site called "scientology-kills.net," which also sells T-shirts bearing the same phrase. In the second dispute, the church sent a letter to Tilman Hausherr of Berlin on Monday telling him to remove altered Scientology graphics from his CompuServe home page, which he ...

After more than seventeen years of litigation, Lawrence Wollersheim knows that talk isn't cheap–not when you're talking to lawyers and your life's work happens to involve badmouthing the Church of Scientology. But the price of silence is even higher. Too high, in Wollersheim's estimation, which is why he says he walked away from an alleged settlement offer by the church that would have netted him and a few colleagues $12 million in exchange for abandoning their crusade against Scientology. Wollersheim is ...

A web of intrigue surrounds the high-stakes legal brawl between FACTnet and the Church of Scientology. Strange things happen around Lawrence Wollersheim. His businesses collapse. His Boulder apartment gets raided by federal marshals, his computers seized. When college students offer to help him rebuild his computer bulletin-board system, they receive threatening phone calls–anonymous voices urging them to stay away from Larry. A California judge who presided over a lawsuit in which Wollersheim was the plaintiff told reporters he'd encountered a lot ...

Ron Newman, a corporate Web page designer in Cambridge, Massachussetts, turns on his computer one day last month and signs on to the Net to check in on his favourite newsgroup, alt.religion.scientology, a.r.s. for short. But as his computer modem erupts into the now all-too-familiar squeal that marks the arrival online, Newman begins to sense that something's not quite right. Ordinarily, it takes only a few seconds to retrieve the day's new postings on this electronic bulletin board. Today there are ...

Cancelbunny and Lazarus battle it out on the fontier of cyberspace–and suggest the limits of social contracts. "Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man....It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally ...

When computers are seized because they contain allegedly stolen intellectual property, and police pierce the security anonymous remailers,the days of the Net as a cozy, cocktail party are over. Welcome to a flame war with real bullets. When computers are seized because they contain allegedly stolen intellectual property, or the security of anonymous remailers is pierced by police, alt.scientology.war the days of the Internet as a cozy, private, intellectual cocktail party are over. Welcome to mortal combat between two alien cultures ...

The growing popularity of the Internet has spawned discussion groups that offer something for just about everyone, from lovers of Jean-Luc Picard (try alt.sexy.bald.captains) to haters of a certain children's television program (alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die) to obsessives consumed by politics, computer lore, comic books or the hidden messages embedded in a single rock song (alt.meter-maid.lovely.rita). Few newsgroups, though, have drawn the kind of following now evident on alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.), an international debating circle concerning the Church of Scientology. Always controversial, in recent months ...

IN THE ONLINE BRAWL OVER SCIENTOLOGY, INTERNET USERS DISCOVER THAT VIRTUAL REALITY BITES BACK.SHOWDOWN IN CYBERSPACE THE BATTLE OVER SCIENTOLOGY'S SECRETS IGNITES A HOLY WAR ON THE INTERNET. Lawrence Wollersheim's hands shake as he reads his notes, ticking off the damage done to his computers. Surrounding the 46-year-old Boulder resident is a cluster of reporters and, beyond that, a ring of glowering, dark-suited men (and one woman wearing a clerical collar), all packed into a hallway of the federal courthouse in ...