The "church" <spit> against the Internet


Contents

Archive under legal attack!
What happened to Lisa McPherson?
Verdict in trial in Lyon, France
Protests against $cientology in the UK
"Fra Arbejdsmarkedet" ("From the Employment Market") April-May 1998
Pictures from programme Envoyé Spécial, France 2, 990610
The Founder Himself - L Ron Flubbard (oops, "Hubbard") framed!
Sterling Management Systems tries to censor the net
List of active web-pages


Archive under legal attack!

In the fall of 1997, representatives (or people who knew how to send mail as such...) of the Religious Technology Center began attacking a Web-site which contained descriptions of various beleifs of $cientology. I set up a very small mirror, and shortly thereafter drew the fire of the RTC.

The audio clip is used as documentation in the comparison of Christianity and $cientology written by Peik J Strômsholm (modified by me to include a link to the sound clip). An up-to-date site with more sound files and some commentary is found on http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/9169/sound.html and on http://www.xenu.net/archive/multimedia.html .


The conflict between the "church" and the Internet has made Usenet history since it was escalated on Jan 1st 1995 by a raid on a critic (the first of many). While it's quite trendy to make fun of the beliefs of scientologists, the conflict has been fueled by the behaviour of the huge origanisation known as the "church".

The behaviour of the "church" is governed by their religious belief that civil courts are to be used as instruments for harassement of critics . While, on one hand, the "church" uses the civil law courts in new and imaginative ways , they never cease to complain about "religious persecution" when a government acts against them.


What happened to Lisa McPherson?

A young woman died while in the care of $cientology's most advanced establishment on earth, "Flag" in Clearwater, Florida. Read about Lisa Mcpherson.

Lisa McPherson leaflet in PDF format


Verdict in trial in Lyon, France

In 1988, a young member of the $cientology church was told by the leader of his local org that he had to come up with the money for a purification rundown (30.000 FFR - roughly 5.000 US$). He was told that the purif rundown was his only change for spiritual survival, never mind growth. He didn't have the money, and his wife refused to cooperate in getting a loan from the bank.

In view of this, the young father of two threw himself from the window of the bedroom of his children, in view of his wife and kids. His name was Patrice Vic, his two children were three and eight years old at the time. His wife immediately filed a complaint with the police, and eight years later, sentence was passed. The leader of the local org - J.-J. M. - was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and another 18 months suspended imprisonment. Various other $cientology members were fined for fraud and similar charges.

The full verdict (72 pages, 200 kB) is here.

The appeal court of Lyon reached a verdict in July 1997, reproduced here.

Redactions in verdict documents

It is a fact that, in France, the privacy of everyone is taken more seriously than the public interest of having access to accurate and complete information, including information about, ehrm, criminals. For this reason, names have been reduced to initials in the two documents above.

Protests against $cientology in the UK

Throughout the last few years, I have been going to protests against $cientology. In this way, I hope to inform members of the general public about the real facts about $cientology.

Very trendy tour guide to Duke the Dog's UK tour. Boring old text-only version.


"Fra Arbejdsmarkedet" ("From the Employment Market") April-May 1998

The Danish journalist Karin Høgh made several broadcasts documenting the use made by cults of members in low-paying jobs.

Translations here.


Pictures from programme Envoyé Spécial, France 2, 990610

A programme looking into various non-savoury aspects of the $cientology cult in France.

Pictures and comments here.


The Founder Himself - L Ron Flubbard (oops, "Hubbard") framed!

If you have a frame-aware browser (e.g. Mozilla, Netscape or MS Internet Explorer), take a look in here. I have attemted to answer each claim in the co$ "profile" of their founder, putting the answers next to the claims. (Oh, and unless you're on a fibre-optic net, you may want to disable automatic loading of images - there are none in my text and too many pictures of LRH in theirs...)

Sterling management tries to censor net

Letter from someone who doesn't even claim to be a laywer but would like to play one on the internet

My name is Robert Georgius and I am the webmaster for Sterling Management Systems, a Glendale, California management company. Sterling Management Systems has been a successful consulting business for the past twenty five years. Like all successful businesses nowadays, SMS also has a website, which I administer. As the webmaster, I am responsible for optimizing the website.

In January of 2006, the United States Patent and Trademark Office approved our application to register "STERLING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS," as a service mark under registration number 3043198. I am attaching a copy of that registration as proof of this fact. SMS uses this service mark extensively on its website to sell its products and services.

As part of my job, I also monitor the Internet to ensure that nobody is illegally using Sterling's trademarks or service marks. In conducting one of these searches I came across a website hosted by Bluehost, whose customer is using our registered service mark "Sterling Management Systems," in his metatags. The owner of this website is using Sterling Management Systems service mark, "STERLING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS," in his metatags to illegally lure people to his website. Our service mark can be found in the metatags in the following Bluehost webpages:

www.stop-wise.biz/Sterling_Management_Systems.html
www.stop-wise.biz/Sterling_v_CAN.html

I am not a lawyer, but I did do some of my homework on this and there are lots of cases where the courts said that using another's trademark or service mark in metatags is trademark infringement. The big one I found on the Internet was Brookfield Commc'n., Inc. v. W. Coast Entm't Corp., 174 F.3d 1036, 1066 (9th Cir.1999) where the court said that using somebody's service mark in metatags was trademark infringement.

Again, I am not asking for the content to be removed, we just want his use of our service mark, STERLING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, taken out of the metatags.


List of active web-pages

A list of active pages about the $cientology cult controversy can be found on http://www.altreligionscientology.org/
Send mail to Jens (jensting@tingleff.org)
Last modified: Thu May 28 17:50:03 BST 2009