Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I put this story under business for a reason. L. Ron Hubbard is a businessman and he is pissed that anyone would disagree with the contrived belief system he has invented to make himself rich. (When the googlebot hits later today it can put that in its pipe and index it!)

The Scientologists are all pissed at a site called xenu.net which hosts Operation Clambake. The Clambake is also hosted in Norway and questions (with purported facts) a few of the Scientology ways. That threatens the Scientologists so much that they are freaking out about it and threatening to sue Google under the DMCA because google links Clambake when you search for "Scientology." What pisses of the Scientomorons even more is that clambake is BEFORE most of their results because in the Google way there are more links and interest in clambake than in the church itself!

This is messed up on many levels. First off the DMCA is stupid, this is not copyrighted material, a search linking a result, just plain stupid. Second someone even questions the "church" of Scientology and they freak, that tells you something about how secure they are in their own beliefs. If its right, then everyone should question it, thats how we learn about truth and reality, then when the last truth has withstood all the scrutiny, that is something to believe in, its basically science, the scientific method, but apparently not the Scientology method.

Anyway, this freaking out and complaining in writing to Google has led Google to make a "pass the buck" move and they now have removed some more pages (searching for "helatrobus" for example) and posted a link at the bottom which states said pages have been removed. The new notice also points to a free speech advocacy site (as Google received a plethora of backlash the last time they removed some links and it became public in this manner) chillingeffects.org which then posts copies of the complaints, etc. In this way Google is bypassing the issue and yet still attempting to champion free speech.

I applaud Google for trying, but somebody needs to take on the DMCA and take it to court. It may not always be smart business to spend serious cash as such on the litigation but think of the positive publicity and hero status that would be awarded to Google if they took on the DMCA and won! That is a distasteful thing to state even as I write it, considering the publicity of a case against free speech as one of the goals of taking it on, but in modern mega media marketing hypo it should certainly be taken into account. IF, and thats a big IF, some big company takes on the DMCA and wins, there will be a windfall of support and publicity for that company.

Again, Google is smart, they are skirting the line and playing both sides, but I think a Google, with a valid case such as this (its not a copyright infringement, I think its pretty clear, if anyone is violating a copyright, its the clambake folks, not Google, and even then stating something about a company, ie complaining about it, is legal free speech, the clambake folks are not selling anything or trying to masquerade AS scientologists, etc, that is the spirit of copyright protections) could make a difference, I think this battle may in fact NEED a Google.   Google Runs Into Copyright Dispute: Yahoo