Scientology Taking Hits Online
Masked men and
women demonstrate in front of the Amsterdam office of the Scientology
Church, part of a worldwide protest organized by an online group called
Anonymous.
A growing number of critics and disgruntled ex-members are using the Web to attack the church's tightly controlled image.
By David Sarno, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 3, 2008
"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."
So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched
Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who
are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church
of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and
alienating members from family.
One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of
David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the
daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on
Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the
practice of psychiatry.
The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory
allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L.
Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular
Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a
translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say
contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in
1952, according to a church website.
These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories
to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing
the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public
image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called
Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and
activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement
has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly
trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays
Scientology in unflattering terms.
No corner of the Web, it appears, is safe for Scientology. Blogger and
lawyer Scott Pilutik recently posted a story noting that Scientology
was yanking down EBay auctions for used e-meters, the device the church
uses for spiritual counseling. EBay allows brand owners -- Louis
Vuitton or Rolex, say -- to remove items they believe infringe on their
trademark or patent rights. Basically, fakes. But, Pilutik said, the
used e-meters being taken down were genuine. Reselling them was no
different than putting a for-sale sign on your old Chevy.
"What's actually going on here," he wrote, is that the church is
"knowingly alleging intellectual property violations that clearly don't
exist." Within a day Pilutik's blog had gotten over 45,000 visitors --
so much traffic that his site crashed completely.
Facing a steady stream of negative publicity and a growing number of
critical voices, Scientology has found itself on the defensive.
The church has referred to Anonymous as a group of "cyber-terrorists"
and, in a statement, said the group's aims were "reminiscent of Al
Qaeda spreading anti-American hatred and calling for U.S. destruction."
"These people are posing extremely serious death threats to our
people," said church spokeswoman Karin Pouw in a phone interview. "We
are talking about religious hatred and bigotry."
A recent video posted to YouTube contained a threat to bomb a Southern
California Scientology building. An FBI spokeswoman said an
investigation was in progress but that no suspects had been identified.
Reporters have long had to tread carefully when writing about
Scientology, fearful that lawsuits and other kinds of retaliation would
follow any story that Scientology did not like. But that may be
changing.
"Before this Internet onslaught," said Douglas Frantz, a contributing
editor at Portfolio magazine who covered Scientology for the New York
Times in the 1990s (and is a former editor at the L.A. Times), "they
were always able to go after their critics and do a good job of being
able to discredit or intimidate them."
Angry former church members also perceive a kind of safety in numbers
afforded by the Internet, and more are coming forward to share their
stories.
"People have been scared out of their minds to speak out about
Scientology," said Hill, Miscavige's niece, in an interview. "Nobody
should have to be that scared to speak out about a church."
Wiseman echoed the sentiment, adding that the Anonymous campaign had
influenced her decision to reveal her identity last week. "The Internet
is listening. If something happens to me, all of these people will
know."
The current wave of anti-Scientology activity began in January, when a
video of Tom Cruise extolling the religion's tech-based approach to
enlightenment was leaked onto YouTube, where users holding it up to
ridicule copied and recopied it; several sites posted it without
hesitation.
It wasn't long before Nick Denton, who as publisher of the blog
syndicate Gawker Media had put the video online first, received a legal
threat from a law firm representing Scientology, alleging copyright
infringement. But Denton refused to take the video down.
"It was an awesome news story," Denton wrote in an e-mail. "If we
didn't race to post it up, some other site would have. That, rather
than litigation by Scientology, was the fear going through my mind."
The church's whack-a-mole campaign with the Cruise video became a
rallying cry for Anonymous, which saw efforts to remove the videos from
YouTube as an unwanted incursion into the domain of digital culture,
where information and media, copyrighted or no, are often exchanged
freely.
In a YouTube video of its own, Anonymous declared open war on the
church. Early on, the group also staged cyber-attacks on Scientology
websites.
But on Feb. 10, thousands of masked Anonymous members picketed at
Scientology locations around the globe, chanting slogans and handing
out fliers. No violent incidents were reported. The protests generated
yet another wave of online media -- videos, photos, news stories, blog
posts -- little of it in praise of Scientology.
The result of all this attention has been that just about any story
critical of Scientology -- even those that have been publicly
accessible for years -- can gain immediate Web currency. On Digg.com, a
popular "social news" aggregator that features popular stories from
around the Web, dozens of Scientology stories have ascended to the
site's most-viewed list in the last several weeks. A successful Digg
story can drive tens of thousands of views to the originating site, as
was the case with Pilutik's post about e-meters.
In addition, the clamor generated by Anonymous has raised the profile
of the small but vehement anti-Scientology community that existed
before Anonymous, and even made for some cross-pollination between the
two camps.
Scientology's longtime detractors, such as those at Operation Clambake (xenu.net)
and Scientology Lies, claim it is not a religion at all but a business
that charges its parishioners ever more onerous fees for access to
revealed truths. Other online forums, such as the Ex-Scientologist
Message Board and ExScientologyKids, have become places for former
members to congregate, share stories and offer support
Ironically, it is the church's aversion to negative publicity -- and
the legal strategy it has long used to prevent it, that has aroused
more online ire than any other issue.
The website ChillingEffects .com has posted dozens of cease-and-desist
letters sent by Scientology's lawyers to various website and Internet
service providers requesting that copyrighted material be removed.
But in the diffuse and often Byzantine world of the Web, some precision
legal strikes are more likely to backfire than hit their target.
Scientology's use of copyright law appears to be an increasingly losing
battle on the Web, said Andrew Bridges, a San Francisco-based
intellectual property attorney. "The big question is: Is the copyright
serving the purpose of promoting science and the useful arts, or is the
purpose essentially the stifling of criticism?"
Still, according to Scientology spokeswoman Pouw, the church views the
Internet as a positive tool. It is, Pouw said, "concentrating on using
the Internet as a resource for promoting its message and mission in
this world, not as a ground for litigation."
But now that goal will have to exist alongside a seemingly steady
stream of online attacks. And while anonymous political activity, such
as postering around a town, is nothing new, Bridges noted, the speed of
the Web is what is giving Scientology trouble.
"What's different is that more people can see the stuff faster than Scientology can go around and get it taken down."
Scientology feud with its critics takes to Internet
Cyber attacks and threats against the church erupt after it asks YouTube to pull Tom Cruise clips.
By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
A long-simmering dispute over digital copyrights between the Church of
Scientology and its critics has boiled over in recent weeks after video
clips turned up on the Internet from a 2004 interview by the church's
most famous member, actor Tom Cruise.
When Scientology officials complained the clips were copyrighted and
requested their removal from YouTube and other websites, a shadowy
organization of online troublemakers sprang into action.
The group known as "Anonymous" posted an eerie video on the Internet
featuring a computer-generated voice announcing a campaign to destroy
the church and calling for worldwide protests Feb. 10
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