Fergie's Tech Blog

Scientology vs. The Internet, Part XVII - UPDATE

Matthew Ingram writes on The Globe and Mail's "Ingram 2.0" Blog:

By now, anyone who is even remotely interested in Tom Cruise (arguably a fairly large group) and specifically his interest in Scientology has probably seen the video clip of the popular Hollywood actor talking about his beliefs -- how the religion developed by failed science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard is the answer to most (if not all) of the world's problems, how Scientologists are "experts on the human mind" and so on. If you haven't seen the video yet, you can watch a version of it here -- at least until the church has it removed (as they have most of the YouTube versions).

When it comes to the Cruise video, it's easy enough to get YouTube to take the clip down, because the company is already extra-sensitive to claims of copyright infringement (Scientology says the video is copyrighted content meant for internal church use) as a result of being sued for $1-billion by Viacom, and so it essentially pulls videos down as soon as it gets a letter from someone who looks like a lawyer. Other websites aren't so easily cowed, however.

More here.

Update: 16:00 PST: Actually, the series of events in the story above has apparent led to an online attack against the Church of Scientology website, as reported on Wikinews.org here.

posted by Fergie @ 1/20/2008 01:16:00 PM