Scientology: It's back on You Tube

Well, not the actual Scientology, but rather, the Anti-Scientology videos that had been pulled.

According to The Standard,

YouTube may be rethinking their process for handling DMCA takedown notices this week, after receiving thousands of bogus notices alleging illegal content on the site. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), over a period of 12 hours, from Thursday night to Friday morning, YouTube received over 4000 notices, all for content critical of the Church of Scientology.

The notices were sent from an organization by the name of American Rights Counsel, LLC. However, Scientology detractors associated with the group Anonymous noted that no such limited liability corporation exists in the U.S. and that the text of the takedown notices is virtually identical to previous efforts from Wikipedia contributor oschaper, thought to be someone named Oliver Schaper (oschaper on Wikipedia and message boards). It's possible that this individual was behind the notices, also filed by another apparently non-existent entity called ContentFactory America.

See also:

Massive Takedown of Anti-Scientology Videos on YouTube

Alleged 'rights group' tries to have 4,000 anti-Scientology videos removed from YouTube

Tags

More like this

crazy hubbardites. can't take a little criticism.

I think YouTube definitely needs to work on its mechanism for DMCA takedown notices. Among the videos that were (albeit temorarily) taken down immediately were some that were shot by the individual members with their own hand held cameras. How on earth could you think that someone else owns the copyright to such footage? It should have been very obvious to YouTube what was happening, but it seems that they've tried to automate this process to a certain extent. They didn't even check to see that the takedown notices were coming from a non-existent company.

As regards $cientolgy: I think the U.S. should take a page from the books in Germany: ban them outright. They hide under the guise of religion, when they're obviously a profit-taking company. Would a real religion file suit to protect its "trade secrets?" (I think the word trade definitely implies a business here, not a religion.) Would a real religion infiltrate the U.S. Government (several agencies) in order to find and alter/remove information about itself (Operation Snow White)?

It's terribly pathetic what some people resort to in the name of a (rather poorly, IMHO) made-up science fiction story. Their founder was a con-man, plain and simple, and the con is still going on.

It's not the rank-and-file scientologists that can't take criticism, they are just battling evil SPs as per instructions from higher-ups in the illustrious Sea Org. The people sending the DMCA takedown notices probably don't even know and have been instructed not to look at what the videos contain.

IANAL, and correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand the DMCA, YouTube has to pull videos upon receiving a properly-filed takedown notice, or face liability under DMCA themselves. And while filing a DMCA takedown notice when you don't actually hold a copyright to the item in question does constitute the crime of perjury, as of yet no prosecutors seem interested in actually pursuing any such charges. Thus, as the system is set up and the laws are written, we're stuck with the situation as it currently stands.

It looks like the Creationists are taking a page out of the $cientologists' book. If you're not familiar with a YouTube user called "Thunderf00t", his anti-creationist videos are wonderful. It seems that someone filed a couple false DMCA takedown notices for videos that he had posted. Check out his video response "GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL!"