NRC-Handelsblad
 
(a major Dutch newspaper), September 14, 1995

USHER

By Rik Smits

Last week, an usher and a lawyer from the renowned law-firm
Nautha-Dutilh unexpectedly entered the office of the Amsterdam
Internet-provider XS4ALL (Access for all). They had been asked by the
Church of Scientology to seize the computers, because these had
supposedly been used by XS4ALL to violate the churches' copyright. A day
later, the zeizure was relieved.
For a short time, the war that has been going on for some time between
the cult and its former members, surfaced. In this war, the Internet
serves as a battlefield. And just like ordinary wars devastate the
battlefield, this fierce battle can have big and unpleasant consequences
for the Internet. What exactly was the issue? Anyone who has walked
through the Kalverstraat, a famous Amsteerdam shopping-area, in the
past years will have seen them. The boys, most of them USA citizens, who
offer the young, lonely or seemingly unstable by-passers a free
personality-test. Anyone who accepts the offer, is taken to a building
that was once aptly described by the Dutch writer Gerrit Komrij as the
stench-hole on the Nieuwezijds': the headquarters of the
Scientology-church. In all cases, an hour of being questioned and doing
tests made clear that there wasn't too big a personality-problem, but
nevertheless the test revealed a few weak spots. But the Church of
Scientology has developed a perfect course to help you solve those
problems, and best of all: not all too expensive. This was the way in
which new cult-members are crimped and once inside, financially stripped
naked. For the Evil has chosen your body and soul as a home - mysterious
Thetans that can only be expelled by taking extensive and expensive
courses.
Thanks to these courses, the cult makes a lot of money. Therefore it's
understandable that the copyright on the texts involved is guarded with
great zeal. Renegades who want to expose the cult, for instance by
publishing the texts, are being hindered by all possible means. That's
understandable, but not decent, because the cult interprets the term  by
all possible means' very literally. If necessary, it's not afraid to
seriously harass its opponents, or (as has been testified) go even
further than that. The seizure at XS4ALL was a part of such a campaign
against former scientologists and the people who sympathize with them.
One of the Internet's facilities is the so-called  anonymous remailer'.
It's a program that strips the name and sender from newsgroup-postings
and e-mail and replaces it by a meaningless code before sending it to
it's destiny. This way, it's possible to contact others and remain
anonymous. It's no big news, just the digital version of the registered
letter-service that any newspaper provides. XS4ALL ran such a remailer.
Someone had used the remailer to publish articles on the Internet about
the testimony of a former scientologist, a man called Fishman, in a
trial against the cult. These documents contain fragments of very
expensive courses. The cult wanted them to be removed from the Internet,
and therefore asked for a seizure at XS4ALL. A day later, when the user
concerned had removed the material, the seizure was relieved. But even
though the cult doesn't have all to clean hands, the arguments of its
opponents aren't that good in this particular case. They claim that
nothing has been published that hasn't already been revealed to the
public. "Don't forget", they state, "that we're talking about documents
of trial in the USA, and these can be accessed by the general public. It
doesn't have to cost you a cent, you only have to go to the court where
the trial was held.
You can even ask for photocopies to be made." This is all true, but
that's not what it's about. When a certain text is published in legal
documents, the copyright remains with the author. If this were not the
case, the novel  Nader tot U', by the Dutch author Gerard Reve, would
have been outlawed after the famous  donkey-trial' in the sixties. I
don't suppose Reve would happy about that. [translator's note: in the
book, the author described sexual intercourse with God, who came to him
in the body of a donkey]
In itself, this bickering between former members and their cult is only
interesting because of the unprecedented ferocity with which the battle
is fought. But the cult's strategy to hold the provider responsible
instead of the person who actually publishes their material puts the
case in a much broader perspective. It's a direct attempt to put heavy
restrictions on a medium, the Internet, because it spreads unpleasing
opinions. Recently, especially in politically correct organizations and
amongst Christian fundamentalists, more people demand that providers be
regarded as publishers and not as some sort of telephone-company that
doesn't have a responsablity for what the users publish' on the network.
If that point of view becomes the offical and legal point of view, it
will mean the end of the Internet as an open channel of communication.
Physically, it's impossible to effectively control the avalanche of
sense and nonsense that floods the Net. Therefore the providers' only
(and very insecure) defense lies in strict selfregulation. The Internet
will on the long run be occupied by commercial companies, who don't want
to offend anyone. It'll be one giant commercial break. No provider will
be able to afford the risk that political discussion and possibly
controversial cultural expressions bring about. That's not a very
pleasant prospect for a society like ours, that highly depends on a free
exchange of knowledge and information, and where freedom of expression
is considered as a big asset.