One opened, more to go... Operation Clambake present:

OC News 2002



This is an archive of news related to Operation Clambake and/or it's author(s). Other news about the controversial fight against the atrocities done by the Cult of Scientology can be found on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology or Operation Clambake Message Board.

December 30 2002
Operation Clambake mentioned in Associated Press article, here a quote from Sydney Morning Herald:

"Meanwhile, the Church of Scientology International used copyright laws to pressure Google to remove listings for a Norwegian site run by critics. The French and German governments cited their laws in getting the search engine to remove hate sites."
December 29 2002
The Leipzig Award is mentioned in Frankfurter Rundschau.

December 28 2002
Dialog Zentrum Berlin announces that the author of Operation Clambake wins Leipzig Human Rights Award 2003.

The European-American Citizens Committee for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the USA was organized to work toward achieving the following reforms:

December 16 2002

Newsweek
Article in Newsweek titled The World According to Google mentiones Google censoring Operation Clambake earlier this year.

October 1 2002

The Times
An article in The Times today:
"When it comes to the Internet's history, the real power-brokers are proving to be the lawyers - and especially those employed by the Church of Scientology. Last week the internet's biggest digital archive became that much smaller after Scientology lawyers insisted that it remove pages created by the organisation's critics. Those running the archive did so with barely a murmur, proving yet again how effective the church's legal threats can be in undermining free speech. The archive, known as the Wayback Machine, keeps snapshots of millions of old web pages - a remarkable resource available to anyone free of charge at web.archive.org. But last week, researchers looking for pages taken from anti-Scientology sites such as Xenu.net were told that they were no longer available 'per the request of the site owner.' In fact, the demand had come from the church alone, on the ground that copyrighted material contained within these sites put them in breach of the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

"Under the Act, the church has 'asserted ownership' of work contained within these sites. Yet the result has been to remove entire websites, including pages that appear to be within the law. At Xenu.net, Andreas Heldal-Lund, a long-time opponent of the church, suggests that copyright law is merely a tool to censor critics. 'I'm the author, and I never asked that (the site) be removed,' he says. Another victim, the respected computer scientist Dave Touretzky, found all his research pages blocked from the archive thanks to some anti-Scientology articles. 'I don't exist,' he says. 'I've been erased from internet history. All because I dared to have some Scientology material on my website.'

"Faced with the threat of litigation from the Scientologists, the archive appears to have removed entire domains before taking detailed counsel of its own. After all, no non-profit body likes to risk offending such a determined litigator as the church. Even Google, the search engine, removed links to Xenu.net and similar sites last March, faced with similar wide-ranging copyright claims from the church's lawyers.

"In the Google case, the decision caused an outcry, and the company soon unblocked the links. No lawsuit has followed. Yet the church continues to put legal pressure on smaller websites, Internet service providers and even online booksellers to suppress dissent. And each time one of its targets succumbs, another blow is dealt to free debate."

September 27 2002
Net Effect at CNet has a commentary today titled "Church, DMCA, and too many missing links":

"How scary is the Church of Scientology? Well, I waffled on whether I should even write the column you're about to read, because I figured I'd get CNET sued just by bringing up the topic. But I couldn't stay out of the fray. I find it terrifying that any criticism of Scientology is fast disappearing from the Web, thanks to ill-conceived copyright laws and an apparently rampant fear of being sued."

Archive.org still wrongfully claim on their site that:

Blocked Site Error.

Per the request of the site owner, http://www.xenu.net/ is no longer available in the Wayback Machine. Try another request or click here to see if the page is available, live, on the Web.
http://www.xenu.net/

September 26 2002
Archive.org controvercy now on Neural.it.

September 25 2002

The New York Times
New York Times article today Net archive silences Scientology critic :
"Buckling under pressure from the Church of Scientology, the Internet Archive has removed a church critic's Web site from its system.

The Internet Archive, a site that preserves snapshots of old Web pages and bills itself as "a library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form," no longer contains links to archival pages of Xenu.net. Instead, surfers are pointed to a page telling them the site was taken down "per the request of the site owner."

However, Xenu.net operator Andreas Heldal-Lund said he never made any such request. Heldal-Lund, a Norwegian businessman and longtime church critic, said he's eager for people to read archived pages of his site.

"I'm the author, and I never asked that it be removed," he said. "I believe what's happening in this case is important history."

A representative of the Internet Archive said the organization, which is run mostly by volunteers, took the pages down after lawyers for the Church of Scientology "asserted ownership of materials visible through" the site. He said the group replaced the links with a generic error message about blocked sites.

However, the organization removed not only Xenu.net pages containing excerpts from Church of Scientology documents, but also the entire Xenu.net site, which contains pages crafted entirely by Heldal-Lund."

Article also in C|Net News.com, SiliconValley.com, Planet Multimedia, Geek.com, Compulenta and Heise Online.

September 24 2002
Operation Clambake got "slashdotted" again: Wayback Machine Purged of Scientology Criticism. This always creates an enormous amount of hits on the site.

LawMeme also has a good article today: Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine for Scientology:

"The Wayback Machine (aka Archive.org, The Internet Archive) has, with little fanfare, removed entire domains from its archive in accordance with a request from Scientology's lawyers:

Lawyers for the Church of Scientology contacted the Internet Archive, asserted ownership of materials visible through the Wayback Machine, and those materials have been removed from the Wayback Machine. [email to LawMeme]
The problem is not that the Internet Archive received such a request from the Church of Scientology's lawyers, or even complied with the legal portions of the request, but that the Internet Archive has not taken minimal steps to defend free inquiry and access to information. LawMeme reveals the sordid details..."

September 16 2002
Internet Archive - Wayback Machine Internet Archive admits they have removed sites based on requests from the criminal Cult of Scientology without informing the sites they remove. Operation Clambake seems to be one of many sites critical to the cult which has been removed. The public explanation on the Internet Archive web site is that the site owner has requested the removal, which is not true. Read e-mail exchange between Operation Clambake and Internet Archive where we tried to sort this out before it hits the press.

September 5 2002
Article in the UK newspaper Guardian mentiones and links to Operation Clambake.

July 12 2002
James Randi, of James Randi Educational Foundation, mentiones Operation Clambake in his online newsletter Swift.

June 25 2002

Law.com

There is an article about Operation Clambake and Google in Corporate Counsel today (quote):

"The church's letter listed 85 copyrighted works, including secret, advanced teachings as well as photographs and texts drawn from the church's official publications. Alongside each entry was the Web address where the document could be found on www.xenu.net, a site calling itself "Operation Clambake" that is critical of Scientology."
June 4 2002
Today Operation Clambake is no longer number one when you search for "scientology" on google.com. This means the cult has been working hard lately to link the word "scientology" to their own site. We need help to counter that! If you want to help, then add this link to all your web pages:

<A HREF="http://www.xenu.net/">scientology</A>

Or in other words: Link any occurance of the word "scientology" to http://www.xenu.net/. That's what in the long run will increase the rating for us on Google.com!

May 15 2002

Seven Wonders "We're Seven Wonders, one of the Web's longest running Web Award sites, and we selected your site as the Net Culture Site of the Week on May 15. You can find Seven Wonders at http://www.penncen.com/7wonders/"

May 7 2002
Did cult lawyer Ava Paquette commit fraud when she smuggled trademark complaints inside her now infamous DMCA complaint to Google? You judge.

May 4 2002
Articles in Ledger-Enquirer (*) and The Mercury News: Legal protection turns service providers into speech police (quote):

"The notice and takedown provision is ripe for abuse," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a University of Wisconsin professor critical of modern copyright laws. "It gives the accused no real due process."

Andreas Heldal-Lund, who runs the Scientology criticism site in question, says the effect is to strip the Internet of its value as a democratic medium where the strong and the meek can be equally heard.

May 2 2002

SiliconValley.com
Article today about Operation Clambake: Scientology, Google and the First Amendment (quote):
Search engines and links provide information in context; they enhance the Internet's richness of ideas. As such, they warrant full free-speech protections.

But a tussle between the Church of Scientology and Google has exposed a First Amendment vulnerability. A poorly worded copyright-protection law is putting dissent and speech on the Internet at some risk.

Operation Clambake this month selection at Fortean Times: "Everything you ever wanted to know about Scientology and they were afraid you'd ask...".

Operation Clambake is required reading at New York University.

May 1 2002
README (New York University, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication) releases the article "Church Versus Cyberstate" today. So did Stern: "Google schlägt zurück: Mit Tricks gegen Scientology Zensur"

Stern

April 30 2002
Article today about Operation Clambake in Süddeutsche Zeitung: 1:0 für Google (quote):

Dort findet der Surfer dann die Klageschrift von Scientology, und im Text den Link zu der von der Sekte für illegal erklärten Homepage. Es handelt sich um eine Webseite des Norwegers Andreas Heldal-Lund (www.xenu.net). Er kritisiert Scientology und untermauert das mit offiziellen und kircheninternem Dokumenten. So wird die Klage unterlaufen: xenu.net ist inzwischen so bekannt wie die Scientology-Webseite selbst.
Interview with Paul Wouters at Xtended.net and Andreas Heldal-Lund in Linux Journal today.

April 27 2002
Operation Clambake is now # 1 when you search on Google.com! Silly cult, they tried to get my site off Google but only gave it the best promotion it has ever had. Just imagine what it would cost to buy the same advertising!!!

April 25 2002
Article in BBC today titled "Scientology Church fights Google".

April 24 2002
International Herald Tribune also prints the interview with Operation Clambake author: Google adds sites by substracting (quote):

International Herald Tribune With its Chilling Effects partnership, Google is subtly making the point that the right to link is important to its business and to the health of the Web, said David Post, a law professor at Temple University who specializes in Internet issues.

"This is an example where copyright law is being used in conflict with free connectivity and free expression on the Net," he said. Post said Google's situation highlighted the need for more awareness of copyright issues, including pending legislation that is more restrictive than the 1998 law.

The copyright controversy has had an interesting side effect for Operation Clambake. The Google software judges the importance of a page in part by looking at how many other pages link to it. Scientology's complaint set off a flurry of linking to the critics' site, pushing it up two spots to No. 2 in the search results for "Scientology" - just below the church's official site.

April 22 2002

The New York Times
Article in The New York Times today "Google Runs Into Copyright Dispute" (quote):
The site in question, Operation Clambake (www.xenu.net), is based in Norway, beyond the reach of the United States copyright act. The site portrays the church as a greedy cult that exploits its members and harasses critics. Andreas Heldal-Lund, the site's owner, says the posting of church materials, including some internal documents and pictures of church leaders, is allowable under the "fair use" provisions of internationally recognized copyright law.

When Google responded to the church's complaint by removing the links to the Scientology material, techies and free-speech advocates accused Google of censoring its search results. Google also briefly removed the link to Operation Clambake's home page but soon restored it, saying the removal had been a mistake.

And Slashdot.org is back on the case. TechTV discussed on Talkback: Should Google Censor Itself?

April 17 2002
infoAnarchy reports that Google does the right thing. If you now do a search for "site:xenu.net leaflet" you get the censored list of hits and a note at the bottom saying:

In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 9 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

I would have appreciated if Google also had bothered to tell me about their change of mind. I had already politely asked Google for an official reply to this site that I could post, as an offer from me to limit the harm this case did to Google. They promised to consider it, but I never heard from them again. I do still salute Google for doing what they now do, this is the smart reaction. Hopefully they have learned their lesson.

Punto Informatico, derStandard, WebWereld and Idg.se reports on the change at Google. When searching on "scientology" on Google today 4 of the first 10 hits are to critical sites and Operation Clambake (www.xenu.net) is up from 4 to number 2. I think this qualifies as a major foot bullet for the Cult of Scientology. Smile!
April 16 2002
Punto Informatico:

DMCA Google style

April 15 2002

Dimolti Award "Your site has been selected as one of Dimolti s Best of the Internet Award winners.

Any nut with a computer can put up a website, as is evidenced by most sites on the Internet. We wish to thank people like you who contribute to the pool of sites actually worth bothering with."

April 12 2002
A harddisk at my ISP seems to have crashed, resulting in everything on www.clambake.org going down. Hopefully back soon.

Google.com sent two DMCA complaints from the cult today. One regarding www.kvalito.no and one regarding www.clambake.org. This brings it back on Slashdot, Broadband DSLReports.com, NewsBytes and Plastic - attracting a lot of the visitors the cult want to scare away... Linux Journal also got an article on the controvercy with Google.com.

Linux Journal

April 10 2002
Article in: index, Bored at Work (link), GoodWebSites.com (link)

April 7 2002

CNN

A very interesting article on CNN today titled "Service providers as speech police?":
Heldal-Lund, who considers his criticisms a permissible fair use, isn't fighting the Google decision because he doesn't want to consent to U.S. laws as a Norwegian citizen. Others lack the knowledge, time and money to fight.

"People who are engaging in what you might describe as parody and fair use need to be willing to defend those rights, and that's expensive," said Stewart Baker, a lawyer who heads Steptoe & Johnson's technology practice. "People are not always willing to do that."

April 6 2002

Fox News

Google removing Operation Clambake from their index is top story on Fox News today titled "Legal Protection Turns Service Providers Into Speech Police"!

April 4 2002
"Whacking Google", article in Tech Central Station.

One site, Operation Clambake, has emerged as a clearinghouse for wacky Scientology texts, firsthand accounts of defectors, and general debunkery of L. Ron Hubbard's "body of wisdom." Based in Norway, Clambake is free from U.S. jurisdiction, meaning Scientology's cutthroat legal eagles can't censor editor Andreas Heldal-Lund with lawsuits."

April 2 2002
Articles in the Search Engine Watch and:

Boston Herald

Financial Times wrote today:

Finally this week, apart from charging for Internet surfing there is a nasty trend developing out there as far as what links you can include on your web pages. The large search engine Google recently removed a web site from the World Wide Web that was critical of the Church of Scientology.

We can thank the US for this. Their draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is effectively being imposed on the whole planet and slowing eroding the premise that the WWW is a free global resource. Ironically the DMCA is also attacking what is supposedly one of the US's fundamental freedoms _ free speech and freedom of expression."

April 1 2002
LA Business Journal prints an article "Engineering searches & Church of Scientology". Quote:

The Church of Scientology, wielding the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, has convinced search engine Google, Inc. to limit access to certain links that are critical of the organization.

The Church of Scientology objected to highly-placed search links to Xenu.net, a Norway-based site that claims to lead the "fight against the Church of Scientology on the Net."

March 31 2002

Wired News

Article in Wired today "Google Yanks Anti-Church Sites":

"Now Xenu.net and clambake.org have virtually disappeared from Google's database.

When using the DMCA as a legal club to thwap critics, Scientology must claim that its copyrighted material has been unlawfully expropriated.

Among the ostensibly infringing sites: Excerpts from an internal report on a Scientology member who died under mysterious circumstances after allegedly being held against her will, and photographs of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and others juxtaposed with Adolf Hitler."

March 28 2002
Telepolis: "Die Welt ist fast alles, was Google ist"

March 25 2002
More media coverage: Google Time Bomb (Slate), L'arrière-cuisine de la Scientologie (Liberation), Priority sluit provider af wegens Scientology-site (NU), L'Église de scientologie bute contre le "remue-ménage" (ZDNet France), Google Caves to Church's Legal Pressure (osOpinion.com), Norsk anti-scientolog linket igjen (IT Avisen), Overlawyered.com, 4User.ru, A very special message from L. Ron Hubbard (SiliconValley.com), Streit um Scientology-kritische Site bei Google (Livenet), Xenu.net / Google contre la secte (uZine), Google i l'església de la cienciologia (Vilaweb), Scientology vs Google (Cietnis), Google restaura la web crÍtica con la CienciologíÍa (iACTUAL), HotWired, Japan, Weglating zoekresultaten Google "een heel kwalijke ontwikkeling" (Emerce), and on RICN

March 23 2002
More media coverage: NetSlaves, Cosmiverse, Silicon.com, Membrana, x86

March 22 2002
More media activity today: The Register, Reuters, WebWereld, Planet Multimedia, Digi.no, Hit Or Miss, derStandard.at, DSLReports.com, DaveNet, IDG.se, PC.com.pl, digitoday.fi, barrpunto.com, PC-WELT, Abondance, CS, The Mercury News, CNN, CBS, geek.com, Politech, Yahoo Internet Life, DAYPOP, Lucianne, The New York Times, Portal.bg, Slate, NRK, TechTV, Zvedavec, Internet magazine, grrl, WebWereld, The Rallying Point, ABCtella, Disinformation and Red Wolf. Do you think the cult regret this now? ;)

Google have put the top page (www.xenu.net) back in their index, and this of course is the most important one. This is because DMCA cover copyright violations and not trademarks, which is the base for the cult complaining about the index page. Google are still blocking the other pages the cult complained about. So keep writing to Google and urge them to rethink! And if you want to help Clambake's ranking on Google: Add a link and/or banner to Operation Clambake. :-)

From The Mercury News:

Certain pages of the Xenu.net website were removed from our search engine earlier this week in response to a copyright infringement notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)," Google spokesman David Krane said in an e-mail.

The home page for Xenu.net was "inadvertently removed" along with a long, two-page list of associated Web pages Wednesday but was put back Thursday, said Google spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey. Neither she nor Krane were available for further comment.

Reuters interviewed me today.

March 22 2002
Operation Clambake is now back on Google!!! This snapshot was made 01:16am today (CET). Not only is Operation Clambake back at # 4 but there is also a sponsored link there linking to the site! No message from Google yet so we do not know what happened. Check this link to see if it still is there.

What did the cult achieve with this DMCA complaint? That hundreds of media woke up and linked to this site which lead to number of newcomers to this site sky rocketed? Another massive foot bullet for the cult. Here is the statistics for one of the servers this site is on, copied at 02:00 (CET) today:

March 21 2002
Here is the actual DMCA complaint from the cult and the attached RTF file with links.

Want to help Google do the right thing?

Write them an e-mail expressing your view. Remember always to be polite.

help@google.com     press@google.com

Lots of media activity, some examples from today only: Slashdot, Heise Online, Yahoo News, Wired, C|Net News.com, Golem.de, Plastic, Aardvark, New Order, Boing Boing, pssst!, intern.de, Christianity Today, Compulenta, infoAnarchy, ZDNet.de, tech dirt, Network World Fusion, Zataz, The Straight Dope, Exmosis, The Null Device, Bob Crosley's Weblog, The Ideal Rhombus, FACTNet, Sympatico, Google Weblog, Microcontent News, Hypocrites.com, Linux Journal, ONLamp, Userland and Drudge Report just to mention a few of them!


Today my ISP, Xtended Internet in Holland, also released the story of what happened in the recent month when the cult crusaded against them because of Operation Clambake.
March 20 2002
G Is Google censoring xenu.net? People are starting to report that Google no longer returns any hits for Operation Clambake and xenu.net. Kuro5hin has an article today and later Rotten.com also wrote about it. Google have yet not responded. PTCS at OperatingThetan.com has a detailed article covering the event. The situation is debated at and generates a lot of new visitors on Moron.org and Metafilter.com.

"While Google's 'cache' system might qualify as a 'host' site, the DMCA makes *no* provisions for the mere 'link' or system that qualifies links, and Google, in case they actually did consider the complaint justified, owed you a notification immediately upon receipt of the complaint. I doubt *seriously* that Google wants to adopt responsibility for every site they index, and this sounds completely insane." [Zinj]
LATEST:
A representative from Google.com later writes to inform that they have received a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint from Religious Technology Center and Bridge Publications (quote from the e-mail and the pages listed in the complaint).

March 3 2002
Operation Clambake linked from an article in Microcontent News about Google Time Bomb.

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