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Three censorship stories drew my attention this month; so if censorship doesn't bother you I suppose you can **** *** and read something else...
Once you've been on the net for a while, you start to notice the strange coincidences; the hidden currents in the meme pool. Those days when three people you know independently send you the same joke; those moments when you're just thinking about someone you haven't heard from in years, and suddenly you see a Usenet article from them. This month I received two completely different e-mail messages which coincidentally ended up leading me to the same web site...
The first e-mail was forwarded to me from a Richard Hamilton; he explained that a group called the Universal Life Church was trying to shut down a spoof religious site called the Universal Life and Death Church. The second e-mail was from a friend of mine, suggesting that the Universal Life Church web site was good for a giggle.
So, I wandered along to the ULC web site. I wasn't disappointed. The very first page has a hilariously satirical advertisement for a church-endorsed legal services company in Nevada, for handling your religious lawsuits; another page has a listing of bizarre moneymaking schemes ranging from "oral spray nutrients" to "neutraceuticals". The sign-up page indicated that anyone could become a doctrinally correct member of this church, no matter how bizarre their religious beliefs--all they had to do was fill in the application form and send twenty bucks. All rather reminiscent of the Church of the SubGenius, in fact.
There was just one problem: That was the serious site. The joke site is based in the UK, at <http://www.ULDCUK.com/>. They've obviously been having a great deal of fun at the ULC's expense; just check out their correspondence with the 'real' church on the page titled "A humorless cult". As best I can make out, Saint Addison took them at their word, got ordained in the ULC, and then decided to see how bizarre he could make his religious behavior before they excommunicated him. A series of increasingly warped e-mail exchanges ensued between this new "ULC UK" and the ULC headquarters, sowing levels of confusion which any Discordian would be proud of.
That is, until the sequence came to the attention of the existing UK branch of the Universal Life Church, and someone calling himself the Reverend Dr. Sir Neil Richards DD. It seems the 'serious' ULCUK has attempted to get the satirical site shut down; but at the time of writing, it's still on the net. Of course, some might argue that making the Universal Life Church look ludicrous is like shooting Jesus fish in a barrel... Their web site says:
"The Universal Life Church will ordain anyone that asks without question of faith, for life, without a fee...
The church has two tenets: the absolute right of freedom of religion and to do that which is right. Anything else within the law is allowed...
Each person in the ULC is free to follow any path as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others."
Lawsuits against the ULC have alleged that it itself makes a mockery of religion, ordaining nonexistent people, household pets, and death row inmates--not to mention atheist pranksters. According to the ULC web site, they have a wide range of degrees and religious qualifications available, ranging from study-free doctorates in Divinity to certificates of Sainthood. My Official Pope Card looks comparatively legitimate in comparison. They've even started offering their wares on eBay...
To find out how this bizarre Amway Church came into being, I turned to the excellent New Religious Movements web site, compiled as part of the Sociology 257 course at the University of Virginia. Their page about the ULC tells the story, and concludes:
"There is little evidence that the ULC is interested in any more than playing games with the IRS."
(Check out the New Religious Movements site page about atheism, by the way.)
It's certainly true that US tax laws have ridiculous exemptions for religious organizations. It's also true that I can think of few better ways to force removal of this religious subsidy than to persuade as many people as possible to declare themselves to be tax-exempt churches, until eventually the IRS is forced to tax religious organizations exactly as it taxes secular organizations. I wish I could believe that's really why the ULC's believers have joined, but I have a horrible feeling that most of them take it seriously...
This month's second censorship story achieved rather more press coverage. The furor started when somebody noticed that a book had disappeared from the database of online bookstore amazon.com. The book in question: "A Piece of Blue Sky" by Jon Atack, subtitled "Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed". Given the notoriously litigious nature of the Church of Scientology, it wasn't hard to guess who might have pressured Amazon to drop the book--though the company refused to confirm it. Before too long, the story reached the attention of WIRED news and other online news sites. Amazon started to come under pressure from customers and associates, and doubtless received thousands of e-mailed complaints.
In the interests of journalistic integrity, I should state explicitly that The Internet Infidels are Amazon associates: we get a small payback from Amazon every time someone follows a link from our web site and buys a book, CD or DVD from them. The money helps to cover the cost of this web site--high speed web connections still aren't cheap. Don't worry, though--as an author, I don't personally see any money from the deal; so if I mention a book or movie, it's because I happen to feel it's relevant and/or interesting.
Although the other online bookstores have similar promotional deals, none of them are as generous as Amazon's. So as you can imagine, a lot of soul-searching went on, and some heated discussions ensued amongst the Internet Infidels. We're a non-profit organization, but becoming a heavy-loss-making organization isn't an appealing idea. Fortunately Amazon came to their senses rapidly, and within a few days ZDnet was reporting that sale of the book would resume--once Amazon had worked out how to block it from being sold in the UK.
It turns out that one particular paragraph in the book has been held to be defamatory under UK libel laws. Of course, that doesn't mean it's libelous in the USA; but the Internet makes questions of national sovereignty rather difficult to resolve. Amazon apparently decided it would be easier just to stop selling the book.
Now, this is a US-hosted web site, so you might think I could just quote the paragraph in question so you'd know what the nature of the defamation was. However, would that then make UK Internet Service Providers liable if they continued to allow their customers to read this web site? To add to the confusion, I'm a UK citizen living in the USA, and I don't honestly know which country's libel judgments I have to obey. (I assume the USA's... but maybe both?) What if I don't quote the paragraph or publish it myself, but merely link to an entirely independent site which quotes it? Thorny legal questions, and I've already been threatened with two lawsuits this year so I hope you'll forgive me for wimping out this time. Let's just say that I have read the possibly defamatory paragraph, and take my word for it, it's not that exciting.
So, the book will go back on sale at Amazon. The Internet Infidels will continue to link to Amazon to help cover our costs. The entire story behind the decision has now been reported by WIRED news. A happy ending, yes?
Well, perhaps. An item at news.com suggests that Amazon already had the technology to block sales of the book to the UK; they just decided it was easier to drop it entirely. Worse, research by the Internet Infidels suggests that "A Piece of Blue Sky" is not the only book Amazon has quietly dropped; James Randi's "The Truth about Uri Geller" is also mysteriously absent from their database. We had all better keep a careful eye on Amazon in the future, and make sure they don't forget that giving in to censorship is not the Internet way.
But once again the Church of Scientology failed in its attempts to censor one of its critics, thanks in part to the grassroots organizing power of the Internet. For it really is mindbogglingly difficult to censor the net, a fact which was illustrated by the third net.censorship story this month...
For some time now, Richard Tomlinson has been fighting a one-man battle against his former employers. Nothing too unusual there--except that he was once employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), formerly known as MI6, an organization so secretive that the UK government refused to officially admit that it existed. (MI5 are the "public" spooks.)
Recently, Tomlinson allegedly posted the names of 116 MI6 spies to a web site. I say "allegedly" because he subsequently denied that the web site was anything to do with him, and suggested that it was an attempt to frame him so the UK government would be able to extradite him and shut him up for good. It has even been rumored that the list of names was posted by a rich and famous public figure in the UK--one who is notoriously litigious and has spouted crackpot conspiracy theories about SIS in the past. For obvious reasons, I won't mention his name...
Anyway, the spooks managed to get one of Tomlinson's web sites hosted in Switzerland shut down; but in a familiar pattern, as soon as one site is forced down by threats, two copies pop up somewhere else on the web. When I heard about the story, it took me about five minutes to locate a copy of the site, including the 116 names. I won't link to it, mostly because it will probably have been shut down and moved by the time you read this page; but if you want to look for yourself, I suggest going to Dejanews and looking for the ongoing Usenet discussion about Tomlinson.
The UK government claims that the list threatens the safety of SIS operatives, and also of innocent people mistakenly included in the list. If that's true, the case brings up interesting issues. If the security services of a major industrialized nation can't remove information from the net, in spite of the full cooperation of foreign governments and media corporations, then it's probably safe to conclude that the net is uncensorable. Basically, once something is published on the Internet, if enough people care about keeping it available then it is impossible to un-publish it--even if you are the original author! (Something I have learned to my cost.)
My feeling is that libel laws simply won't work in this new electronic world. If you see a web site publishing something untrue about you, your best bet is to put up a web page arguing your side of the story. The very worst thing you can do is try and get the other site taken down, thereby drawing everyone's attention to it and encouraging dozens of people to put up mirror copies.
Of course, this means that there's now no way to get rid of information which any sane observer would agree is maliciously false. That's why it is more and more important that people learn to be skeptical of what they read. Ironically, the authorities who once encouraged people to have a naïve faith in them, now find that they must teach people to be skeptical about what they read. The "believe what you are told" meme has been turned around and used against those who once helped to spread it.
If you're interested in more discussion of this topic, I can thoroughly recommend The Freedom Forum web site. In particular, Jon Katz continues to write thought-provoking articles about the sociological and legal implications of new media. I don't always agree with him, but he certainly has more awareness of how the net works than some religions I could mention...
mathew
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Last updated: Wednesday, 30-Nov-2005 17:06:10 CST
