The Church of Scientology

Although the slander laws that were set forth in the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case apply to the digital media the issue becomes much more complex. First there are more than just the major news makers that have a right to publish on the internet there are an extraordinary amount of blogers and other media friendly amateurs that make the works available to the public. There is no way to sift through all that information and overabundance of sites to make certain that they are complying with the law. Another issue is that not all of these sites are created by American composers. The authors of many blogs are international and are not held to the same restrictions as the American press. Yet they can publish commentary on situations and people from the United States and Americans have access to their works. An additional issue is the question of who should ultimately be held responsible for what people find on the internet; the search engine that guided you to that site or the author of the site itself.

A perfect example of this conundrum is when in March of 2002 the Church of Scientology sent complaints to Google for bring up links to anti-Scientology websites when searching for the keyword “Scientology.” They “cited the Digital Millennium Act, a 1998 law that can make it illegal to link to copyright-infringing material”[1] to persuade Google to sever these links. The Digital Millennium Act was written to prevent Internet pirates or hackers from breaking down firewalls and other security measures and stealing copies of copyrighted material[2]. This law was passed on October 28, 1998 by the 105^th Congress along with a few other technology bills[3]. Under the threat of being sued for aiding copyright infringement Google pulled the links to the Norwegian based website, www.xenu.net which can not be held accountable to United States copyright act, but is however fully within its rights under the international copyright laws[4].

Google severing these links had freedom of speech advocates up in arms. This becomes a sticky situation for an innocent company that links people to over two billion websites that they have absolutely no control over. With the amount of pages that are being added to the net everyday it would be impossible for a company to sift though every one of them. Google soon reanimated the links to this website. After this event Google set up a policy in which if they had to remove a site because of complaints they would put a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that would direct the searcher to a site where the complaint would be logged.[5] Since this time Google has been forced to hire a small army of lawyers to combat challenges such as these with a good success rate. They are now known for being in the forefront for fighting for intellectual property rights and priding itself on combating all lawsuits against them quickly and efficiently[6].

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[1] Gallagher, David. "Technology Briefing: Google Removes Anti-Scientology Links." New York Times 22 Mar. 2002, sec. C: 4. ProQuest. University of Oregon Library, Eugene. 29 Jan. 2008.
[2] Clausing, Jeri. "Technology Bills Languish as Congress Races for Exit." New York Times 12 Oct. 1998, sec. C: 2. ProQuest. University of Oregon Library, Eugene. 29 Jan. 2008.
[3] “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” 28 Oct. 1998. www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf. 29 Jan. 2008
[4] Gallagher, David. "New Economy: a Copyright Dispute with the Church of Scientology is Forcing Google to Do Some Creative Linking." New York Times 22 Apr. 2002, sec. C: 4. ProQuest. University of Oregon Library, Eugene. 29 Jan. 2008.
[5] Ibid
[6] Hafner, Katie. "We're Google, So Sue Us." New York Times 23 Oct. 2006. 29 Jan. 2008.