Scientology Lawyer Promises to Continue "Appropriate Action"
April 17th, 2002 by Don Marti in
We asked Scientology attorney Helena Kobrin if Google's new policy of making DMCA takedown letters public and the resulting boost to the Google standings of Scientology critic site Xenu.net would affect her firm's decision to send future takedown letters. Here is her answer:
Dear Mr. Marti,
I am somewhat surprised by your questions. I am an intellectual property attorney, and my job is to protect my clients' rights in their copyrighted works and their trademarks. When we learn of infringements to those rights, we take appropriate actions to protect them by writing to the infringer and, if a service provider is involved, to the service provider. We take follow-up actions as needed.
Frankly, this is the simplicity of what we do. It is the same thing that is done by all intellectual property attorneys in protecting their clients' rights. It has nothing to do with search engines or criticism. Will we stop doing our jobs because someone disagrees or puts our letters on the Internet? No more so than I would stop in going after someone who breached a contract or would fail to prosecute a murderer, a thief, or an embezzler if I were a prosecutor or would back off on stopping someone from dumping toxic waste if I were an environmental attorney merely because someone criticized my actions.
Sincerely,Helena Kobrin
Don Marti is technical editor of Linux Journal.
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Re: Scientology Lawyer Promises to Continue
On May 3rd, 2002 Anonymous says:
Helena Kobrin is just another cultie. Anything she says and anything she does is soley for the purpose of attacking and destroying critics of her cult and subverting the social structure of the US and other nations to put the Nazi-esque Scientology regime in control. Anytime you hear some official statement from a scientologist just imagine that you are listening to the devil. The devil always lies, if not in fact then at least in purpose because anytime the devil does tell the truth it is to forward an evil goal. Scientology is exactly the same. This woman is a plague upon the legal system. She and her buddy Kendrick Moxon need to be disbarred for unethical behavior. They follow Hubbard's policy of filing harassment lawsuits, which is solid grounds for disbarment all by itself. I hope I live to see the day when Miscavige and the rest of those amoral criminal thugs are finally brought to justice. Then they can sit in a cage for a change and Kobrin and Moxon can go flip burgers for a living.
Lee
Re: Scientology Lawyer Promises to Continue
On April 28th, 2002 Anonymous says:
If she really meant what she said, she would have taken www.xenu.net to court in Norway for copyright infringement long ago. But $cientology hasnt, because they dont have a case.
Re: Scientology Lawyer Promises to Continue
On April 28th, 2002 Anonymous says:
> No more so than I would stop in going after ... a murderer,
Does the name LISA MCPHERSON mean anything to her?
http://www.xenu.net/archive/deaths/
It's crowded at the moral high ground
On April 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Everybody wants to be thought of as the good guy, so they rationalise their actions. If this means classifying the people you're attacking as equivalent to perpetrators of murder and toxic-waste dumping, in order to forget the fact you're attacking them on behalf of brainwashing, censorious, violent s***** like the Church of Scientology, then so be it, it seems.
(Yes, I fully realise the irony of my colourful depiction of the CoS above. However, the difference is: the CoS *is* as I described, whereas Kobrin likes to think of Google as *equivalent to* murderers and waste-dumpers to morally vindicate her actions.)
Re: It's crowded at the moral high ground
On April 29th, 2002 Anonymous says:
A trademark holder has a legal obligation to protect their Trademarks and Service Marks, as well as their copyrights. What the Church of Scientology is doing is protecting what they legally own. Anyone who illegally utilises their intellectual property is breaking the law, and the Church of Scientology lawyers would be seriously remiss in their duties and obligations if they did not take appropriate legal actions to protect the interests of their client.
This is not solely about the Church of Scientology but the rights of the owners of intellectual properties to be protected by the appropriate laws of the land.
Re: It's crowded at the moral high ground
On April 29th, 2002 Anonymous says:
This is not solely about the Church of Scientology but the rights of the owners of intellectual properties to be protected by the appropriate laws of the land.
Is a trademark/IP issue or are they just using a convenient law to beat up on their critics? Unfortunately, they have a long history of doing the later...
LinuxToday comments auto-censorship braindead
On April 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Dear oh dear. The above comment contained the word "s.c.u.m" without the dots, which the LT comment system decided to render as "s*****". Please, aren't we going a stupidly bit too far in attempting not to offend?
If you must censor, please let it be by a human instead of a braindead automatic script that has no idea of context. Blanking out words doesn't stop an offensive message from offending. Better yet, don't make any pretense of censorship and make it clear that you're not responsible for readers' comments.
mostly fixed
On April 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
You fixed the stuff, but the description still has quotes in it.:
Scientology expos
D'oh!
On April 17th, 2002 scott (not verified) says:
That should be fixed too. E-mail me if anything else pops up.
Scott
scott@ssc.com
ps: Probably not worth the wrath, but that is one creeepy letter.
Headline breaks RSS feed
On April 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
FYI, this story and the story preceding it have quotes in the title. Your rss feed does not change them to " and thus breaks a lot of parsers. You might wanna fix that.
Cheers,
Sam
Re: Headline breaks RSS feed
On April 17th, 2002 scott (not verified) says:
Good to know. Thanks.
This still isn't fixed....
On April 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
You cleaned up the title area, but not the description area.
Re: This still isn't fixed....
On April 18th, 2002 scott (not verified) says:
It sure looks fixed to me. I just checked the news.rss file and everything looks to be converted to "
Drop me an e-mail if you're still having trouble, I'd rather not drag it out in the comments of an article. ;)
Scott
scott@ssc.com
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