Scientology --- Blocking the Wayback Machine: Why you should care

Blocking the Wayback Machine: Why you should care

As barb's comment in another thread suggests, one of the reasons the Wayback Machine's blocking of some critical web sites has yet to generate much response is because people aren't familiar with it, its capabilities, and it's importance. Indeed, I only learned about it a few weeks ago.

This is my attempt to give you a brief overview of the Internet Archive (aka archive.org), the Wayback Machine, and the issues involved. Before I say much more, try the fun example of what the Wayback Machine can do for you.

TRY THE WAYBACK MACHINE

Let's say you wanted some information that you recall was available on Sten Arne's web page. If you try to go to that page, you'll get a 404. Go ahead, try it:

http://www.users.wineasy.se/noname/index.htm

Now instead, go to http://www.archive.org and paste...

www.users.wineasy.se/noname/index.htm

...into the Wayback Machine window (not the 'Search' window) in the middle of the page. If it's working (it seems to have had some reliability problems) you'll get a list of dates when Sten Arne's page was grabbed by archive.org. Pick one (say June 20, 2000) and there you'll see the page as it was on that date in all it's glory. Better still, the links (many? some? all?) also work.

Because his page was captured multiple times, you can actually view it as it developed over the years as well. Sten Arne's work lives on, even if he's walked away from the topic.

Cool, huh?

ABOUT INTERNET ARCHIVE (aka archive.org)

You can find a page that describes the Internet Archive at

http://webdev.archive.org/about/about.php

To quote from the page:

"...without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. And paradoxically, with the explosion of the Internet, we live in what Danny Hillis has referred to as our "digital dark age."

The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet - a new medium with major historical significance - and other "born-digital"

materials from disappearing into the past..."

SOME WAYS TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS OF WHAT IS GOING ON

-- There is a risk that information like www.xenu.net will "disappear into the past." If Andreas decided tomorrow to do the same thing as Sten Arne, you and future researchers wouldn't be able to find www.xenu.net in the Wayback Machine. Because someone, not Andreas, caused archive.org to block that information.

-- Imagine if the COS contacted the Google Usenet Archive and had every post Keith Henson made to ars over the years blocked, or had every one of YOUR posts blocked. I see the Internet Archive as roughly the web page equivalent of the Usenet Archive.

-- Andreas noticed that his site had been blocked. But how many sites were blocked that the owners have yet to notice? And they may never notice: they may have passed away or moved on to other issues.

If they no longer read ars, how would they know? Apparently archive.org didn't bother to notify the site owners they were blocking their sites. Adding to the insult, archive.org's return message says that xenu.net was blocked at the site owner's request. Andreas made no such request.

-- Put another way: except for the unknown party who made the request, no one outside of archive.org knows the full list of which Scn-critical sites were blocked.

-- In the Google issue, the COS used a combination of the DMCA and bluster to bamboozle Google. The internet community created enough noise and analysis to get Google to reevaluate their position and come to a reasonable solution. On the other hand, the people at archive.org have apparently not even responded to Andreas's requests - or anyone else's - for information about why his and other critical sites were blocked.

-- What library of merit would remove a book from its shelves because of a complaint by a user? Doesn't the Internet Archive's behavior affect their credibility as a research source? Isn't it counter to their stated purpose?

-- What's to keep archive.org from rolling over on future requests for blocking? Will the requester be emboldened to expand its blocking further if there is no reaction?

SOME OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

-- Because of the lack of information from archive.org, we don't really know what is going on. The similarities to the Google issue are hard to ignore, however.

-- I don't know all the ins and outs of how the Internet Archive works; sites like xenu.net are hopefully still preserved by archive.org, and certain researchers may still have access to the blocked pages.

--Like Google, archive.org allows individuals to have their own material removed. I don't see anything wrong with that.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

-- Contact the usual media that are interested in these issues: such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( http://www.eff.org ) Slashdot ( http://www.slashdot.org ) etc.

-- Express your concerns directly to archive.org ( mailto:info@archive.org ) I also note that they have a forum on their web page ( http://www.archive.org ). While the messages there are read, they are rarely responded to.

CONCLUSION

The power to cover up history is the power to change it. Don't let those who use '1984' as their guide control what future generations will know of what happened in the critical Scientology movement in the early days of the internet.

From: Hartley Patterson <hpttrsn@daisy.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Blocking the Wayback Machine: Why you should care
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 18:49:10 +0100
Organization: News from Bree
Message-ID: <MPG.17f6c17552f54c23989a54@news.freeserve.net>

Bedford McIntosh:

> As barb's comment in another thread suggests, one of the reasons the
> Wayback Machine's blocking of some critical web sites has yet to
> generate much response is because people aren't familiar with it, its
> capabilities, and it's importance. Indeed, I only learned about it a
> few weeks ago.

Goodness. I typed in my URL and there it was not. So I wrote them:

On typing the URL of my website into your Search facility I get

----------------------- Blocked Site Error.

Per the request of the site owner, http://www.daisy.freeserve.co.uk 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.

------------------------

This is untrue - I have never contacted you. I have no problems with my site being archived! I would be grateful if you would remove this reference from your database.

If you have the original request asking that the site be blocked, I'd be interested to see it. The ownership of this website can be confirmed with my ISP, Freeserve.

It has come to my attention that a number of other websites containing material critical of the Church of Scientology have been blocked in this way. You may have read of the recent problem Google had with this organisation, which attempted to remove links to a website from Google using the DMCA. Google acted promptly to counter this threat.

In your case however there is no such problem - my website has been blocked either in error or maliciously. It was recently vetted by a lawyer representing the Church and presently contains no material it objects to on legal grounds.

There seems to me to be a simple means of checking requests to remove websites, and that is to Email the address on the website (most sites have a contact address) asking for confirmation. Perhaps you should consider doing so in future.

> -- Contact the usual media that are interested in these issues: such
> as the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( http://www.eff.org ) Slashdot
> ( http://www.slashdot.org ) etc.

If I get no reply, I'll do that.

-- "I think of my beautiful city in flames"

http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk A medieval spreadsheet, enturbulating entheta and how to outrun Thread.

From: plockton@deltanet.com (Bedford McIntosh)
Subject: The Wayback Machine speaks
Date: 23 Sep 2002 17:32:09 -0700
Message-ID: <c5757860.0209231632.c3fef57@posting.google.com>

(Posted on their own "web" forum found at the bottom of www.archive.org, by "Jeff.") OK, so now what?

The Internet Archive archives data that is publicly available to provide services, such as the Wayback Machine, that are useful to researchers, historians and scholars.

While we endeavor to provide as a complete a record of the Web as possible, we are a small, non-profit, largely volunteer organization with limited resources.

While we collect publicly available Internet documents, sometimes authors and publishers express a desire for their documents not to be included in the Wayback Machine (by tagging a file for robot exclusion or by contacting us or the original crawler group). If the author or publisher of some part of the Archive does not want his or her work in the Wayback Machine, then we may remove that portion from Wayback Machine without notice.

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.

The library we are building will help future historians, researchers, and scholars, but we do not see this as the only digital library researchers will use. We encourage others to create digital archives of materials they find of value.

Thanks for your continued interest in and support of the Internet Archive.

From: janeebislis@hotmail.com (Praxis)
Subject: Net archive silences Scientology critic - CNET
Date: 24 Sep 2002 14:19:09 -0700
Message-ID: <80ee9418.0209241319.564ad15b@posting.google.com>

From http://news.com.com/2100-1023-959236.html

"Net archive silences Scientology critic By Lisa M. Bowman Staff Writer CNET News.com September 24, 2002, 1:05 PM PT

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.

A representative for the Church of Scientology could not immediately be reached for comment.

Under certain provisions of U.S. copyright law, site operators can fight such requests if they think legitimate material is being blocked. However, Heldal-Lund said he wouldn't challenge the decision because the action would put him under U.S. jurisdiction.

Scientologists have taken a notoriously heavy-handed approach to squelching critical Web sites, pressuring site operators, ISPs (Internet service providers), and even Internet heavyweights such as Google into removing links to Web pages.

Most often, Scientology lawyers claim copyrights on materials excerpted from their site, material they are fiercely protective of because members must pay to access it. Many site operators who receive such threatening letters immediately remove the material without questioning whether the pages actually violate copyrights.

In 1999, Amazon.com removed, but later restored, links to a book critical of Scientology.

Most recently, Google responded to threatening letters from Scientology lawyers earlier this year by taking down links to the Xenu site. However, the company reinstated links to the site's front page under pressure from free-speech advocates. The incident prompted Google to revisit its takedown policy. Now it sends copies of such letters to the ChillingEffects.org site, a site run by civil liberties groups designed to educate people about their free-speech rights. "

Subject: open letter to ARCHIVE.ORG
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
From: dst@cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky)
Message-ID: <3d90fae0$1@news2.lightlink.com>
Date: 24 Sep 2002 19:53:04 -0400

The following open letter was sent today to info@archive.org and various media outlets.

================================================================

As the owners of SlatkinFraud.com, one of the websites that has been blocked completely from the Internet Archive, we were left puzzled and disturbed by the recent explanation provided by archive.org for our site's omission.

While we understand that the organization behind the Wayback Machine does not want to unwittingly contribute to copyright infringement, we are distressed by the way in which the removal of our site was conducted, and the lack of feedback that we received from archive.org when we questioned this decision earlier this year.

When a Wayback Machine user attempts to access the archived version of SlatkinFraud.com, they are instead provided with a misleading message claiming that the 'site owners' requested that it not be included in the archive. This is wholly untrue, and entirely in contradiction to the actual views of the website owners in question, who would very much like to see our site become part of the Internet Archive. The material contained within SlatkinFraud.com is wholly owned and maintained by its site owners.

Unfortunately, as has become clear in recent days, SlatkinFraud.com is not the only site that has been summarily removed from the Archive based on complaints from the Church of Scientology. In the explanation recently provided by archive.org, the writer notes that the Church "asserted ownership" of an unknown quantity of material that was, at the time, available through the Wayback Machine archives. The maintainers of archive.org, however, have apparently made no effort whatsoever to inform site owners of these complaints lodged against their material, and in fact, until now, had not even replied to direct questions regarding the removal of certain sites when asked by the site owners in question.

This is clearly not an acceptable system for determining what sites or material should be archived by the Wayback Machine, since it does not adhere to one of the main provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: the counter-notification process.

Under the DMCA, the owner of a site that has been alleged to contain infringing material has the right to challenge that claim via a counternotification letter to the hosting ISP if he or she believes that the material in question does not infringe on the copyright in question. After receiving this counter-notification from the user, the ISP is obliged to replace any files that were temporarily removed pending the complaint, at which point the original complainant must either initiate formal legal action against the owner of the site, or drop the matter entirely.

This system provides an important check to the sometimes perilous balance between the rights of copyright owners, and those of users. By formalizing the process, and allowing a response from the individual responsible for the alleged infringement, it frees the hosting company from the annoyance of dealing with frivolous claims.

A similar situation that arose resulted from similar complaints made by Church of Scientology lawyers about certain listings on the popular search engine Google. These complaints initially resulted in the wholesale removal of several Scientology-related sites from the Google database. Once this omission was discovered, the decision taken by Google to remove the sites without notice led to an outcry from its users. In fact, on closer examination of the complaints from Scientology, it became immediately obvious that the Church's lawyers were acting in bad faith by deliberately mixing trademark and copyright complaints, even though trademark complaints are not covered under the DMCA at all.

The ensuing barrage of criticism and media coverage both national and international forced Google to reconsider its decision. After several days, the company replaced the links in question, and agreed to make public any further DMCA complaints in cooperation with Chilling Effects, a non-profit website dedicated to preventing abuse of existing copyright law. This solution was welcomed by Google users, who had felt betrayed not only by the removal itself, but by the lack of disclosure on the part of Google regarding the initial complaints.

The explanation offered by the Internet Archive does not mention whether the original complaints received from the Church of Scientology were made under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Such information would be helpful to site owners such as ourselves, as it would assist us in determining whether a complaint is justified, and remove any infringing material on our own volition.

Assuming that it was, in fact, a DMCA request, it would serve archive.org well to follow the same procedure as that eventually and successfully - - adopted by Google, and make every effort to inform site owners of such complaints in a timely manner. This could be done through a simple email alert system that would inform the site owner that a complaint had been made, or through a similar policy to that of Google, and publicizing the letters, either on the archive.org website itself or through an interested third party such as Chilling Effects.

This would allow the site owners to decide whether or not to issue a counter-notification, and relieve the Internet Archive of any concerns over contributory liability that may have played a role in its decision to remove the material without warning. It would also discourage copyright owners from making frivolous complaints about material that is obviously protected by fair use, since the process requires that formal legal action be taken within thirty days of receiving the counter notification letter.

Should archive.org decide not to re-list a site within the Wayback Machine at this point, which is, of course, its right, it should also refrain from suggesting that this was at the request of the site owner, and instead, explain its own concerns over potential infringement.

Finally, given the enormity of the Internet Archive project, and the benefits that it has provided, and, we hope, will continue to provide to the online community, it is essential for the Library maintainers to be open and transparent about the methodology used in selecting sites to be archived. Removing sites from the archive in a clandestine fashion, as dictated by the current policy, will only lead to increased concern that the Archive itself is rewriting the Internet history that it seeks to chronicle.

The Internet Archive's stated commitment is to provide a useful, wide-ranging resource for researchers, historians and scholars. It is surely in part due to such an admirable mandate that the Internet Archive has benefited from contributions from sponsors such as Alexa Internet, AT&T, Compaq and Xerox PARC, not to mention many individual supporters who believe in the idea of an Internet history that is freely accessible to all. It is doubtful that these supporters would want to see this ambitious initiative tainted by the suggestion that the integrity of the archive itself has been corrupted by those who would misuse copyright and trademark laws to censor views with which they disagree. The risk of such silent, selective discrimination against protected speech is great; the power to prevent such abuses by making all information related to such attempts to discriminate will always be greater.

Clearly, the best course of action is for the Internet Archive to adopt policy that is not only transparent, but dedicated to protecting not only its own interests, but those of copyright owners, site creators and, of course, the thousands of individuals who use the Wayback Machine and other Internet Archive services on a daily basis. On balance, the approach taken by Google, modified appropriately for the particular situation faced by the Internet Archive, would seem to be an excellent roadmap for the Internet Archive to follow.

Kady O'Malley, Dave Touretzky, and Scott Pilutik

Owners of SlatkinFraud.com

From: "Bat Child (Sue M.)" <batchild1@cox.net>
Subject: NY Times, 9/24/2002: Net archive silences Scientology critic
Organization: Knights of Xemu
Message-ID: <qen3pukn7r9mediult54vca696o79bhmf3@4ax.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 15:56:30 GMT

Found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1023-959236.html

====================

Net archive silences Scientology critic Lisa M. Bowman, Staff Writer, News.com

Buckling under pressure from the Church of Scientology, the Internet Archive has removed a church critic's Web site from its system.

"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 for the Church of Scientology could not immediately be reached for comment.

In 1999, Amazon.com removed, but later restored, links to a book critical of Scientology.

====================

http://members.cox.net/batchild1 http://members.cox.net/scorseseinfo

From: EuroCult Report <german_scn_news@hotmail.com>
Subject: Information blockade underway
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 08:03:17 -0400
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020927080005.115A-100000@darkstar.zippy>

On September 25, 2002, Russian compulenta news reported information to the following effect:

Web Archive removes pages that criticize the Scientology cult

As reported by Cnet News (www.news.com), copies of pages saved in the library of Internet Archive web pages (www.archive.org) that contained criticism of the Scientology movement have been removed.

The Internet Archive Project got underway in 1996 and since that time has been regularly saving copies of web pages from a multitude of sites and putting them up for public access. They also kept copies of pages from the xenu.net site, which provides critical articles about Scientology.

Now, however, these pages are not accessible. A search for xenu.net in the Internet Archive yields that the archive pages were removed at the owner's request.

According to Cnet's information, the owner of the pages, Andreas Heldal-Lund, asserts that he never demanded removal of copies of his pages from the Internet Archive. As verified by representatives of the archive, access to the cached version of xenu.net was closed at the demand of the Church of Scientology (www.scientology.org). Scientology claims that xenu.net maintains material whose publication rights belong to the church.

It should be mentioned that this is not the first time Scientology has tried to suppress distribution of criticism about itself one way or the other. In March of this year, the Church of Scientology obtained the removal of references to xenu.net from the Google search system.

[The above was also reported by the Heise news agency, among others, in Germany.]

--- Similarity of words between the above and the original article, including quotations, is usually, but not always, a coincidental by-product of paraphrasing - for non-commercial use only - visit http://cisar.org

From: HR-Defense@aol.com (Human Rights Defense (ShyDavid))
Subject: Net archive silences Scientology critics
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 07:11:32 GMT
Organization: -NONE-
Message-ID: <3d96a79e@news2.lightlink.com>

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-959236.html?tag=cd_mh

Net archive silences Scientology critic

By Lisa M. Bowman Staff Writer CNET News.com September 24, 2002, 1:05 PM PT

Buckling under pressure from the Church[sic] of Scientology, the Internet Archive has removed a church[sic] critic's Web site from its system.

However, Xenu.net operator Andreas Heldal-Lund said he never made any such request. Heldal-Lund, a Norwegian businessman and longtime church[sic] 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[sic] of Scientology [falsely] "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[sic] of Scientology documents, but also the entire Xenu.net site, which contains pages crafted entirely by Heldal-Lund.

A representative for the Church[sic] of Scientology could not immediately be reached for comment.

jurisdiction.

In 1999, Amazon.com removed, but later restored, links to a book critical of Scientology.

---- Crashing sucks.

http://coyotewicca.org

From: Rod Keller <rkeller@unix01.voicenet.com>
Subject: The Times: Wayback Machine
Message-ID: <3%im9.391$Rk3.36509@news3.voicenet.com>
Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:16:15 GMT

Technobabble A net gag for scientology critics The Times October 01, 2002 by DAVID ROWAN http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-432274,00.html

FORGET THAT APHORISM about history being written by the victors. 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."

Although the Wayback Machine receives funding from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, its day-to-day running depends on volunteers. 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 (indeed, today, Xenu.net is the second site Google suggests if you search for "Scientology"). 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.

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