"Scientology posts lead 'Net activists to mull limiting cherished free speech"

by Kevin Coughlin Advocates of free speech on the Internet may be facing their toughest foe: Free speech itself.

Net activists claim that Church of Scientology members are bombarding a popular computer bulletin board with thousands of generic, pro-Church[sic] messages to drown out any critical opinions.

In argot of the Internet it's called "vertical spamming," and it has some Netizens so worried that they're even suggesting calling in the FBI - an astounding prospect, given the vehement opposition of many Internet groups to any government regulation of the global computer network.

"Free speech is free speech when it's not disruptive of other free speech. What we're seeing is not free speech, but the abuse of free speech," said Jon Noring, a long-time Netwatcher from Utah.

Noring fears other groups could adopt the Scientology strategy to stifle the unfettered, no-holds-barred talk that has characterized the Internet. He is circulating an electronic petition to protest what he feels is at best a violation of Internet etiquette, and at worst a disruption of electronic data communications that he thinks may violate federal law. "It's like ignoring Robert's Rules of Order and going into a public meeting with bullhorns," he said of the spamming that he says began on May 19 [1996].

Church[sic] of Scientology spokeswoman Debbie Blair yesterday defended members' rights to free cyber-speech, while denying any organized effort to swamp the Internet. "That's never been condoned by the Church[sic]," she said.

"It's only a few hypocrites that would complain," a Church[sic] statement said. "When they express themselves ... no matter how vile or hateful their postings are, we acknowledge their right to say what they want ... There has been so much false information on (the bulletin board) that no one should complain about the truth being posted."

The Church[sic] of Scientology is based on the philosophy of the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It counts among its members Hollywood personalities John Travolta, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley and Chick Corea. The Church[sic] maintains that certain sacred[sic] texts may be revealed only to a select few members. It has sued the Washington Post, several "apostate[sic] infringers" from the Internet's alt.religion.scientology newsgroup and a number of Internet service providers for publishing such tracts without permission. Preliminary court rulings generally have sided with the Church[sic].

David Post, co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute at the Georgetown University Law School, said he knows of no laws prohibiting spamming. But any organized effort to discourage use of a popular bulletin board "is a threat to free discourse on the Net," said Post.

Noring and another Internet activist, Ron Newman, said thousands of pro-Church[sic] postings began flooding the popular Usenet discussion group alt.religion.scientology on May 19.

Usenet is the portion of the Internet dominated by electronic bulletin boards where people exchange comments and replies on virtually every subject imaginable.

A Scientology critic started the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup in 1991. The newsgroup mushroomed into one of the Internet's hottest, with up to 2,700 weekly postings from both defenders and attackers of the Scientology movement. At one point, the church[sic] tried to shut the newsgroup down by persuading data carriers not to carry it. Those efforts failed.

Many of the recent postings begin in similar fashion: "Many falsehoods and inaccurate statements regarding several aspects of the religion[sic] of Scientology have been observed on a.r.s...."

Noring said pro-Scientology postings appear to be coming from forged or bogus e-mail accounts.

Spamming itself is not new. An Arizona lawyer outraged the Internet community in 1994 by sending thousands of electronic ads randomly across the Internet. (In Net lingo, this was a _horizontal_ spamming, spread across a wide swath. A _vertical_ spamming concentrates on a specific bulletin board or newsgroup.)

The lawyer's Internet service company crashed under the deluge of electronic complaints, or _flames_, and tossed the lawyer off its network.

Noring said e-mail leaked by former Scientologists indicates Church[sic] members looked upon spamming as a propaganda tool two years ago [1994].

Responding to the alt.religion.scientology spammers has been difficult, Noring said, because they present a moving target.

According to Noring, who runs an electronic publishing business, the spammers change Internet service providers frequently and sometimes use "anonymous remailers," third-party companies that strip identifying information off messages before relaying them.

The Scientology battles at times have assumed a bizarre, spy vs. spy quality.

Late in 1994, unknown culprits began forging cancel commands that made postings vanish from the Scientology newsgroup, sometimes with the statement "canceled because of copyright infringement." The Church[sic] has seized computers from the home of a former member and has forced a Finnish remailing service to cough up the name of a user.

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