If you’re the kind of sci-fi fanatic who has to see every new futuristic action movie no matter how crummy it is — and I come pretty close to that category myself — then of course you’ll check out “Battlefield Earth” regardless of how many cheap jokes critics crack at its expense. The action sequences are acceptable in a generic, Sci-Fi Network way and the Psychlo costumes at least look cool. But don’t say you weren’t warned.

I imagine the novel on which the movie is based, by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is ludicrous trash (although I haven’t read it and have no intention of doing so), but I doubt it’s as incoherent, as hysterical or as flat-out gratingly loud as Christian’s movie. For one thing, an author can’t subject you to shot after shot photographed at wobbly, off-center angles for no particular reason, weigh every action sequence down with super-slo-mo in lame imitation of “The Matrix” or end every single scene with a vertical wipe.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that “Battlefield Earth” was directed by a software program that absorbed and reprocessed the standard sci-fi elements of the past 30 years: grimy spaceships, alien overlords, the human race reverting to barbarism, someone reading the Declaration of Independence and making sense of it. Sure, Christian has that luxuriant coif and an illustrious risumi (he was art director on “Alien”), but how can we be sure he’s not a hologram or a CIA personality graft?

Christian has supposedly directed eight other films. Now, I pride myself on my appetite for trash culture, and I’m damned if I’ve so much as heard of a single one of them. Come on now: “Masterminds” with Patrick Stewart? “Underworld” with Denis Leary and Joe Mantegna? “Nostradamus” with F. Murray Abraham and Rutger Hauer? Those don’t exist; they were invented to sound vaguely plausible, like something you might have noticed on the USA Network’s schedule one night, and planted on the Internet Movie Database after the fact. If you believe you have seen them, can you prove your memories were not implanted by an alien race from the 31st century?

OK, maybe those Scientology mind-control rays have affected my judgment after all. The first 20 minutes or so of “Battlefield Earth” are quite enjoyable, if you have a weakness for the cheapo decrepit future envisioned by the “Planet of the Apes” series. Jonnie and sultry babe Chrissie (Sabine Karsenti) live in a primitive human settlement high in the mountains, where they were driven after humanity was abandoned by the gods, as their legends tell them, and demons came from the skies to conquer the world. Pepper, a Canadian actor who’s had supporting roles in “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Green Mile,” is well cast as a hooting, growling, half-wild man; with his narrow, pointed face framed by all that stringy hair, he looks like he’s part wolverine.

When Jonnie leaves the mountains to explore the truth behind the legends for himself, he finds that hoariest of post-apocalyptic clichis, a ruined 21st century (or so) city that for some reason has not disappeared or been buried over the course of 1,000 years. (Does anybody besides me think that an enormous amount of science fiction derives from Stephen Vincent Benit’s short story “By the Waters of Babylon”?) As Jonnie stands gazing at an abandoned automobile, another hunter-gatherer type tells him about the gods who drove chariots to and from caves with golden arches.

This is typical of the efforts at humor in Corey Mandell’s screenplay; “Battlefield Earth” wants to strike an occasional note of the kind of self-mockery that worked so well in “The Matrix.” (Keanu Reeves: “I know kung fu!”) But the Wachowski brothers had complete confidence in the imaginative universe they’d created, which enabled them to poke fun here and there without undermining their narrative. Christian never clearly establishes a tone for “Battlefield Earth,” so violating it only furthers the sense that the whole film is a murky, addled mess.

Soon enough, Jonnie is captured by the Psychlos, who have ruled the planet since conquering it in a nine-minute onslaught a millennium earlier. All I can say about that is, if we were overrun by these quarrelsome bozos with their rotten teeth, platform shoes, Peter Tosh wigs and samurai armor, it doesn’t say much for human intelligence or fortitude. As for Travolta’s performance as Terl, the Psychlo head of security, he and Joaquin Phoenix (from “Gladiator”) should be nominated for a special Academy Award: best impersonation of Liberace in an evil starring role.

Travolta is one of the producers of “Battlefield Earth” and is a well-known adherent of Hubbard’s Scientology teachings, but he’s not doing his late mentor any favors by exposing his own weaknesses as an actor this way. By the time the final credits rolled, two guys behind me were performing loud imitations of Terl’s Snidely Whiplash villain cackle, reducing the rest of the audience to hopeless giggling.

Seeing that Jonnie is unusually intelligent for a barbaric man-animal, Terl decides to use a magic machine to teach him all about Psychlo language and technology, with all of human science and history thrown in. (Yes, another “Matrix” ripoff.) Terl, it seems, is a poor manager and a bad guy even as Psychlos go; he hopes not only to loot and pillage all of Earth’s remaining riches but to defraud the Psychlos’ ruling Corporation along the way. “Once we’ve finished mining out this miserable planet,” he announces, virtually drooling, “let’s do the universe a favor and exterminate the lot of them!”

Next Terl sends Jonnie and a group of other humans off to the mountains to mine gold with no supervision whatsoever, so they have lots of time to cram for math exams and plot their uprising. I guess we’re supposed to admire the humans’ pluck and resourcefulness — once Terl has carefully laid the groundwork for their rebellion — but the script takes them straight from studying the equilateral triangle to unearthing some old-school human military technology that was supposedly useless the first time around. No, they aren’t transformed into kick-ass superheroes by finding an old copy of “Dianetics,” but that might have made more sense.

Many questions go unanswered. If the Psychlos are so damn smart, how come they never learned the humans’ language? (If nothing else, the textbooks on dentistry might have been helpful.) Why are they vulnerable to a rebellion by a few dozen “Easy Rider” freakazoids with centuries-old jet fighters? What the hell is going on in all the incomprehensibly edited, computer-graphics-clogged and impenetrably dark action sequences? And what’s that green stuff the humans eat? Guacamole? Vichysoisse? Rotten oatmeal?

It’s tough to find anything like a silver lining here; Forest Whitaker does his agreeably growly bit as Terl’s assistant and Kelly Preston briefly enlivens matters as a babealicious Psychlo vixen. In the larger scheme of things, no crimes were committed here; next summer, after you’ve worn out your DVDs of “Wing Commander” and the “Mortal Kombat” movies, you might rent this and decide it’s not the worst movie you’ve ever seen. It probably won’t convert you to Scientology, but you might pick up some hair tips.

“We already have a system in place to monitor this problem. We adhere to the laws of the country where we ship,” says Books.com marketing director Jack Bashian. The Cleveland company checks each order to see if the ISBN (or product code number) for an ordered book is kosher in the country to which the customer has asked to have it shipped. If it’s a prohibited title, the book doesn’t fly. This rule applies to “Mein Kampf,” but also to Kitty Kelley’s 1997 exposi of the British monarchy, “The Royals,” which is banned as libelous in the U.K.

Powell’s Books of Portland, Ore., takes a different approach. “We have a self-policing policy,” Powell’s marketing director, Kanth Gopalpur, told Salon Books. “We don’t sell books that instruct people on how they can cause physical harm to others, such as ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’ or the ‘Hit Man’ book.”

But “hate books” have a little more Lebensraum on Powell’s shelves. “Someone told me last week that we shipped a bunch of books to Germany glorifying the SS,” Gopalpur said. So while German extremists can’t buy their books from the Internet’s biggest vendors, they can find them if they dig a little deeper.

Over the last year, two other controversial books have run into difficulties with online sales. The U.S.-published “The Committee: Political Assassination in Ireland” by Sean McPhilemy was banished from Amazon.co.uk’s catalog. The book, which had been one of the site’s bestsellers in Britain, alleges that Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Irish Protestant David Trimble was a member of a secret group behind terrorist activities against Irish Catholics. (Trimble is suing Amazon.co.uk for $100 million, and his lawyers have sent threatening letters to Barnesandnoble.com, which continues to sell the book). Amazon.co.uk also dropped “A Piece of Blue Sky,” a book that criticizes the Church of Scientology, when an English court ruled that it was libelous.

In March, Mullaney was informed by her Internet service provider, Frontier GlobalCenter, that her Web site had been partially blocked, due to a letter from the Church of Scientology that alleged she was illegally using copyrighted materials. Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which the Church of Scientology invoked in this case, Frontier was required to block the Web site unless Mullaney agreed to contest the charges in court. She did agree and filed the paperwork, but still it took four months for Mullaney to have her Web site reinstated.

Susan’s tussle with the Church of Scientology is, in many ways, an old story. In a war against what it calls the “cult of Scientology,” the online community of Scientology critics has long copied, distributed and annotated hundreds of “top secret” and copyrighted documents from the Church of Scientology — usually invoking fair use laws, (which allow publishers to excerpt copyrighted material for the purpose of comment or criticism), to defend their actions. The Church of Scientology has determinedly fought to dismantle the Web sites that have republished its material all across the Net — using legal threats, filtering software and innumerable pro-Scientology posts in Usenet groups.

It’s one of the best-documented battles on the Net, but there is a new weapon in these skirmishes, courtesy of the U.S. government: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, signed into law in November 1998, is the first U.S. legislation to address online copyright protection. Written in compliance with the global copyright protection treaty from the World Intellectual Property Organization, the act prohibits the unlawful use of any kind of copyrighted file online. Until this legislation, online copyright laws were vague at best, but thanks to this law, Internet service providers are now required to remove Web sites that allegedly break copyright laws — even before the copyright infringement has been proven.

In the last six months, at least a half dozen critics of the Church of Scientology have reported that the church has demanded that Internet service providers disable their Web sites or reveal their identities as anonymous Usenet posters, because of alleged copyright infringements. And, they say that the Internet service providers have carried out such demands without hesitation. The magic wand the Church of Scientology is invoking to get such quick results? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

As Frank Fields, an attorney for the Internet service provider Frontier GlobalCenter puts it, “I have concerns that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides another field of battle; I’ve been engaged in these battles in the past. This is just another venue.”

Susan Mullaney is just one of a number of Scientology critics who have seen the barrel end of the act. One of the first was Marina Chong, an Australian resident who had been hosting her Web site on Best, an American ISP. In February, Best notified Chong that her site had been removed after Bridge Publications, a subsidiary of the Church of Scientology, complained that her Web site contained copyrighted ethics texts. It was not the first complaint that Chong had received from the Church of Scientology, but it was the first time her ISP was forced to take down her site because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Best reinstated her Web site after the offending page had been removed; Chong has since moved the site altogether.

“Because I am not a resident of the U.S.A. and because I have no inclination to fight the case in court, I agreed to remove the page,” Chong explained in February. “This legislation is a new weapon in the Church of Scientology arsenal, and I am sure the Church of Scientology will use it to close down as many sites as possible.”

Mullaney and Chong are angry that they were presumed guilty until proven innocent: Their Internet service providers removed their Web sites before the Church of Scientology proved a copyright violation. This, they complain, is thanks to the stringent guidelines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

“The law requires us to take down the alleged offending material — this was the compromise Congress struck when they made this deal,” explains Frank Fields, an attorney for Frontier GlobalCenter. This was the “safe harbor” compromise that proponents of the act struck with Internet service providers: The ISP can’t be held liable for copyright infringement as long as it takes down allegedly offending material as soon as a complaint is filed. Says Fields, “Internet service providers, in order to take advantage of safe harbor, have no other choice to take down the site,” until the customer has filed legal papers agreeing to go to court to defend himself or herself.

But the act is, in many ways, a godsend for the ISPs — especially when it comes to the Church of Scientology. In the past, thanks to murky copyright laws, an ISP could be held liable for its customers’ copyright infringements. At least twice, Internet service providers were sued by (and eventually settled with) the Church of Scientology, thanks to customers who posted chunks of Scientology texts on their Web sites. So even while some Internet service providers may have historically ignored complaints from the Church of Scientology, others would quickly censor the sites in question in order to protect themselves. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act now eliminates the possibility of ignoring a letter of complaint, but it also gives the Internet service provider exemption from liability.

Still, despite complaints about the way the Church of Scientology is using the act, critics of Scientology also have an opportunity to use the law to their own advantages. If a site owner files a counter-notification agreeing to defend the usage of the “copyrighted” materials in a court of law, then the Church of Scientology must begin litigation within 10 days or the ISP must reinstate the site.

“The advantage for the customer with the material that gets taken down is that the initial complaint is filed under penalty of perjury. So if it’s a bogus complaint, that person can also turn around and file a complaint back,” says James Lippard, a network security administrator and owner of the site discord.org. Lippard was forced to remove a picture of top Church of Scientology executive David Miscavige from his Web site in June, when his ISP received a Church of Scientology complaint. Although Lippard felt that he was in the clear legally (technically, he says, the picture wasn’t even on his server; he merely linked to the image on the Church of Scientology’s Web site via a proxy), he chose not to enter into a legal fight with the church — an endeavor he felt might be prohibitively expensive.

But other critics of Scientology have already chosen to defend themselves. After her site was removed, for example, Mullaney filed a counter-notification agreeing to defend her use of the sound files and questionnaire. But the Church of Scientology failed to meet the 10-day deadline to begin a legal battle; as a result, Mullaney’s Web site was reinstated on July 8.

Still, that doesn’t mean that her Web site is safe — although the Church of Scientology apparently decided against litigation in this round, both she and Frank Fields are concerned that there is nothing to keep the Church of Scientology from filing repeated complaints. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unfortunately, doesn’t prevent multiple complaints for the same alleged violation — a loophole which could, conceivably, spur an endless cycle of Web sites being blocked and reinstated. As Fields puts it, “Without restraint, it could become very problematic for all of us.”

“The Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives legal teeth to a practice that was already taking place,” says Shari Steele, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The issue of Web site censorship is a concern, she says, but she is more worried about another way that the act is being used: to reveal the identities of anonymous posters on Usenet newsgroups.

In June, the Church of Scientology subpoenaed AT&T Corp., invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that it reveal the identity of a WorldNet subscriber who was posting excerpts from “Introduction to Scientology Ethics” on alt.religion.scientology under the pseudonym “Safe.” Faced with the law, AT&T quickly ponied up the user information, an act that Steele says “the fourth amendment protects against — it’s a misuse of the civil justice system for companies to be [defeating] anonymous speech.”

“Safe” — who describes himself as a Free Zone Scientologist, practicing the tenets of Scientology even as he vocally criticizes the church online — believes that the Church of Scientology simply wanted to know who he was, and had no interest in copyright litigation. “The Church of Scientology does not want its control over its members to be found out by the public and it doesn’t want its members to know that they can get scientology outside of the Church of Scientology, ” “Safe” posited in an e-mail. “I have not heard anything from the Church of Scientology’s Bridge Publications since its subpoena to AT&T to reveal my identity. No doubt this was an intimidation tactic to let me know that they know who I am. I have to admit, even their silence is intimidating.”

Are his concerns an exaggeration? The Church of Scientology has a history of confrontations with its critics — including hiring private investigators to investigate the backgrounds of reporters or picketing their houses. Many of Scientology’s online critics have attempted to keep their identities private, fearing retribution. Says Mullaney, “With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, if anyone wants to fight to keep their Web site up they have to give the Church of Scientology their name and address in a counter -notification; you can’t be anonymous. Some people are wondering if the Church of Scientology is just trying to ‘out’ people with this; there are plenty of reasons that they don’t want the Church of Scientology to know who they are. They’ll keep their pages down to avoid it.”

But the speculation of the Scientology critics is, of course, speculation. Helena Kobrin, a spokeswoman for Moxon & Kobrin, the Church of Scientology’s law firm, refused to discuss the specifics of any of these cases, offering instead a statement that “just as other copyright owners, we have used and will continue to use the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as and when appropriate to protect our clients’ copyrights. In each instance we follow the precise requirements of the applicable law. We review each situation that arises individually and determine what is the most effective means for dealing with the problem. In most instances a simple request to remove the materials is enough.”

Is the Digital Millennium Copyright a good copyright protection tool? Certainly, it offers legal avenues for not just the Church of Scientology but also for its critics. If the Church of Scientology can indeed legally prove its copyrights, and uses this law to prevent online theft, then it has every right to do so, just as all owners of copyrights — including artists, musicians, writers, and others — hope to protect themselves from piracy and illegal distribution of their work.

But, as Steele of the EFF explains, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act leaves open too many questions and doesn’t offer enough protection to free speech and citizens’ rights online. In fact, the Electronic Frontiers Foundation opposed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act from the start. “We thought that it went way overboard in adding protection for copyright holders that hadn’t existed before; there are many holes in the legislation,” sighs Steele.

So far, no Digital Millennium Copyright Act cases have been tried in court, so it’s still difficult to predict how the Church of Scientology’s use of the law will hold up. Kobrin says that the Church of Scientology has “won judgments and obtained permanent injunctions in five U.S. cases and two non-U.S. cases,” but that was back before the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was on the books. Now that critics have a legal fallback as well, will they be able to more easily defend their usage of Church materials? Perhaps, but that’s a decision that will have to be made in court. Meanwhile, Lippard hopes that “eventually the Church of Scientology is going to meet someone with the resources and time to fight back.”

While HotWired’s editorial content has dwindled recently to a shadow of its former self, the site has always been a creative leader in the marriage of technology and marketing; it is generally credited with the introduction of the banner ad in 1994. But this latest innovation brings the concept of sponsorship to a new and surreal level.

If an advertiser can buy the very colors off of HotWired’s home page, with its message invading the site’s central editorial showcase, what’s next — sponsored cursors that morph into corporate logos? “This scroll bar courtesy of Nike”? “404: file not found” pages with pop-up console ads?

Of course, even mentioning such ideas raises the scary possibility that somebody might implement them.
— Scott Rosenberg
SALON | Nov. 12, 1998

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Scientologists lose a round in copyright fight

The war between Scientology and its online opponents may have no visible end, but victory in the latest skirmish goes to the Net. Last week, a judge dismissed a request from Bridge Publications (one of the countless subsidiaries of the Church of Scientology) for summary judgment against FACTNet, a nonprofit online anti-cult group that Scientology had accused of duplicating its copyrighted material.

FACTNet claims that the copyrighted material — church documents by L. Ron Hubbard that reveal secrets Scientology members normally have to pay thousands of dollars to read, such as the origin of the mythical creature “Xenu” — isn’t legally copyrighted at all. (FACTNet had copied the material to CD-ROM, allegedly to back up its own research databases.) The judge is allowing FACTNet to argue its case; the case will now go to trial, where the Church of Scientology will have to prove copyrights to each of the 1,914 individual documents it claims were copied. FACTNet, in turn, is convinced that the documents are public domain, and that the Church of Scientology didn’t even have the right to copyright them in the first place.

“Scientology has been claiming loudly to be the victim of the largest copyright infringement case in U.S. history,” FACTNet said in a statement, “However … the real perpetrator may be Scientology itself, and the lawsuit could turn out to be the largest case of copyright registration fraud in U.S. history.”

This isn’t the first lawsuit that the Church of Scientology has slapped on a Net-oriented group. Complaining that Scientology is victim of the religious bigotry of members of the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, Church officials have seized the hard drives of a number of online anti-Scientologists, slapped copyright-infringement cases on others and peddled a Net filter that prevents church members from viewing critical Web sites. They have also won several lawsuits, so FACTNet’s battle is not over yet.
— Janelle Brown
SALON | Nov. 10, 1998

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A costly tour of the Gates mansion

$42,500 is a princely sum that could be a respectable annual salary, orenough to buy a Sports Utility Vehicle, or the cost of 4 years’ tuition at apublic college. It’s also the cost of a personal tour of the mansion of BillGates.

Or rather, it’s the sum that one Microsoft employee was willing to pay tosee the home of his boss — as last week’s winner of an online auctionconducted by Microsoft as part of the company’s annual charity fundraisingdrive. The employee, who is going unnamed but is “not an extremely highexecutive,” according to a Microsoft spokesperson, will get a private tour ofthe mansion — including a session with Gates, who will reveal “his favoriteroom” to the winner.

The simple fact that Microsoft employees would — and could afford to –pay so much to see where their chairman lives speaks to both the legendary auraof “billg” and the grandiosity of the house itself. As Microsoft spokespersonDan Leach modestly puts it, “Bill is a very popular executive with theemployees of Microsoft. It seems that everybody wants to see the technology [inGates' house]. I personally would love to see it.”

The sum will be matched by Microsoft and given to the charity of thewinner’s choice. Overall, Microsoft’s drive (which also included events likerubber ducky races and executive promises to bleach their hair should targetsbe met) raised $12 million for charities.
– Janelle Brown

Opponents of Scientology — and there are many online — say that the Scientology On-line project’s filter is “cult mind-control for the 21st century” that stifles free speech. Members of the Church of Scientology say instead that it’s a protective program, safeguarding the religious members from seeing materials that they never wanted to see in the first place.

Either way, one thing is for certain: This is the latest skirmish in a protracted battle — with no end in sight.

The Church of Scientology was originally founded by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s around a belief system that is part psychology, part technology. Members are encouraged to become “clear” — to achieve a state of higher spiritual existence — via expensive auditing and courses. If you take more courses, you reach higher “Operating Thetan” (or OT) levels and can read sacred documents, which detail an ancient world of intergalactic spirits. Scientology claims to have 8 million members worldwide (though critics put that number as low as 50,000), including high-profile celebrities like John Travolta, Kelly Preston and Tom Cruise.

Detractors call Scientology a cult, primarily because of the cost of achieving higher OT levels (reportedly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) and the testimony of ex-members who claim that some Scientologists are mistreated and brainwashed. The church, on the other hand, says that it is a victim of religious bigotry, and that it deserves the same respect as any other faith.

Scientology and its online critics have fought a long, well-documented war, with the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology as ground zero. Here, vocal critics spar with a small group of Scientologists and former Scientologists — debates in the past have been interrupted by mysterious cancelbots and pro-Scientology spamming that threatened to shut the newsgroup down. The Church of Scientology has raided the homes of critics who published portions of their “secret documents” online, and brought lawsuits against people it charges are violating its many trademarks.

In 1998, the war still isn’t over. Instead, the critics are louder than ever — alt.religion.scientology is one of Usenet’s biggest newsgroups, and still predominantly critical — and groups like Operation Clambake have sprung up to spread information critical of Scientology. The “sacred” texts of Scientology, and endless reams of documents and commentary about Scientology’s conflicts on the Internet, have been copied hundreds of time across the Net. In response, the Church of Scientology has posted lengthy position papers of its own on the Web.

So perhaps it wasn’t surprising when, on L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday on March 13, 1998, Scientology official Mark Ingber announced the church’s newest online initiative: on-line.scientology.org. In a speech that was viewed by members all over the world (and later distributed online), Ingber announced that every Scientology member would soon have a Web site.

According to transcripts posted on a Scientology critic’s site, Ingber said in his speech: “Logging on to the Internet is like opening a giant phone book. When you log in and enter the word ‘Scientology,’ you’ll get all the listings that contain that word from whenever and wherever, anywhere in the world. And while we’ve been reaching a high volume of people through our 116 main Internet sites, we look at it this way, we have a whole planet to clear.” Every Church member, he said, would get a Web site starter kit that would allow the creation of a personal “I am a Scientologist” Web site.

Four months later, there are thousands of “I am a Scientologist” Web sites on the Internet — 10,000, by the church’s own count, though critics who have performed their own census have put the number at 7,300.

According to Charlotte Kates, an 18 year-old New Jersey student who says she spent six months in Scientology (she departed in mid-May), the Scientology On-line project dispenses to each and every church member a CD-ROM containing templates for building a Web site. After filling out the template with personal information, the members send their Web site materials to the main Scientology office for approval to use the Scientology “marks and works” (Scientology has laid legal claim to dozens of words and terms, everything from the word “Scientology” and “Dianetics” to terms like “Purification,” “Source,” “Advance!” “OT” and “New Vitality Rundown”). After approval is granted, the member can post the Web site. If a Scientologist doesn’t have a computer or Net connection, staff members will fill out the template and post it for the member, hosting the sites on Scientology’s servers.

The Web sites are look-alikes. Each “personal home page” has five sections: “About Myself,” ” My Success in Scientology,” “My Favorite L. Ron Hubbard Quote,” “Groups I Support” (the groups consist of a selection of organizations associated with Scientology, like the Narconon drug-addiction group and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group that fights psychiatry), plus “Favorite Links” (a selection of Scientology Web sites and groups). Each site also includes a “Support Religious Tolerance” banner that links back to www.scientology.org and a “Contact Me” section with forms for sending e-mail, phone numbers and address information to the site’s owner.

A “view source” of the Scientology site template reveals a long list of keywords related to Scientology — presumably to top-load the search engines with as much pro-Scientology material as possible. Considering the sheer number of pages and keywords, it’s not surprising that if you plug the words “Scientology” or “Scientologist” into a search engine today, many of the pages you’ll pull up are “I am a Scientologist” pages, rather than those of Scientology critics.

Linda Peters, spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology International, says (via e-mail) that the goal of the Scientology On-line program is to “make it easy for Scientologists to assist others in providing information, to express their views and to help others find out for themselves what Scientology is all about — by finding out from a Scientologist who has his own personal story to tell.”

Explains Dean Blehert, a poet and 30-year Scientology member, “Certainly I’d like a fairer representation for Scientology. There are probably a few hundred of these ‘critics.’ There are several million people who value Scientology … If someone does a search on the Web and comes up with item after item that attacks Scientology, and nothing that speaks positively of it, that’s an odd misrepresentation. If those of us who know it well and value it don’t speak out, who will?”

But the search engines are well aware of Scientology’s efforts. “We heard about this major push to load up the search engines a couple months ago,” says Adam Gross, senior customer service representative at Lycos. “We didn’t get real worried about it. We’re pretty protected from a major effort like that just from the way we catalogue.” (This wasn’t the first time he had heard from the Church of Scientology, he says — a representative from Scientology called him up last year asking that 20,000 Web-page addresses be submitted to the search engine in specific areas.)

When the members of alt.religion.scientology heard of the Scientology On-line project, which they dubbed a “Web spam,” they went into action — documenting the pages, informing the search engines of what was happening and investigating the Web site templates. Some participants were even excited about the online initiation of thousands of Scientologists: It meant that more church members might be exposed to critical points of view. As one person posted, “Scientologists are now explicitly being directed to the Web; this will result in some truthful information seeping back in to the cult core.”

But if the critics who roost in alt.religion.scientology thought that Scientology Net-newbies might suddenly become readers of and participants in their newsgroup, that hope was dispelled by the sudden appearance of the Scieno Sitter.

According to documents supplied by ex-Scientologist Kates, Section 7 of the contract that all Scientologists have to sign in order to gain permission to build their Scientology Web site says that members must “agree to use the specific Internet Filter Program that CSI has provided to you which allows you freedom to view other sites on Dianetics, Scientology or its principals without threat of accessing sites deemed to be using the Marks or Works in an unauthorized fashion or deemed to be improper or discreditable to the Scientology religion.” After posting their Web sites, Scientologists are instructed to install a provided version of Netscape 4.0 that is preconfigured with this filter.

No one outside the church knew exactly what this filter was until last month, when Kates appeared on an Internet Relay Chat channel used regularly by alt.religion.scientology members. With the filter installed in her browser, Kates demonstrated exactly what it would do: Conversation was impossible, as Kates was kicked off the chat line every time certain words were typed (Xenu, for example) or when certain people entered the room.

It appeared that the filter was blocking Scientologists from seeing or discussing “forbidden” words. Several software professionals in alt.religion.scientology obtained copies of the filter, from Kates and other anonymous self-proclaimed Scientology members, and examined the code. What they found was a program that seemed to be based on the popular CyberSitter software from Solid Oak, and included a list of hundreds of verboten Web sites, names of critics and Scientology terms. Alt.religion.scientology was blocked altogether, as well as the names of many of the Usenet members themselves — even including a few current Scientologists who had participated in alt.religion.scientology.

“I’m one of the names that is blocked by the filter, even though my relationship with Scientology is extremely tangential. I’ve not posted anything scandalous at all,” says Thaddeus Beier, a software developer and alt.religion.scientology member who helped examine the software-filter code. “I don’t think that filtering software is necessarily a bad idea if you’re upfront about it; spam filters, for example, are a good idea. But this is something that’s done under the table — a huge number of the terms that are banned are completely unrelated to the stated goals. I find that disturbing.”

According to Beier, Kates and others in the group that studied the filter, it sometimes simply blanks out offending words on Web sites — making much of the Web difficult to read, since the list includes “strings” (sequences of letters) like “SP” (for “Suppressive Person,” or church critic) and “NOTS” (New Operating Thetan Levels). Other terms — such as the names “Robert Vaughn Young” (a former Scientology member who has written about the church), “McPherson” (the name of a Scientologist who died under church care) and “Xenu” (a mythical figure revealed in church texts accessible only to advanced members) — will shut down your browser. The filter, which only works with Windows 95, performs similar blocking functions on a user’s e-mail.

The members of alt.religion.scientology have spent plenty of time debating just why the filter might exist. Some believe that Scientology wants to prevent members from seeing documents that they would otherwise have to pay to see. Others believe that Scientology is afraid that the more extreme documents — those explaining the intergalactic leader Xenu, for example — might scare away recent Scientology converts. And, of course, most think that Scientology doesn’t want its members to hear its critics.

Scientology spokeswoman Peters says the filter was developed because “many of our parishioners want to use the Internet but asked for a filter protection from those elements that have sought to twist and pervert the religion … Therefore, like many other religions and groups, we have provided a filter so our parishioners can enjoy their right to practice their religion without suffering harassment and intimidation for doing so.”

Several current and former Scientologists agree that it’s likely many Scientologists want to use this filter. Part of the Scientology doctrine teaches members that the sacred documents should only be read when a member is spiritually ready, after years of auditing. While she was a church member, Kates recalls, she believed that if she accidentally read about OT 3 or Xenu before the proper time, it could kill her. Additionally, church members believe that being exposed to “entheta” (negative energy of any kind, which presumably includes criticism of Scientology) can harm their personal spiritual growth.

That’s certainly the reason given by the documentation for the Scientology On-Line CD-ROM, which reads: “By popular demand from Scientologists, a program has been developed to prevent you from being subjected to ‘entheta’ and hate mail on the Internet. This filter allows you direct access to our sites rapidly, without being dev-t’d by vilifying material, forgeries, and hate messages. In this fashion your attention can remain focused on dissemination and setting people’s feet on the Bridge to Total Freedom.”

Not all Scientologists — particularly the more Web-savvy members — have installed the filter. Russell Shaw and “Whippersnapper,” Scientologists who have actively participated in the debates on alt.religion.scientology (ironically, Whippersnapper is included in the filter’s list of blocked terms), both chose not to build a Scientology Web site or install the filter for the time being — though both say they support its use. If he had a child, Whippersnapper says, he would install the filter to protect his child from the “prurient and shocking allegations” of the anti-Scientology critics.

Why does he believe there’s a need for the filter? “First and foremost, because of materials Scientologists consider secret and sacred, which have been deliberately disseminated by a large number of the critics,” Whippersnapper writes. “This one fact alone explains the near-total non-participation of Scientologists in the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup, the very existence of the filter, and most of the bitterness of the sometime conflict between the Church and the more prominent critics … Exposure of that material is almost without exception a rude, almost violent act without rational purpose. Scientologists are expected to avoid all contact with that material, and the critics who publicize them, primarily on the Net, know it very well.”

But those Scientologists who don’t participate in alt.religion.scientology, where the filter has been dissected, seem to have quite a different perception of its capabilities. Dean Blehert, for example, believes that the filter merely works to prevent anti-Scientology spam. As he sees it, “The filter doesn’t ‘prevent me from having to see the Web sites of anti-Scientology critics.’ It’s a spam filter that spares me having to wade through mail I don’t care to receive. If I want to search the Web for anti-Scientology sites, I can … On occasion, putting up a site that says one is a Scientologist results in one getting flamed with anti-Scientology spam.”

Blehert compares the anti-Scientology groups on the Web to hate groups — a common comparison by the Church of Scientology. He asks, if you were Jewish, why would you want to visit anti-Semitic sites? He has, he says, only benefited from Scientology, and reading some of the more vehement attackers of his religion is both depressing and the “road to paranoia.”

Church spokeswoman Peters says that the Scientology software kit was “designed in-house.” And Solid Oak, the software developer, denies having anything to do with Scieno Sitter, but acknowledges that its code could have been used via a sub-licensee. Ironically, the standard CyberSitter software blocks all Scientology Web sites as “cults,” so if Scieno Sitter is based on the same code makes it look, as president Brian Milburn puts it, “like we’re blocking them and then turning around and selling to them.”

Milburn says: “Scientology is not one of our customers. However, I have looked at the information on the Internet, and I can say that it appears likely that [Scientology's filter technology] comes from one of our sublicensees.” CyberSitter licenses a tool kit to groups that want to build their own non-commercial filters.

Milburn adds: “[Scientologists] run a nasty game, and I don’t particularly want to get involved with them.” Yet Solid Oak will likely be profiting if the Scientologists did use its code: CyberSitter licensees are required to pay royalties for every user of the licensed filtering software.

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Why do the members of alt.religion.scientology care so much? For the longtime critics, the list of barred words, phrases and sites shows them in detail exactly what scares their opponents. As Iain Brown, another member of the team that studied the Scieno Sitter code, puts it, “In a way, it isn’t especially important to me, in that the Scientologists that are using this filter have signed up for it voluntarily. But it’s also interesting to me to know exactly what it is that is frightening the church — whose names are on the list, what places do they not want their members to see. I want to know what they think is bad.”

Some members of alt.religion.scientology are almost proud of their pariah status: Many point out the fact in their .sig files. Robert Vaughn Young says, via e-mail, “I did manage to see the list of forbidden areas that was hacked and am honored to be on the list. What this organization is trying to do would make any dictator or any group that wants to control the minds of others envious.”

For Charlotte Kates, recently departed from Scientology, the filter’s meaning is more personal. “It so epitomizes what Scientology does to its members, the thought-control processes,” she says. “Scientology has the slogan ‘Think for yourself’ — and then you look at this and it’s like, wow, this is Scientology mind control as it would look in programming language. This is cult mind control for the 21st century.”

The Scientology On-line project and its filter have undoubtedly rekindled — or perhaps simply escalated — the war between Scientology and its Internet critics. But the emergence of 10,000 Scientologists on the Web has had one unexpected side effect on the relationship between the two groups: The church’s greatest critics are suddenly seeing the human faces of their opponents. Thaddeus Beier, alt.religion.scientology regular Deana Holmes and several others have been carefully documenting the personal information from the “I am a Scientologist” home pages — building databases of pictures, testimony and biographies.

As Beier says, “I see a big distinction now — between the Scientology organization and the techniques they use to extract money from people, which I find wretched, and on the other hand the believers, who are good, normal people. If anything they’re just too trusting. Anything that prevents them from seeing the truth is a really bad deal.”