Newsgroup Postings : (old news) Globe and Mail article: Scientology loses domain battle

(old news) Globe and Mail article: Scientology loses domain battle
From: Wulfen - www.total.net/~wulfen/scn/ <wulfen@NOSPAMtotal.net>
Subject: (old news) Globe and Mail article: Scientology loses domain battle
Date: 2000/07/14
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Scientology loses domain battle

Internet arbitrator gives name to Freie Zone,
a splinter group of the church

JOHN PARTRIDGE
The Globe and Mail
Friday, July 14, 2000

The controversial Church of Scientology has lost a fight over an
Internet domain name to a renegade sect that swears allegiance to
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard but split from the church nearly
two decades ago.

An arbitrator operating under a new international system set up to
resolve fights over Internet monikers has refused to award
http://www.scientologie.org to the Religious Technology Center (RTC).
Based in Los Angeles, RTC's roles, its Web site says, include
protecting the church's copyright and trademarks, and monitoring and
enforcing the "purity" of how its doctrines are taught.

Instead, in a decision made late last month, the arbitrator ruled that
the disputed Web address should stay in the hands of its current
owner, Freie Zone E.V. -- Free Zone Association -- because it has a
legitimate right to the name and has not behaved in bad faith.

Freie Zone, based in Germany, registered the domain name in 1995, but
has not been able to use it since September, 1996, when the registrar
put it "on hold" at RTC's request, the decision says.

The decision says Freie Zone appears to be a "renegade group of the
Church of Scientology" that was founded in about 1982 by "'Captain'
Bill Robertson, apparently the 'right arm' of L. Ron Hubbard at the
time." The decision quotes the association as saying it split from the
church in 1982, when RTC took over the organization and "thousands" of
Scientologists either left or were expelled.

Freie Zone's stated goal is to support Mr. Hubbard's philosophies.
However, it explicitly disassociates itself from the church's
"official and unofficial" organizations because it disagrees with its
practices and interpretation of Mr. Hubbard's works.

In a complaint filed in May, RTC accused Freie Zone of being an
"underground" organization whose purposes include interfering with the
centre's activities and those of its affiliates. It alleged that the
association had no legitimate right to use the disputed domain name
and had instead set up the site in bad faith to attract Internet users
away from legitimate Scientology sites.

However, the decision says that in its submission, Freie Zone
contended it set up the site to sell reprints of a German book called
Scientologie -- Wissenschaft von der Beschaffeneit und Tauglichkeit
des Wissens (Scientology -- Science of the Constitution and Usefulness
of Knowledge), which was published in 1934. The association said it
had obtained exclusive rights to the book from the heirs of its
author, Dr. Anastasius Nordenholz.

The arbitrator, Bernard Meyer-Hauser, a Zurich lawyer, said in his
decision that the book appears to be based, at least partly, "on the
same or similar philosophical sources as L. Ron Hubbard's own
philosophy when developing the Church of Scientology. However, he
added that: "On the other hand, it was L. Ron Hubbard who seems to
have first used the word 'Scientology' to describe his philosophy in
1952."

While ruling that http://www.scientologie.org is "confusingly similar"
to some of RTC's trademarks, Mr. Meyer-Hauser found that the rights to
the Nordenholz book had indeed been licensed to Freie Zone and "these
rights appear to be even older than the complainant's trademarks." He
also found that using the Web site to disseminate information about
the book and its underlying philosophy "appears to be a legitimate
interest in itself."

-- Scientology's gate is down. --
http://www.total.net/~wulfen/scn/
http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/8412/