FC: Google still delists anti-Scientology site -- reports were premature

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous message:

"Google bows to Scientology's DMCA request, yanks critics' site"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03281.html

Apparently Google relisted only http://www.xenu.net/ (the home page). That
is more important than it sounds because xenu.net once again appears when
people search for "Scientology" on google -- it ranks fourth.

-Declan


----- Forwarded message from Erik Moeller <moeller () scireview de> -----

From: Erik Moeller <moeller () scireview de>
Subject: Xenu.net is -still- censored by Google
To: p2pj () infoanarchy org
Cc: timothy () slashdot org, declan () politechbot com, ahl () xenu net
Date: 22 Mar 2002 06:43:18 +0100

When I read that Xenu.net was relisted I was skeptical, and this was
quickly confirmed. Contrary to popular reports, the URLs that
Scientology complained about can still not be found in Google's index,
except for the root site, http://www.xenu.net. First, let me reproduce
once again the list of censored sites:

www.xenu.net/
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/index.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/prop1.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/prop2.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/prop3.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/prop4.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/prop5.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/propaganda/prop6.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/ clan-images.html
www.xenu.net/archive/photoalbum/lisas_case_sup.html
www.xenu.net/archive/events/
www.xenu.net/archive/events/lisa_mcpherson/
www.xenu.net/archive/disk/
www.xenu.net/archive/disk/enemy/
www.xenu.net/archive/disk/enemy/da.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/disk/enemy/targets.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/disk/archive/grd_chrt.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/disk/OTIII/
www.xenu.net/archive/hubbandcw/
www.xenu.net/archive/greece/
www.xenu.net/archive/HCOB/FU-HCOB-630511.html
www.xenu.net/archive/HCOB/FU-HCOB-630714.html
www.xenu.net/archive/HCOB/FU-HCOB-610619.html
www.xenu.net/archive/enemy_names/
www.xenu.net/archive/enemy_names/dead_agenting.html
www.xenu.net/archive/enemy_names/targets.html
www.xenu.net/archive/tonelevel.html
www.xenu.net/archive/grade_chart.html
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuleaf.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenusw.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenunl.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenufr.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenufi.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuno.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuge.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuaf.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuru-k.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/xenuheb.htm
www.xenu.net/archive/so/

Let's pick randomly one of the URLs,
www.xenu.net/archive/tonelevel.html, and enter the phrase
"The numbers preceding the emotional tone indicate the arbitrary level
of the tone." in Google. Another document with the same content shows
up, but not the censored one.

A different methodology, let's search all documents on xenu.net for the
word "leaflet". Xenu.net has this leaflet in various translations. 

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:xenu.net+leaflet+-dirty&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&start=0&sa=N

As of this moment, only the Spanish and Italian leaflet show up, which
are both NOT in the list of URLs scientology wanted to be censored.

In other words, Google has relisted the main site, probably because they
find the copyright claims spurious and found it an effective way to
quell the bad publicity to do so.

Hidden censorship is much worse than when it's obvious. The publicity
needs to go one until Google reindexes all URLs, especially since
visitors will otherwise miss information when doing *targeted* searches,
as opposed to untargeted ones for Scientology in general.

Sincerely,

Erik Moeller


----- End forwarded message -----



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