Tilman Hausherr <tilman@berlin.snafu.de> wrote:
Copy to the EFF for background.
This is interesting in a cult exposure arena. The contention by the
cultist is that being exposed as a customer of Scientology would be a
financial hazard -- which it is -- however that claim has been moved
to the back burner probably on orders by Scientology which I would
expect told him that it's not acceptable to point out that being a
Scientologist is considered around the world to be justifiable grounds
for avoiding the business.
Instead the claimant alleges that information about Scientology on the
network which links to exposures of Scientology's core criminality are
"hateful, bigoted and untrue" -- and yet the claimant can't point to
a single thing that's "hateful, bigoted" or "untrue."
But that didn't stop him from sueing web site owners.
I found an interesting update about the lawsuit by Front sight and
Ignatius Piazza against Diana Mertz Hsieh.
According to
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~skent/Linkedfiles/hsiereport.htm , Piazza
hasn't even taken the time to read the websites that the lawsuit is
about, but said that these websites are "hateful, bigoted and untrue":
====================
This claim by the plaintiff is perplexing, since, in his Verified
Complaint, Dr. Piazza does not specify exactly the Internet links to
which he was referring. Consequently, it is next to impossible for me,
and I suspect the court, to evaluate the merits of his assertion.
Moreover, no evidence exists that he read any of the web sites to which
defendant Hsieh referred him. In deposition, when the defendant's
attorney, Mr. Watson, asked Dr. Piazza whether he had read any of the
articles/websites to which defendant Hsieh had referred to him in e-mail
correspondence on October 26, 2002, Dr. Piazza replied, "Um, I don't
remember if I did or I didn't" (Deposition of Ignatius A. Piazza, II,
2003: 42 l. 2). Similarly, when the defendant's attorney, Mr. Watson,
asked Dr. Piazza, "Do you understand that there is quite a body of
websites on the Internet criticizing Scientology?," Dr. Piazza replied:
A. Whether I'm aware of it or not, what difference does it make?
Q. Are you aware of that?
A. I don't go through these websites, so there may be hundreds of them,
but I'm not aware of what they are or I don't read them.... (Deposition
of Ignatius A. Piazza, II, 2003: 64, l. 13-20).
Then Dr. Piazza's attorney, Mr. Morris, objected. The objection aside, I
cannot determine how Dr. Piazza concluded that defendant Hsieh provided
Internet links to hateful, bigoted, and untrue statements about
Scientology, since he did not (or did not remember) reading any of them.
====================
I hope that Nevada does provide a SLAPP-like law.
Tilman
--
"Keep kwiet. Ksenu's kracking klam klusters."
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/prolinks/
---
CAUTION: Reading these Scientology "secrets" will give you pneumonia:
http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
http://w4u.eexi.gr/~antbos/XENU.HTM
And Saddam: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
"You should eat what you kill." -- Cannibal George W. Bush, KCBS, 1/Jan/04
.
|
