This is old news by now (about a week old) but what the heck.
As of September 4, ScientologyWatch.org reports Scientology has decisively lost its drawn-out lawsuit against Dutch writer Karin Spaink over links on her Web site to their sooper sekrit skripturz.
Since Scientology-related lawsuits can sometimes get convoluted, and I have been out of the anti-Scientology loop for several years, I've missed out on some of the fun. However, on my own Web site I briefly mention the original 1996 summary proceeding, which Karin won. The case went to a full hearing in 1999, which Karin won. The cult appealed, and the courts ruled that Karin's paraphrases of the sekrit skripturz are perfectly legal, thankyouverymuch.
For the uninitiated, the documents in question detail the origin of man's problems: an interplanetary despot named Xenu who killed off his excess population by freezing them, shipping their corpsicles to Earth in interstellar DC-8s, dropping them into volcanoes on Hawaii, and nuking them. Xenu then captured their disembodied souls and forced them to watch bad movies that implanted neuroses into them. As a result these disembodied souls cluster together and stick to the bodies of Scientologists, slowing down their enlightenment. The only solution to this problem is paying huge bucks to the Church of Scientology to repeat utter twaddle while holding soup cans connected to an electrical meter, which gets rid of the "Body Thetans."
And so now as a result of Scientology's loss, it is perfectly legal for anyone (in the Netherlands at least) to tell you this and even link you to it on the Web. This represents a total victory for free speech in the public interest.
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