Scientology loses domain battle
Internet arbitrator gives name to Freie Zone, a splinter group of the church
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."
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14-7-00 Globe&Mail