… this has been replaced with the following notice:

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Church of Scientology International

Remember, just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t meant they’re not out to get you ….

However, my overriding impression is that the subject being discussed is the idea of moral responsibility. Where does he say the state should be used to force people to live life in the way he approves?

Aside from the ‘theaton’ stuff, I get the sense that people generally ridicule scientologists as crazy ‘authoritarians’ merely because they hold certain propositions to be true whilst refusing to entertain others. For example, on Brooke Shields’ use of psychiatry, Cruise was asked by an interviewer whether he thought psychiatry could work for some people – or in other words, he was asked whether he had any doubt about the ‘evil’ of psychiatry. The fact that he answered ‘no’ seems to me not so much evidence that he is an ‘authoritarian’, but rather that he holds certain propositions about psychiatry to be true – which is to say he has a belief about it. What, if anything, is inherently authoritarian about that?

I don’t think that’s a closet he has a problem being out of.

If you catch my drift.

Also, if youtube pulls the Tom Cruise video, Gawker has it here and is refusing to pull it despite the threat of the lawsuit. Anyone who thinks it’s benign needs to see this and if you conclude that Tom Cruise is anything other than a closet authoritarian, well, you have a very forgiving outlook on things. The guy (who happens to be the primary bankroller of the church) is a special kind of crazy.

http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress

There’s also the more interesting and more general question of grey markets. If it is legal to own the goods in Australia, then should the manufacturer (if, say, bought off, or in an attempt to control prices) be able to enforce conditions of resale preventing it being sold to someone there by a third party?

In the US, the publisher has nothing to say. There’s actually been litigation on this point and US courts have recognized a concept called the “first sale” doctrine.

Basically, once you buy an item, you own it. If it contains IP, the copyright holder still can’t prevent you from re-selling the book or at least not the one that you actually bought.

As for Australia, I’m painfully ignorant of the laws there but I would suspect that their libel laws allow civil suits or even maybe criminal charges where truth is not a complete defense. That’s a rant for another time, but if the judge can’t tell the plaintiff “Either prove that he’s lying and knew better when he published, or GTFO of my court” then that country has a problem.

Strictly IMHO. I hate to bash Australia. If it weren’t for the gun laws I’d have moved there long ago.

Robert Ronson, author of a children’s sf novel called Olympic Mind Games — set at the 2012 London Olympics — was sternly told by the Olympics 2012 committee that he wasn’t allowed to use the O-word, nor such protected terms as ‘London 2012′ or even just ’2012.’ What’s more, they complained, ‘there is no such thing as Olympic mind games’. Ronson ignored this bluster and seems to have got away with it.

“It’s rough and tumble, and it’s wild and woolly and it’s a blast,” he says. “It’s a blast. It really is fun, because … there is nothing better than … going out there and fighting the fight and, suddenly you see, things are better.”
“Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anyone else; as you drive past, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one that can really help.”

A more believable scenario is that the scientologists made the publisher aware that under the libel laws of countries outside the US and Canada, it would be much easier for the church to bring, and win, an action in court. Something the scientologists would have no hesitation in doing.

Simply google the term “fair game” in terms of its usage by scientology members – fairly chilling. In fact, it’s rather disturbing to review a compilation of the terms they use, and the underlying meaning and philosophy those phrases represent.

Not very nice people. In some ways, just a different variation of whack job than the run of the mill jihadi, in that they’re so willing to blindly give themselves over to something that, to the outside observer, is quite obviously and seriously flawed.

http://xenu.net(Link)