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From news.interserv.net!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!xs4all!announce Thu Sep 7 09:28:34 1995 Path: news.interserv.net!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!xs4all!announce From: announce@xs4all.nl (announce) Newsgroups: alt.activism,misc.legal,alt.religion.scientology Subject: xs4all newsflash - scientology raid Date: 6 Sep 1995 18:12:48 GMT Organization: XS4ALL, networking for the masses Lines: 54 Message-ID: <42kob0$8cm@news.xs4all.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: xs1.xs4all.nl X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #666 (NOV) X-Posted-By: announce@xs1.xs4all.nl Xref: news.interserv.net alt.activism:66204 misc.legal:70245 alt.religion.scientology:94003 ***** XS4ALL NEWS-FLASH ***** Dear Friends, Yesterday, thuesday september 5, 1995, the scientology church raided the xs4all offices for a seizure. The permission of seizure that scientology got against xs4all was issued on a false claim, relating to a remailer that had not been active on xs4all for more than 2 months. During scientology's visit no word was said about this remailer, as it was not running at xs4all at all. The only concern seemed to be a homepage from one of our users (http://www.xs4all.nl/~fonss). This homepage contained the fishman affidavit, to which scientology claims copyright. We had no prior notice about this homepage, and never had the chance to contact the user. According to the user, fonss, scientology had not contacted him about his page. (the scientologists that where present at our offices specifically told us that they had talked to this user, and 'where at his door'.) We have explained to scientology's legal representation, and to the scientologists that where present that as a provider we do not accept responsibility for contents that our users disseminate. Users homepages are the responsibility of the users themselves, and not of the internet- provider. This fact is supported by various politicians in dutch parliament, and by several organisations whom we had previously consulted about this matter. After scientology's visit we wrote an email notice to our user, fonss, explaining him what had happened at the xs4all offices earlier that day. We also explained our visions regarding his homepage, and that we would not assume responsibility for it, as it is the users' own responsibility. We have not asked our user to remove any content from his homepage, as this is not our business. After our letter the user voluntarily removed the fishman affidavit, and now has made a hyperlink to the same document on another site on internet. After scientology's visit we noticed that a personal snailmail-letter adressed to one of our staff was missing. The sender of this letter was called by scientology about 1 hour after the visit to our offices. Ofcourse we will demand a thourough investigation into this whole case, first because of the seizure that was issued on false grounds, and then because of the personal letter that appears to have been stolen. The whole case has attracted a fair amount of media coverage. We've been handling journalists most of the day. They seem to be extremely shocked by this whole situation, and reflect that in their media-coverage. The xs4all staff

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