Saturday, January 19, 2008

Scientology church put stop to leaked Tom Cruise web video

We read:

"Scientologists have forced internet giant Google to remove a leaked web video that featured Hollywood star Tom Cruise praising the niche religion. The Scientology video was removed from Google's YouTube video site today. "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Church of Scientology International," said a message on the site.

A Google Australia spokesman denied the company giant had "buckled under pressure" from the Church of Scientology, but confirmed Google had "complied with our legal obligation to remove material".

Source

There is a bit of a surge lately in using copyright laws to suppress speech. If any of these cases get to court, however, I think they will die. Copyright laws do permit use of excerpts and that is all that happened above as far as I can work out.