The page that was at this location has been moved in response to complaints from the Church of Scientology. The complaints were: that the page had links to sites that were vicious and offensive to Scientologists; the page showed a bias against Scientology and this is hurtful to Scientologists; it implied that Scientologists were against Web and free speech which is again hurtful; the title in particular was offensive in this regard; since this page is hosted by an educational institution, students may believe there is some endorsement of the linked sites attacking Scientology; that search engines find the page so that the community may also see the university as endorsing the linked attacks on Scientology; the page is out date.
The School of Computer Science and Engineering apologises to the Church of Scientology for any offence or hurt this page may have caused. The original intention (1995) of this and related pages was to provide a focus for discussion of the World Wide Web in relation to issues of free speech, fair comment, defamation, censorship and assignment of responsibility for information published. The reference to the Church of Scientology was simply because it provided a good discussion point in this context. This remains the case, and the interaction with the Church over this page provides a first hand instance of this.
The offensive page is located at http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/web/free-expression/cos-example.html. Anyone reading it should not in any way interpret it as an attack on Scientology. It is included here purely to provide the context of the material that Scientology objected to. The links on the page have been removed so that there are no direct links to offensive sites. As well there is no hyperlink to the page to avoid it being found by search engines and causing on-going offence.
This page generated numerous emails, phone calls, meetings and even a submission to the university executive to have it removed. (Of course there would have been less interaction if the School had responded more quickly). The Church also requested that a one line comment and link to an anti-scientology site on a student page also be removed. It also checked university policy documents to support its requests. We in no way suggest that this level of activity is disproportionate to the offence caused, Scientologists are fully entitled to work to ensure that material they find objectionable is removed from the Web, and this activist stance may well be in interest of the wider community and other groups under attack on the Web.
Search engines such as Google, rank pages according to the number of links to the page. It is claimed on some Web sites that Scientology pages are massively interlinked, but are linked to little else and that this gives them a high search engine ranking. It is fascinating to speculate on the resultant Web rankings if the Church can also get owners of sites with links to anti-Scientology sites to remove these links - as has been the case here.
Underlying all this are the standard free-speech issues: Scientology portrays its opponents as criminals, psychiatrically disturbed, vicious etc and has won some court cases against them. Its opponents attack Scientology on a whole range of grounds - and also make very extreme claims. Can one satisfactorily block attacks which one sees as both baseless and vicious without limiting the right to free speech that is essential to community functioning? The purpose of this page is to point to what appear to be very interesting activities on the Web related to this issue.
We decided not to include any links to Scientology or anti-Scientology sites to avoid any further offence and suggest that those seeking further information use a search engine. In pointing students and others to pages found by search engines, we should also note that care should be taken with respect to the ownership and authorship of the pages found.