1.	One of the hazards of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or DMCA, came home today, in a decision by the leading search engine, Google, to ban a site that's critical of the Church of Scientology. The net-effect is that a search for the term Scientology will only yield links to sites that are controlled by the church itself.
2.	How it works. The DMCA has a provision for copyright violations. If a party believes its rights are being infringed, in this case the Scientologists, they can send a demand to an ISP anywhere in the chain of access for the offending material, in this case Google (a bit of a stretch, since Google is hardly an ISP), and if the ISP complies, they cannot be held liable for the infringement.
3.	The site that's being blocked, xenu.net, is in Norway, so they are not subject to the DMCA. The Scientologists can't shut the site itself down because it's outside the US. So they sent a demand to Google, which is based in California, and they complied with the request to remove the content from their index. Now, according to the DMCA, the accused infringer has the right to demand that Google reinstate the content, but there's a catch, if they do, they then would have to agree to the juristiction of the US courts.
4.	Now to the question of whether there's a copyright violation. I've reviewed the site. If there's an infringement it's not very easy to find, and it's clear that the purpose of the Xenu site is to present an alternate view of Scientology. There's no doubt that this is free speech. Yes, it's in Norway but the Internet is pretty seamless about national boundaries. It's written in English. It's got good data, and a point of view. People who want to know more about Scientology and look on Google won't find it. That's wrong.
5.	We're getting the first real demo of a nightmarish scenario, a constitutional one, set up by the DMCA. And it looks like it's going to get much worse before it gets better. See the next section.