From mwharing@cipher.xs4all.nl Sat Sep 16 13:22:44 BST 1995

The following text was posted by Marcel Bullinga <roesderz@xs4all.nl>,
chairman of DB.NL (Dutch EFF) after discussion on the DB.NL-mailinglist.
The translation was done by me (Martin Haring <mwharing@cipher.xs4all.nl>)
I am a member of DB.NL and fully support this declaration.


 DB.NL (Dutch EFF) condemns attacks on freedom of speech by Scientology
 ======================================================================

On September 5, The Church of Scientology seized the computers of the Dutch 
Internet Provider XS4ALL (`Access for All').
Their motive: one of the XS4ALL users had a document in his Web-structure
which criticized the practices of the CoS.
During the raid XS4ALL rightly refused to remove this information from
its system. This was done --- for understandable reasons --- by the XS4ALL
user himself, who replaced the information by a link to the same
document on an English system.

DB.NL condemns the raid for the following reasons:
 1) An Internet Provider is not responsible for the opinions of its users.
 2) Scientology seems to misuse the argument of copyright to silence
    its criticizers on a worldwide basis, and thus infringe on the freedom
    of speech on the Net.

DB.NL:
 1) Supports XS4ALL and the XS4ALL-user in question wherever possible.
 2) Asks the network-users to create a link to the document in question,
    as in our opinion information should be free. Everybody must be
    able to form his/her own opinion based on the facts. The URL is:
    http://mail.bris.ac.uk/~plmlp/scum.html
 3) Will create such a link on its own Web-pages.


Digitale Burgerbeweging Nederland
E-mail: db.nl@xs4all.nl
Web: www.xs4all.nl/~db.nl/