Yes, you probably annoy me.
The
eBay/Scientology Affair.
The Ebay-Scientology Imbroglio
Making fun of scientology is
cliché. In fact, it may be the only thing on the internet more cliché than
talking about how much you can’t wait to see Snakes on a Plane.
But joking aside, I’m talking
about an insidious cult that controls people mentally and financially, forcing
them to depend on them for all aspects of their lives. But enough about Ebay, I
should probably also mention something about Scientology.
Anyway. Let me preface this all
by saying this article deals with scientology and their ridiculous devices and
stories. I’m going to assume that you are familiar with them and all their
jargon, if you aren’t go read the wiki and don’t bother reading this since you
might not understand why something is funny.
Now onto a story so frightening,
just hearing the rough details will chill you to the core.
In the distant, hazy past of
September 2005, I was informed that Ebay doesn’t let people sell E-meters. I
couldn’t understand why. You can sell microwave ovens on eBay. You can sell
and buy the components to make a very powerful bomb. You can even buy a used
Ford Taurus station wagon with high mileage or something equally
self-destructive. For the life of me, I couldn’t fathom why it is that E-meters
are against eBay policy. They aren’t medical devices. They don’t produce
harmful communications interference. For fuck’s sake, according to the U.S.
government E-meters don’t actually do anything! How can a piece of plastic and
metal that doesn’t actually function in any meaningful way be illegal to sell?
One person I asked about told that
it isn’t sellable on Ebay because it’s considered a religious item. A quick
Ebay search for the word “Jesus” quickly proved his theory of a ban on
devotional objects quite wrong. No one else had any kind of remotely plausible
answer. Of course, being a clever guy- I rank myself somewhere between
Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew on the cleverness scale- I knew something
shady was afoot. When presented with a mystery, I cannot resist investigating
it.
Motivated and prepared I set down
to work: I decided I would set a trap for them. I found a cardboard box and
hastily scrawled the word “e-meter” on the side in sharpie marker, and then drew
on some ramshackle knobs and the complimentary gizmos. With my high quality,
American made E-meter I was in an entrepreneurial mood and I went to Ebay in
high spirits.
It took me a few minutes to craft
the perfect auction to hawk my wares. Since I suspected the vilest of
treachery, I saved the full html of the auction for posterity. You can see a
mirror of it here.
As you can see, it may be the
greatest work of comedic genius since the last thing you read that I wrote.
Unless Steve Gutenberg comes out of retirement, you can be sure it won’t be
topped anytime soon.
Before long, word spread far and
wide across the information superhighway and my auction got enough hits that
Ebay took notice. The auction was taken down! I couldn’t believe it was true.
I fully expected Ebay to explain themselves to me. Here is the first email they
sent me.
Dear xxxxxxxxxxxx (danielschmitz@gmail.com),
**PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT EMAIL REGARDING YOUR LISTING(S)**
We would like to let you know that we removed your listing:
5805518376 L. RON HUBBARD* BRAND SCIENTOLOGY INSPIRED E-METER
because an intellectual property rights owner notified us, under penalty of
perjury, that your listing infringes the rights owner's copyright, trademark, or
other rights.
We have credited any associated fees to your account. We have also notified the
bidders that the listing(s) was removed, and that they are not obligated to
complete the transaction.
If you relist this or any other similar items on eBay, your account likely will
be suspended.
If you believe your listing was ended in error, or have questions regarding the
removal of this listing, please contact the intellectual property rights owner
directly at:
Religious Technology Center
ampaquette@aol.com
eBay is available to answer questions, but since it is the intellectual property
rights owner that requested the removal of your listings, we encourage you to
contact them first.
For more information on the VeRO Program, and a list of rights owner About Me
pages, please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/vero-removed-listing.html
http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/vero-aboutme.html
Thank you for your cooperation.
Regards,
Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
eBay Inc
How sinister! Apparently someone
with an AOL.com email address at the “Religious
Technology Center” holds a copyright on E-meters and
says I’m not allowed to sell them.
So the fuck what? Michael Jackson
owns the copyright to his music but I can sell all my old cassettes of
History if I feel like it. I’m sure Warner Bros owns the rights to my
Batman and Robin DVD, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sell it on Ebay. Something
else is afoot here beyond copyright law.
For those of you who aren’t aware,
the RTC is one of the many dummy corporations for the Church of Scientology.
Real religions don’t actually sue people who talk about them negatively, or who
infringe on copyrights (do real religions even have copyrights?). Well the
Church of Scientology has set up a bunch of legally unaffiliated (read:
affiliated) corporations and non-profit organizations to fight their battles for
them and to direct as much of the hostility away from the Church itself, and
these RTC pin heads are one of them.
How afraid am I of the RTC? Well
let’s see, the head of the RTC has a FUCKING AOL.COM EMAIL ADDRESS! So clearly
I was dealing with some heavy hitters and individuals with serious clout.
I decided I would pursue the issue
further with Ebay before confronting the long, tentacled arms of Scientology. I
fired off a reply to Ebay asking them to give me a rational reason why they
canceled the auction. I pretty much called their shit out completely…
Message: Hello. My name is Daniel and I was selling an L. Ron Hubbard* Brand
E-Meter.
This auction was canceled for some reason, I would like to know why.
I know you cannot give me a rational answer. You cannot say that religious
items are banned, because people sell christian crosses and other religious
items all the time. You cannot say that selling e-meters are banned because
they contain "trade secrets" because as far as I know, Microsoft X-boxes also
contain patented technology and they are quite legal to sell.
The only rationale you have to offer is that you are afraid of the
Scientologists; you are afraid that a crazy cult is going to sue you, even
though we both know their case against you would have no merit.
So please, explain to me why this is illegal to sell. Just admit to me you are
afraid of them and this is the last you'll hear from me about it.
Thank you,
Daniel Schmitz
Ebay member since 1999.
I didn’t expect they would answer with anything which satisfied my question. How right I was!
Hello Daniel,
Thank you for writing eBay.
We removed your listing because the rights owner reported your listing
to us as infringing their rights. When we receive these requests from
rights owners through our VeRO Program we are obligated to remove the
listings they specify.
As you know, eBay has not inspected the item you have listed. Nor do we
have enough information about your item to make any judgment as to
whether it is authorized. In addition, eBay is not an expert in the
rights of any third parties. As a result, we are not in a position to
make a judgment as to whether the item you have listed is authorized or
legal.
eBay values you as a member of the eBay community, and recognizes that
on occasion an auction may be ended in error or due to
misidentification. To help you better understand why a rights owner
might have asked that your listing be removed, we have encouraged
members of our Verified Rights Owners Program to create their own "About
Me" pages. This may help answer some questions you have. The link below
will take you to current "About Me" Pages:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/programs-vero-ov.html
If the rights owner that requested the removal of your item is listed on
the above page, we encourage you to review their 'About Me' page. We
realize that there may be other questions that the 'About Me' page
doesn't answer. Therefore, we also ask VeRO members to be available to
answer your questions and clear up any errors or misunderstandings. We
encourage you to contact them directly at the following email address:
ampaquette@aol.com with any concerns or questions you may have regarding
how, or why they determined that your listing infringed their rights.
If you contact the rights owner and do not hear back, or if you have
made a good faith effort to resolve the issues with the rights owner but
are unable to do so, please contact us by replying to this email and
explain your situation. We will make an effort to contact the rights
owner to resolve any differences.
For more information about infringing items and eBay's VeRO Program,
please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/vero-program.html
Thank you for your time.
Regards,
Ernie
VeRO Team
eBay Trust & Safety
Translation: someone sent us a
threatening email saying their “rights” had been violated and so rather than
actually figuring out if they had any merit in their case at all, we went ahead
and did what they said.
This is complete and utter
bullshit. Any company or group can write to ebay and say that an auction
violates their rights and ebay will take action without even bothering to
investigate? That is ridiculous.
Not to mention, they passed the
buck off to the RTC and their cohorts at AOL.com. There was only thing left to
do: contact these fuckers.
I contacted my legal team and
constructed this high powered letter to send to the cyberspace mailing address
of the RTC.
From : Daniel Schmitz <danielschmitz@gmail.com>Sent : Monday, September 19, 2005 9:47 AM
To : ampaquette@aol.com
Subject : Ebay Item 5805518376
Hello Smurf and/or Smurfette,
I see you have caused ebay to remove my
auction due to some program ebay has for copyright holders to protect their
copyright. Please tell me, how is your copyright being violated by me selling a
piece of property which I already own?
I presume you do not have any idea what the
First Sale Doctrine is. Allow me to explain it.
The first-sale doctrine is an exception to
copyright codified in the US Copyright Act, section 109. The doctrine of first
sale allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e. sell or give away) a particular,
legally acquired copy of protected work without permission once it has been
obtained. That means the distribution rights of a copyright holder end on that
particular copy once the copy is sold.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#109
That is a direct link to the statute on the
government's site.
Since that thoroughly discredits your whole
arguement I will use the remainder of this email to express my dissatisfaction
with you. I do not believe your arguement will hold up in court, as I know for
a fact mine will, since I have looked at First Sale Doctrine case law. What is
the big, trade secret that you are protecting? Is the fact that E-METERS DON'T
DO ANTHING? Or the fact that your psuedo-religious brainwashing pyramid scheme
relies on legal threats and lies to remain in operation?
Please let me know how you plan on handling
this before I decide to go to the authorities.
Your Baby's Daddy,
Dzan
As you can see I
did my homework. The first sale doctrine is legit. You are allowed to sell any
item you legally own, regardless of who owns the copyright to it. I am allowed
to sell any of the music CDs or DVDs I own, regardless of their copyrights. And
thus, I am allowed to sell my cardboard box with “e-meter” drawn on the side. I
didn’t expect a reply since I am just me, and they are a giant monolithic entity
with an AOL.com email address.
What I got was
better than nothing, though not by much.
From : AMPaquette@aol.com
Sent : Monday, September 19, 2005 12:46 PM
To : danielschmitz@gmail.com
Subject : Re: Ebay Item 5805518376
Dear
Sir/Madam:
To answer
your question, an E-meter, or "Hubbard electrometer,"is a Scientology religious
artifact used by a Scientology minister to assist the minister in locating areas
of spiritual travail. E-meters are manufactured and sold by Church of
Scientology International. The words Scientology and E-Meter are trademarks of
the Scientology religion, which are owned by Religious Technology Center.
Scientology and E-Meter are registered trademarks. RTC would never give consent
for such a use of the trademarks, because sales of E-meter religious devices
through eBay do not meet the requirements of federal law.
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia have ruled that E-meter religious
devices may only be used by Scientology ministers "for use in bona fide
religious counseling." As a result of this case, E-meter religious artifacts
bear the following label:
By itself, this meter does nothing. It is solely for the guide of Ministers
of the Church in Confessionals and pastoral counseling. The Electrometer is not
medically or scientifically capable of improving the health or bodily function
of anyone and is for religious use by students and Ministers of the Church of
Scientology only.
As the Mother Church of the Scientology religion, CSI ensures that e-meters are
sold only to Scientology ministers or those who are in training to provide
ministerial services. eBay and its subscriber are not qualified to screen
purchasers.
I trust this answers your question.
Sincerely,
Ava Paquette
Moxon &
Kobrin
Boy, that was hard to read, wasn’t
it? They seem to imply that the government won’t let them sell the E-meters,
though if you read carefully you’ll see that isn’t the case.
They blatantly misconstrue the
meaning of the Federal warning label: they imply the label exists to ban people
from using them other than themselves. What the label exists for in reality is
to tell people that Scientologists aren’t allowed to make ridiculous claims
about its powers when they use it. There is no implication that I can’t touch
or operate pr own one. The point is that they aren’t allowed to claim it has
medical powers. Their not so clever use of quote marks in that sentence creates
a fictitious double meaning that isn’t legitimate.
If you know me, you would know
that I wouldn’t let this affair end on that note. I wrote this reply to that
baloney…
To whichever colored Mighty
Morphin’ Power Ranger this may concern,
Actually, your previous email does not answer my
question. Who is and who isn't "qualified" to use a piece of machinery that
"does nothing" does little to change the fact that the reason eBay removed the
auction has to do with COPYRIGHTS and not RELIGION. eBay does not have any
policy, as far as I can tell, against selling religious items.
Your only arguement borders upon legally
defensible is some claim of copyright violation on my part. However, I believe
your legal ground there to be dubious at best. Again, I suggest you familiarize
yourself with United States copyright law. According to the First Sale Doctrine
I have the right to sell ANY property that I legally own, regardless of any
copyright. If I own a non-registered piece of property, I am entitled to
dispose of it however I see fit. As an example, I own the DVD set of Xena the
Warrior Princess. Although 20th Century Fox have a copyright on
those DVD, I am entitled to sell them without Fox having any sort of say on the
matter.
Please do read this link from the government
copyright website. Your copyright protection ends as soon as the item becomes
my legal possession. End of story.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#109
Clearly, you have no leg to stand on. I am going
to contact eBay about your fraudulent cancelation of my auction on ficticious
legal grounds, and have my auction reinstated. Good day to you, and good day to
Xenu.
Daniel Schmitz
Apparently, Ava Paquette could not
summon forth Moxon and Kibrin or any other extra-terrestrial legal advisor for
that matter, since she has not written me a reply.
Did I win? I don’t know. I took
both eBay’s and Scientology’s failure to address my argument as an admission of
defeat. On the other hand, my auction didn’t get reinstated either.
What did I accomplish? Hard to
tell. We all knew already scientology was ridiculous and capable of underhanded
actions so that wasn’t a huge revelation. This episode did manage to reveal
what a spineless, pathic entity eBay is. They aren’t willing to stand up for
what’s right against the “Religious Technology Center” so imagine what would
happen if eBay was challenged by a group with actual clout or a lawyer with
legal credibility.
I hope anyone that reads this and
happens to own eBay stock sells it ASAP.
Contact me.
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