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War of Words over Cruise Site
The end is near for ScienTOMogy.
The owner of a Tom Cruise-skewering Website that came under scrutiny from the Church of Scientology for its too-close-for-comfort URL has agreed to change the Web address.
"He said he would change it, so, we're waiting for him to do that," Helena Kobrin, an attorney representing the Church of Scientology, said Wednesday.
As of Wednesday afternoon, ScienTOMogy.info was still a valid address, and according to the site, a more popular than ever destination, thanks to recent headlines over its engagement with Scientology lawyers. But changes appeared to be in the works. A new URL, registered on Oct. 13, also was bringing users to ScienTOMogy's vault of Cruise parody videos.
The new Web address? PassionofCruise.info.
Whatever the URL is, though, the site's Glen Stollery doesn't expect the church of Scientology to be appeased. "Rest assured," Stollery said Wednesday night, "they'll still be pursuing me."
The matter of Scientology versus ScienTOMogy began in September, when a lawyer for the church informed the site that its domain name infringed on the Scientology trademark.
That ScienTOMogy.info featured pictures of Cruise, arguably the world's most prominent Scientologist, in a straightjacket (that's bride-to-be Katie Holmes in matching restraint-wear), and a video of Cruise "kill[ing]" Oprah Winfrey with a powerful electric current, wasn't an issue, the Scientology camp maintained. It was all about the "m"--the lone letter distinguishing ScienTOMogy from Scientology.
"You can't use somebody's trademark, regardless of what you're saying, if you haven't been given permission," Kobrin said.
Stollery, though, doesn't believe trademark concerns are at the heart of the dispute. He believes his site's content is.
"When I started making a fool of what they consider to be the [spokesman] for Scientology," Stollery said, referring to Cruise, "they got a little testy about it."
Stollery said he's been told by church officials in his native New Zealand that if he removed certain anti-Scientology links from the site, the legal posturing would be ended. But Stollery isn't budging. He said he's only adding links, not removing them. He's also refusing to transfer ownership of the ScienTOMogy.info URL to the church, as requested.
ScienTOMogy.info was launched in July in the wake of Cruise's couch-jumping declarations of love to Holmes and dead-serious dialogue about the dangers of prescription drugs. According to the site, it's dedicated to "exposing Tom Cruise's moronic behaviour [sic] in his relentless crusade to promote the cult, Church of Scientology." Mostly, it features clips of Cruise's most controversial TV talk-show stops--Oprah Winfrey, The Today Show, etc.--and several short parody videos.
Legal battles or no, Stollery said running the site has been "a lot of fun."
No word, meanwhile, on how Mel Gibson is taking to PassionofCruise.
(Updated Oct. 20, 2005 at 10:35 a.m. PT.)
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