For some time now, there has been a secret war for the top ranking hit when searching Google for scientology. The Scientologists have been using a multitude of microsites to influence their site's ranking, while others have been linking to a popular anti-scientology site using the keyword “scientology“.

The Religious Technology Center and Bridge Publications (parts of the Church of Scientology) have just forced Google to remove almost all the links to xenu.net from their database. According to Google's email, the links were removed because of violation of copyright.

Even though xenu.net have a right to oppose this in court, it seems astounding that Google could be forced to remove information from their databases. After all, the URLs and page titles are already publically available on xenu.net's website, and the rankings are simply Google's opinions on relevance to the search keywords. How is this a violation of copyright against the Church of Scientology on Google's behalf?