War of Words over Cruise Site
Wed Oct 19, 7:49 PM ET
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.
In an interview with One News in his native New Zealand, the site’s Glen Stollery was not exactly admitting defeat. Stollery said he planned to hold onto the ScienTOMogy moniker (the church had requested to be transferred ownership of the URL).
“There’s nothing wrong with what I’ve done,” Stollery told One News. “It makes it very clear it’s not a Scientology site.”
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.
What Kobrin called a fairly “routine” trademark issue became a fairly big news story this week when ScienTOMogy went public with the battle.
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. No word on how Mel Gibson is taking to PassionofCruise.
