Cinematical reports that the Church of Scientology are bringing their hurt feelings to bear against a ScienTOMogy - a website that parodies Tom Cruise’s increasingly bizarre behaviour.

The New Zealand based site has been served with a cease-and-desist letter threatening lawsuits of up to US$100,000 if the domain name ownership is not transferred.

Although the site starts with a disclaimer (”Obviously this website has ABSOLUTELY NO connection whatsoever with the Church of Scientology, its affiliated organizations or, needless-to-say, Tom Cruise. It is designed for commentary and criticism within the limits of Free Speech. All content should be treated as opinion and all trademarks/copyrighted material herein are owned by their respective trademark owners. “) the Scientology lawyers are claiming that the word “ScienTOMogy” is a trademark violation.

This is not the first time that the Church of Scientology have tried to gag its critics. It previously made headlines when it used the US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove www.xenu.net, a site critical of Scientology, from Google’s listings. In the past the church has been accused of suing all those who oppose their views rightly or wrongly simply as “nuisance suits” aimed at eventually driving the critic into silence.

And, on the subject of nuisance…

Apart from Ava’s numerous email’s and faxes about their trademark claims re http://www.scientomogy.info (which I do not consider harassment), it seems the local chapter of the Co$ has decided to begin a non stop barrage of phone calls, emails, and visits to my home - at any hour day or night.

The phone calls are always from a prepaid cellular phone and they’ve used plenty of different numbers, normally at night from 8pm till midnight. The first few I was stupid enough to answer but now they just call and call and call. When I did speak to “a church member here in Auckland” he kept insisting over and over that we meet to talk about my “vendetta” with the church… I explained that my site is about Mr Cruise not the church and that was extremely clear - and all correspondence was to be through my lawyers and Ava - there was nothing else to say.

Then the visits to my home started. Now I have security cameras stationed at my front door and driveway entrance so I have never answered the door and therefore cannot be certain it is the church… but they have my home address and in 8 months of living here never had unsolicited callers - especially almost daily!

Though when I do meet these guys at least I’ll know them from the footage! Interesting thing is… Last census showed only approx. 200 Scientologists in the whole of NZ!! So, I wonder what’s next???

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