Scientology In 1995 members of the
Church of Scientology caused a raid on the servers of Dutch Internet provider XS4ALL as part of a
bigger conflict with its online critics and sued it and
Karin Spaink for copyright violations because of citing out of some confidential materials of Scientology. A summary judgment followed in 1995, full proceedings in 1999, an appeal in 2001 which has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Netherlands in December 2005, all in favor of the provider and Karin Spaink, putting freedom of speech above copyright in some cases. From these days there is also a relationship with
NGO Bits of Freedom, an organisation promoting Freedom of Speech: BoF was a strong supporter for Karin in her fight with Scientology. A video appeared from
anonymous featuring the office building of XS4ALL.
Station B92 In December 1996, XS4ALL put the
Belgrade radio station
B92 online using streaming audio technology in response to the jamming of its broadcasts by the regime of
Slobodan Milošević. XS4ALL installed a leased line to the radio station in response to a request from Adriënne van Heteren, a Dutch citizen who went to Belgrade to set up various cultural activities. After XS4ALL had launched the online broadcast of Radio B92, its signal was picked up by the
Voice of America and
BBC World Service and transmitted back into Serbia, where it was then also transmitted via several local radio-stations. XS4All opened up their—still existing—dial-in modems to give people from Egypt direct access to the open internet. Because international telephone connections from Egypt to the rest of the world were not blocked, people could dial into the modems in
Amsterdam and from there subsequently log into the internet using username and password
xs4all. When later that year a similar situation arose in Libya, the possibilities of such connections were brought to the attention of protesters in that country. == Corporate culture ==