There are a number of disputes concerning the Church of Scientology's attempts to suppress material critical of Scientology and the organization on the Internet, utilizing various methods primarily lawsuits and legal threats, as well as front organizations. In late 1994, the organization began using various legal tactics to stop distribution of unpublished documents written by L. Ron Hubbard. The organization has often been accused of barratry through the filing of SLAPP suits. The organization's response is that its litigious nature is solely to protect its copyrighted works and the unpublished status of certain documents.
Various critics of the Church of Scientology have characterized the organization as a confidence scam and say that these secretive writings are proof, or that they contain evidence that the organization's medical practices are illegal and fraudulent. Scientology has been convicted of fraud in the courts of several nations, although not those of the United States. Others have said that the organization is abusing copyright law by launching lawsuits against outspoken critics.
alt.religion.scientology
Scott Goehring set up the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology in 1991, partly as a joke, partly for the purpose of informing the public about Scientology. Debate over the pros and cons of Scientology waxed and waned on the newsgroup through the first three years of its existence, and flame wars flared up commonly, as they did on some other newsgroups.
The online battle is generally regarded as having begun with the arrival of Dennis Erlich to alt.religion.scientology in late July 1994. A former high-ranking official in the Scientology organization who had been personally affiliated with L. Ron Hubbard, he caused a number of regular participants in the newsgroup to sit up and take notice.
The Xenu revelation
On December 24, 1994, the first of a large number of anonymous messages was posted to alt.religion.scientology, containing the text of the "secret" writings of Scientology known as the OT Levels (OT stands for "Operating Thetan"). Included among these postings was OT III (Operating Thetan Level Three), which gave L. Ron Hubbard's description of the "Xenu story". The Xenu story had been published in the Robert Kaufman book Inside Scientology: How I Joined Scientology and Became Superhuman in 1972, the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977, and several times in the 1980s in the Los Angeles Times; nevertheless, this action brought on the actions of lawyers representing Scientology, who contacted various newsgroup participants and posted warnings demanding that the unauthorized distribution of the OT writings cease. The lawyers described the documents as "copyrighted, trademarked, unpublished trade secrets", and the distribution of the materials as a violation of copyright law and trademark law.
The first postings of the OT documents were done through an anonymous remailer, and the identity of the person who made them available on the newsgroup was never discovered. However, Dennis Erlich posted replies to these messages on the newsgroup, and his replies contained the entire text of the original messages (including the disputed materials). Scientology's lawyers therefore approached him, declaring that Erlich had re-published the copyrighted works in his newsgroup messages. Erlich's reply to this was to deny their requests to remove his postings from the newsgroup.
Attempt to remove alt.religion.scientology
On January 11, 1995, Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin attempted to shut down the Usenet discussion group alt.religion.scientology by sending a control message instructing Usenet servers to delete the group on the grounds that:
(1) It was started with a forged message; (2) not discussed on alt.config; (3) it has the name "scientology" in its title which is a trademark and is misleading, as a.r.s. is mainly used for flamers to attack the Scientology religion; (4) it has been and continues to be heavily abused with copyright and trade secret violations and serves no purpose other than condoning these illegal practices.
In practice, this rmgroup message had little effect, since most Usenet servers are configured to disregard such messages when applied to groups that receive substantial traffic, and newgroup messages were quickly issued for those servers that did not do so. However, the issuance of the message resulted in increased public criticism of Scientology by free-speech advocates.