Scientology and the Internet

Scientology and the Internet" refers to a number of disputes relating to the Church of Scientology's efforts to suppress material critical of Scientology on the Internet through the use of lawsuits and legal threats. In late 1994, the Church of Scientology began using various legal tactics to stop distribution of unpublished documents written by L. Ron Hubbard. The Church of Scientology is often accused of barratry through the filing of SLAPP suits. The official church response is that its litigious nature is solely to protect its copyrighted works and the unpublished status of certain documents.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 argue that the church is a scam and that these secretive writings are proof, or that the documents contain evidence that the Church of Scientology'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. Critics have said that the Church of Scientology is abusing copyright law by launching lawsuits against outspoken critics of the organization.


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". Although the Xenu story was 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; 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 The lawyers described the documents as "copyrighted, trademarked, unpublished trade secrets", and the distribution of the materials as a violation of copyright law and trademark law.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.