Church Chafes at Net Access
Scientology Meant Texts for Chosen Few

By Diego Ribadeneira, Globe Staff
07/25/96

The Church of Scientology considers its most secret texts so sacred that only members who are spiritually prepared by having paid thousands of dollars for training sessions are allowed to view them.

Church doctrine warns that those reading the documents - written in dense jargon and containing stories about global empires and exploding volcanoes - without being spiritually ready could become ill or even die.

But today the secret writings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard are out and available to anyone with a computer, a modem and access to the Internet.

And the Church of Scientology, which counts among its members celebrities like John Travolta and Tom Cruise, has become engaged in a massive electronic and legal campaign to safeguard the privacy of its texts, saying they are protected by copyright laws. The campaign has included raids on homes of Scientology critics and seizures of computers and computer disks.

The Internet, meanwhile, has become a battleground, with church supporters and critics exchanging heated electronic volleys. Observers of the Internet struggle say now that the documents have become so readily available that the church stands to lose some of its appeal and a source of income.

"Why would anyone pay any money to see something that's free on the Internet?'' said Steve Hassan, who runs a cult information organization in Cambridge.

It all began in July 1991, when Scientology critic Scott Goehring formed an Internet newsgroup, alt. religion.scientology, which quickly gave birth to other news groups and web sites devoted to discussions and debates about the religion.

Soon others began posting the secret Scientology writings, which became part of the public record in a Los Angeles trial involving the church.

Critics of Scientology say the church is using copyright infringement as an excuse to target detractors, who have accused Scientology of brainwashing and coercing members and forcing them to pay large sums of money for books and courses.

"It's a wonderful anomaly to deal with a religion that holds itself out as having the ultimate truth but really doesn't want to make it available,'' said Herbert Rosedale, a New York attorney and president of the American Family Foundation, an organization that studies cults. "It would be as if the Catholic Church came out and decided that it was going to prevent anybody from reproducing the text of the Mass without paying the church a royalty.''

Rosedale and other legal analysts say it is unclear whether the Scientology texts that have been electronically posted are protected by existing copyright laws.

"There are valid intellectual property and copyright concerns involved here,'' Rosedale said. "They fall in the gray area, and is a situation in which laws have not kept up with technological advances.''

Some of Hubbard's writings provide the background for Scientology's foundation. The religion was founded in 1954 by Hubbard, a former science fiction writer. It is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service and says it has 8 million members worldwide, although critics say the figure is much lower.

Scientology says it can provide spiritual healing to cure a wide range of phsyical and psychological ills. Among church teachings is a belief in reincarnation across billions of years and billions of galaxies.

According to the Hubbard writings available on the Internet, human suffering can be traced back 75 million years, when galactic spirits banished to Earth were blown up by hydrogen bombs. The spirits invaded humankind, leading to all of humanity's ills.

Scientology officials say the dissemination of Hubbard's secret writings - other than those that have been published in books, including the best seller "Dianetics'' - not only violates the copyright and trademark rights but also infringes on the church's freedom of religious expression.

"This belief is as fundamental to the Scientology religion as the belief in resurrection is to Protestants, as a literal interpretation of the Bible is to fundamentalist Christianity, as strict adherence to dietary laws is to certain Jewish sects or as a belief in the absolute sanctity of life is to devout Catholics,'' according to a church statement that is part of an Internet site Scientology has established to explain its position on the distribution of Hubbard's writings.

Websites that feature both sides of the Church of Scientology and the Internet controversy can be found at the following addresses:

http://www.theta.com/relfreedom

http://www.scientology.org

http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html

This story ran on page a3 of the Boston Globe on 07/25/96.

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