Fishman Affidavit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article forms part of a series on Scientology |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
Concepts
|
|||
The Fishman Affidavit is a set of court documents submitted by ex-Scientologist Steven Fishman in 1994 containing criticisms of the Church of Scientology and, controversially, substantial portions of the Operating Thetan course materials.
The documents were brought as exhibits attached to a declaration by Steven Fishman on 9 April 1993 as part of Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz. Fishman told the court that he had committed crimes on behalf of the Church. He also attested that he was assigned to murder his psychologist, Dr. Uwe Geertz, and then commit suicide.
As evidence, Fishman submitted course materials he said that he purchased from the Church of Scientology. The Church says the documents were stolen and considers them to be copyrighted and a trade secret.
Among other materials, the affidavit contains 61 pages of the allegedly trade-secret and copyrighted story of Xenu. Although the Church of Scientology attempted to prevent others from receiving the document by continuously borrowing it, the text of this declaration and its exhibits were scanned, OCR'd and converted to text and posted onto the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology by ex-Scientologist Arnie Lerma. The material was then placed on the World Wide Web by David S. Touretzky.
Lerma's newsgroup posting resulted in the August 1995 raid of his home for copyright violation on the materials, and the resulting lawsuit Religious Technology Center (Scientology) vs Arnaldo Lerma, Richard Leiby, and The Washington Post. The U.S. Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Arnie Lerma had violated the Church's copyrights.
After being posted to the newsgroup, the documents were mirrored on hundreds of websites worldwide. The Church of Scientology responded by suing a number of people and their Internet service providers for copyright infringement. The defendants responded by challenging the church to prove it was actually the copyright holder of the disputed documents. The other notable case in connection with this was against Dutch writer Karin Spaink — the Church bringing suit on copyright violation grounds for reproducing the source material, and also claiming rewordings would reveal a trade secret.
In 2003, Karin Spaink won her legal case against the Church of Scientology in the Netherlands, in what many people have said was a victory for free speech.
Numerous critics of the church have accused it of intentionally using aggressive lawsuits in these and other cases as SLAPP suits, intended to silence their opposition. See Scientology and the legal system.
The Fishman Affidavit contains much text from the old versions of the Operating Thetan levels. The versions of OT I to OT VII in the Fishman Affidavit are considered authentic as the Church of Scientology has brought copyright lawsuits over their release on the Internet.
The OT VIII in Fishman, which refers to Jesus as "a lover of young men and boys", is not considered authentic by the Church of Scientology — not only has the Church stated it is inauthentic and not brought suit over it, but ex-members who reached OT VIII have come forward and concurred. The Church claimed it as a copyright violation in the suit against Arnaldo Lerma, but later said this was an error. Fishman stated that he had obtained his copy of OT VIII from a different source than his copies of the other OT Levels, purchased from a fellow Scientologist.[1]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Press Release by Steven Fishman. A press release by Steven Fishman. Steven Fishman.
- Steven Fishman home page. Home page. Steven Fishman.
- Scientology in the News: Press Office. 2 court cases with regards to the Fishman declaration. Church of Scientology.
- The Fishman Affidavit. Read the full Fishman Affidavit, or go to OT III immediately. Karin Spaink (September 1995).
