The War between Scientology and the Internet

  • Skeptic Magazine article: Scientology v. the Internet by Jim Lippard and Jeff Jacobsen
    Why is the battle between Scientology and the Internet being waged so fiercely? Why the Internet? This article from Skeptic magazine will answer your questions; it shows what's happened on the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology within the past year, why so many people are opposing Scientology, and what the organization did to provoke the wrath of the Net.

  • Westword newspaper article: Showdown in Cyberspace by Alan Prendergast
  • Followup article by Alan Prendergast: Hunting Rabbits, Serving Spam: The Net Under Seige
    This piece, published in the Colorado free newspaper Westword, tells the story of the August 1995 raid on Arnie Lerma, Larry Wollersheim, and the FACTNet BBS. It also tells the story of the Fishman Affidavit, its appearance on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology, and Scientology's efforts to try to stop it from being spread across the Internet.

  • The Net Magazine article: Never Defend, Always Attack by Jeroen Pietersma
    After a team of Scientologists attempted to seize the computers of XS4ALL in the Netherlands, a Dutch reporter decided to find out just what was going on between Scientology and the Internet. This story from the European magazine gives a good synopsis of how the battle rages on. This article was translated from Dutch to English, so you may find the writing style a bit confusing.

  • Ron Newman's page: The Church of Scientology vs. the Net
    If you haven't read this page yet, go there immediately. My good friend Ron Newman has built an extensively researched page containing a amazing amount of research material on the war being waged by Scientology against the Internet, as well as a tremendous archive of newspaper and magazine articles covering the debacle. Anyone doing research into Scientology's background will find this site invaluable.

  • F.A.C.T.Net - Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network
    The FACTNet BBS was founded in late 1993, so that its members could distribute useful information about Scientology via modem to those who needed it. The BBS operators promised full Net access by early 1995, but this never happened because the Church counter-attacked. It hit the operators, employees, relatives, and just about anyone connected with FACTNet with lawsuits, and threatened lawsuits against any company that did business with them (such as Mailboxes Etc., because they sent out faxes). Mysterious figures stalked and intimidated FACTNet members and employees, and they attempted to infiltrate and sabotage the BBS. FACTNet put out an appeal for help on the Internet, and much of the material on the BBS was distibuted to the Net where it could not be contained. In August of 1995, Scientology lawyers obtained a search warrant and raided FACTNet's headquarters using the excuse that Larry Wollersheim (director of FACTNet) was about to engage in "dissemination of copyrighted trade secrets" to the Internet. A week after this raid, a court ruling forced the lawyers for Scientology to allow their search for "copyright violations" to be supervised by Wollersheim's own lawyer, and they had to return his materials to him. Details surrounding this raid have ignited a storm of outrage and media coverage. FACTNet has set up a Web page covering the latest bulletins in this case:
    The F.A.C.T.Net 3 Defense Fund Home Page

  • alt.religion.scientology Week In Review
    The intensity of the war between Scientology and the Internet has turned alt.religion.scientology into one of the busiest newsgroups on the entire Net. Traffic on the newsgroup now ranges in the hundreds of messages per day, and this can make it difficult to keep track of the latest happenings. Fortunately, Rod Keller has been doing most of the dirty work for us, and his findings are neatly summarized in his Week In Review postings. Check out this link to learn of the latest happenings on alt.religion.scientology. The Week in Review is also mirrored at this site in Germany.

    alt.religion.scientology FAQs

    Alt.religion.scientology used to have two "official" FAQ files, one promoting Scientology and one debunking Scientology. After the online battle became a full-scale war in February, the Church of Scientology stopped posting its pro-Scientology FAQ. The members of alt.religion.scientology believe that the newsgroup was officially declared an "enemy" of Scientology at that time, and all Scientologists were officially forbidden from reading the newsgroup. By ceasing to post the "official" Scientology FAQ, the Church of Scientology can now refuse to acknowledge the existence of alt.religion.scientology. In the absence of any official sources of information on Scientology on the newsgroup, Rod Keller has compiled his own alt.religion.scientology FAQ.

  • Scientology Acronym/Terminology FAQ v2.6
    In addition, Martin Hunt has compiled an online dictionary of terms used by Scientologists. This is necessary because the Church of Scientology has its own unique language of strange terms that make the actions and orders of Scientology nearly incomprehensible to new readers. NOTE: This file is 120K in size, and it may take a while to load with some Web browsers. You may want to consider storing this on disk, so that you can browse it at your leisure.