Fishman Affidavit

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The Fishman Affidavit is a set of court documents submitted by ex-Scientologist Steven Fishman in 1993 in the federal case, Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz.

The Affidavit contained criticisms of the Church of Scientology and substantial portions of the Operating Thetan course materials.

Contents

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. Along with Kendrick Moxon and Laurie Bartilson, Timothy Bowles was one of the lead attorneys for the Church of Scientology in the case[1].

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.[2][3]

As evidence, Fishman submitted course materials he said that he purchased from Ellie Bolger, a fellow Scientologist, and Richard Ofshe, an expert witness for his defense. The Church says the documents were stolen and considers them to be copyrighted and a trade secret, except for the OT VIII material, which is rejected as inauthentic.[4] Among other materials, the affidavit contains 61 pages of the allegedly trade-secret and copyrighted story of Xenu.

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.

CSI v. Fishman and Geertz was settled in 1994.[5]

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[6]. 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[6]. 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.[7] 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 brought suit on copyright violation grounds for reproducing the source material, and claimed rewordings would reveal a trade secret. In 2003, Spaink won the case, with the court holding that her quotation of Scientology works was acceptable and expressing concern about Scientology's attempts to prevent discussion of its doctrines.[8] The ruling also reversed earlier decisions affecting hyperlinking[9].

Critics of the church have accused it of intentionally using lawsuits in these and other cases as SLAPP suits, intended to silence their opposition. Critics of Steven Fishman have produced the affidavit of Kenneth D. Long, dated 10 April 1991, which states that Fishman was mission public who did a few introductory courses, never worked for the Church or CCHR, and did not get any auditing or do any courses at Miami Org, contrary to his claims[10]. A former Scientologist and frequent witness in anti-Scientology litigation, Vicki Aznaran, has given a declaration in which she states various allegations made by Steven Fishman and other church critics are untrue[11], contradicting her previous declaration given in CSI v. Fishman and Geertz.[12]

  1. ^ Gonnet, Roger (1998). La secte: secte armée pour la guerre. Alban, 212. ISBN 2911751043. 
  2. ^ Behar, Richard. "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power", Time, 1991-05-06. Retrieved on 2007-04-09. 
  3. ^ Ortega, Tony (1999-12-23). Double Crossed. Phoenix New Times. Village Voice Media. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
  4. ^ Court TV Library. Court TV Online Legal Documents. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
  5. ^ Garcia, Wayne (1994-07-07). Church of Scientology settles suit with PR firm. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
  6. ^ a b Civil Action No. 95-1107-A. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
  7. ^ "OT III Scholarship Page". David S. Touretzky. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
  8. ^ Grossman, Wendy M. (2003-09-12). The mills of Xenu grind exceeding slow. The Inquirer. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
  9. ^ "Hyperlinks remain legal after Scientology defeat". ZDNet UK. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
  10. ^ [1] Affidavit of Kenneth D. Long, April 10, 1991
  11. ^ [2] The Declaration of Vicki Aznaran
  12. ^ [3] The Declaration of Vicki Aznaran in CSI v. Fishman and Geertz, 4 April 1994.

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