Category: Stuff in English

Magnusson becomes helpful

Stockholm, January 22, 2001

[Previous installment: McShane compliments Zenon.] WHEN ZENON AND I ENTER the hall after the weekend, Magnusson’s aide is the first person that we meet. While he usually ignores us, he now makes a show of flashing me a big grin. He must have read my previous report, I gather, and is doing his best to disprove my published assessment that he is a Scientologist. As I will soon discover, I am only partially right. There is a bit more to this smile.

9:30

THE COURT RESUMES. Magnusson starts by protesting my presence during last Friday’s closed door sessions. I wrote about these closed-door sessions, he informs the court, and published my notes on alt.religion.scientology. Thus, I broke the confidentiality that RTC tried to maintain with such difficulty, and apart from that, my reports constitute contempt of and defiance to the court that ordered me to maintain secrecy. Hence, Magnusson wants me out in all future closed sessions (such as today’s, when Birgitta Alexandersson, the notary public, will be heard).

Magnusson’s aide, who flashed me a huge smile only minutes ago, gets up and hands copies of my court reports as found on DejaNews to the court and to Zenon. Zenon replies that secrecy is only limited to actual parts of the scriptures discovered within these closed-door sessions, not to anything else, and I did not reveal any of that.

Magnusson sustains his protest. Zenon asks him to what passages exactly he and RTC object. One of them turns out to be the five-liner that Magnusson prevented Zenon from uttering Friday afternoon and which I later quoted as a planned part of Zenon’s plea, but most of all Magnusson protests the defiance that he discerns in the closing sentence of that paragraph: “That’s secrecy for you.” Aren’t I ridiculing the court here?

Zenon explains that this certainly was not information that I learned in a closed session: Magnusson did not allow Zenon to utter these lines and I got them at home, from Zenon himself, from his notes. And what does Magnusson mean by ‘contempt’? I simply pointed out the consequences of Magnusson’s own stance: if Magnusson will not allow Zenon to say something while they are discussing evidence and grounds, he will bring up that same issue in his plea – perhaps even with more vehemence.

It slowly dawns upon me that Magnusson has actually been demanding that I be thrown out of the court room completely, even when the doors are not closed and no secrecy is required. I must no longer be allowed to be here. I have shown gross contempt of court, and have proven myself to be utterly unsuitable and unworthy.

The court tackles the question in slices. They are not sure whether my use of the term “body thetan” in the previous report is justified. There is indeed some secrecy to be maintained, isn’t there? Zenon argues that far before he ever got into a dispute with Scientology in 1996, that word was already being used by other people in public discussions about Scientology. (Actually, he could have informed the court that there even is a Dutch Body Thetan Society, and that the UK can boast an Association to Prevent Cruelty Against Body Thetans.) The court can’t very well prohibit us from using words from the scriptures, can they? If it did, half the English vocabulary would be covered by secrecy. As for Magnusson’s wish that I be dismissed: Zenon needs me; while he is interrogating people he can’t make notes, and he has no other assistance than mine.

The court adjourns. They need to reach a formal decision on Magnusson’s request.

9:50

DURING THE BREAK, Zenon and I discuss the consequences of a negative decision. “I need to have somebody who can make notes and who can shove information at me,” Zenon says. “If the court refuses you any further entrance, I am afraid that I must ask the court to adjourn and reschedule the whole case. Fuck, I can’t do this totally by myself, can I?”

Then again, we understand why Magnusson is doing this. First of all, McShane suddenly finds a rather detailed transcript of his testimony on the net – and as we all know, transcripts such as these are often terribly useful in other people’s court cases. McShane would rather not have them around, especially not where it concerns a closed session. He’d rather not be held accountable elsewhere for what he is saying here. Secondly, there is probably an element of revenge involved. So there I was, not a party in this court case at all, yet allowed to see the OTs and NOTs; probably I am the second non-Scientologist, non-lawyer in the position to officially lay their eyes upon Scientology’s scriptures – Zenon being the first. And thirdly, Magnusson might hope to hamper or cripple Zenon. He is simply being pusillanimous.

We wait for twenty-five minutes for the court to announce its decision. Judging by the amount of time that it takes, and by the no-nonsense behaviour of this court, we assume that the court is carefully reading my two reports and weighing my words.

It’s a rather weird thought that by now three of my articles have made it into this court case: my summary of OT3 has been part of the case for a few years already (in attachment 126), and by now two new pieces have been officially filed.

10:15

THE COURT RESUMES. We are called in to hear their decision. Although I walked a tight line, the court states, they found me neither incapable nor unsuitable to be Zenon’s biträde. There was no contempt of court. I can stay.

I breathe relief. Zenon will not be forced to ask to reschedule. Moreover, while I was vehemently hoping that the court would come across my reports – they do after all not only comment upon McShane’s glitches (oh, how I now wish that I had incorporated all previous known and established security breaches concerning the OTs in my last report; it would have been so edifying), they also present a more social, subjective point of entry than any legal assessment can provide one with – Magnusson has dutifully fulfilled that task for me and has himself formally provided the court with my reports. Thank you, Mr Magnusson; you were most kind.

Then again, I’m quite sure that Magnusson will put the fee for the copies of my a.r.s. reports on Zenon’s legal bill.

10:18 – A procedural discussion starts.

Zenon would like to have the deposition of Ms Alexandersson, the notary public who compared Zenon’s postings and his webpage to RTC’s originals in an open session: he assumes that the procedure of her comparison will be discussed, not the actual contents of the material. The court needs to make another decision. It takes them ten minutes.

10:30 – The court announce their decision: Ms Alexandersson’s testimony will be partly open, and partly under secrecy, just like McShane’s testimony.

10:33 – Birgitta Alexandersson’s deposition

MS ALEXANDERSSON SEATS herself. She is reminded – like McShane was previously – that she is still under oath. She starts by explaining that she is not working as a notary public anymore, and is by now living abroad.

Magnusson: What method did you employ to make the comparison?

Birgitta Alexandersson: 3 steps. We – I and my aide, who is a lawyer – sat down with the material I got the originals from the church, both OT2 and OT3 and NOTs. We compared those to attachment 30, 37, and 126, the diskettes from the bailiff, the material from Panoussis’ hard disk and the documents handed in to the various authorities. With respect to attachment 126 [the monkey OTs], I made a ransom selection and compared those to the originals. They were exact copies.

M: How did you get the originals?

BA: A church official brought them to my office.

10:38 – Start of closed session

Zenon comments that Alexandersson’s aide stays in the court room. Alexandersson says that he helped her to make the comparison and that he knows her notes. Zenon asks why he should be allowed to stay during this closed session. Can’t Alexandersson read from her notes by herself? Does she need help or a souffleur?

The court has a small discussion amongst themselves. In the meanwhile Alexandersson gets quite annoyed and says that she doesn’t care if her aide leaves, so the aide does so before the court reaches a decision. Magnusson tries to retaliate by reminding the court that I am here and am making notes. The court assures Magnusson that I am still bound by secrecy.

Alexandersson produces her notes and from those, she reads what differences and similarities she assessed existed between Zenon’s OT2, OT3 and NOTs and the originals that RTC supplied her with. It takes an hour and a half to do so.

12:17-13:15 – Lunch break.

Zenon questions Alexandersson. He wishes to know how much of OT2 and OT3 was not quoted in the documents that he posted or filed. Alexandersson goes through her notes, but can’t find the answer in them; she exclaims that these notes are old and that she doesn’t remember. She only has her notes to go by. Zenon insists, the answer is quite important to him; Alexandersson gets quite irritated: she has no knowledge apart from what is comprised in her notes, and she doesn’t see why Zenon insists. I, however, understand why he does so: Zenon is trying to show that Alexandersson only compared texts that match and is not telling or does not know how much of the original text was not at all in Zenon’s copies. This is important with regard to the right to quote. Alexandersson finally states that she received the full binders from RTC, the same ones that the court has seen. Taking this into consideration, her account of how big parts were copied doesn’t seem to match the length of the respective materials. End of closed session.

Zenon wants to know how Alexandersson made her selection of the works within attachment 126 that she then compared to RTC’s original NOTs pack. Did she make a random selection? Yes. No. She started at the top of Attachment 126 and then compared each individual Monkey NOT to the NOTs Pack. Since by then she was well acquainted with the originals, she could decide rather quickly which works within Attachment 126 was infringing and which one wasn’t. No, she didn’t go through the whole of Attachment 126; it contained 200 individual texts, she was dead tired and she had agreed with Magnusson that she would hand in her assessment the next morning. Yes, she started at the top and ignored the ones that were fakes. Yes, that is how she assessed that the seven works that she compared were originals. No, the ones that she threw aside she didn’t count. No, she doesn’t remember, it’s too long ago. Yes, she worked her way from the top down.

In the hearings of 1998, Alexandersson twice stated under oath that she had made a random selection from within attachment 126 and that each of those randomly selected works that she compared to he originals, was infringing. According to the investigation protocol she said the same to the prosecutor in the penal investigation case against Zenon. Now she says that she did not select randomly, that everything that at first glance did not appear infringing was cast aside, and that she defined the result of her selection to be her random selection. The court frowns. Alexandersson denies that she ever stated that she made a random selection. The court secretary intervenes: Alexandersson has indeed stated that.

Zenon asks for Alexandersson’s testimony in primary court to be re-heard from the tapes.

13:55 – Mikael Nyström’s testimony.

NYSTRÖM IS THE internet and computer expert who in primary court stated under oath that a series of NOTs postings to a.r.s. – dated May 2, 1996, postings that Zenon disputes he ever made – could not, or could almost not have been falsified. Meanwhile, it has been proven that such a message can be falsified: a few weeks ago a message was posted to a.r.s. having the exact same headers (host name, NTTP-posting host, NTTP-posting user, user, sender, what have you; all from Zenon’s old dodo.pp.se account which has long been closed) and that message was purportedly written by Mikael Nyström. Zenon questions Nyström.

Zenon: can you explain to the court how one identifies a Usenet message?
Nyström: By the IP address (you check whether it exists), the message ID, the NNTP posting host, NNTP posting user, the news server used. You can falsify a few things but not all.

Z: Can you falsify the sender’s address?
N: Yes.

Z: The message ID?
N: That is more difficult, but not impossible. The message ID in part serves as a guarantee for authenticity: it is unique for each message.

Z: Where is such a message ID created?
N: That depends upon the operating system used, and upon the program used. Almost always the message-ID is created by the server.

Z: Do you know if Netscape generates a message ID?
N: I’m not sure with Netscape, but in any case the news server checks the message ID and might modify it.

Z: Which headers are generated from within Netscape, that is: at the client side?
N: The sender name and e-mail address.

Z: What about NNTP posting user and NTTP posting host?
N: These are always generated by the server. Even if the client would add them to a message, the server would strip them off and re-generate them.

Z: Can you falsify NNTP posting user and NTTP posting host?
N: There is some room for falsification, but not much.

Z: So how do you tell where a message come from?
N: By looking at the dial-up and at the posting host, the IP address for the computer, that is: the name for the computer to which you are connected and via which you post.

Z: What does ‘dial-up’ and ‘posting-user’ mean?
N: It tells you which particular user is logged in at this particular moment from which particular dial-up.

Z: If you dial in and post to a newsgroup, are your actions then logged, under normal circumstances?
N: Yes, certainly when you pay per minute of usage at your provider. Paid providers do extensive logging. With free providers, it’s a tad different.

Z: How normal is logging for normal providers?
N: It is even expected of them. When a client for instance abuses the net you must be able to trace him.

Z: So you can look at these logs and then find out who it was?
N: Yes.

Z: Let’s look more closely at this particular message. Can you tell from where it was posted?
N: Yes, by looking at the path, the posting host, the news server.

Z: The path lists all the computers through which this message passed?
N: Yes. Each message passes lots of machines; and here you can see which ones. At news servers, a replication process takes place: news servers check what they have and what they miss, and then exchange on a peer-to-peer basis with one another in order to get a full feed. That is where the message IDs comes in, these are used to check what you have and what you have not.

Z: So, is it correct to say that from this path you can tell…
N: Yes, you can see which way it traveled.

Z: And the dial-up?
N: You can tell that he’s from e.g. Tele2 and dialed in.

Z: Within which limits can you be certain about that?
N: To quite some degree.

Z: [shows Nyström the falsified message]
N: This one says that it came from Swipnet. We know that it is false, the account does no longer exist.

Z: But if you had no clue about its origin and were just presented with this message, would you still say…
N: I can’t be sure. We know that this one is falsified.

Z: How can you falsify a news message?
N: Usually, this is done by injecting it into a news server.

Chair: How do you do that?
N: You contact a news server directly, and you fake a sender and a message ID.

Z: How do you recognise a faked message?
N: You look at the sender, at the message ID and check whether that is plausible, then at the posting host and user, and you look at the path and check whether it is reasonable.

Z: As a system administrator, you can log in everywhere, can’t you, and can’t you inject any message then?
N: Well, if you are a system administrator, basically, you sit with your hands in the cookie jar.

Z: You spoke about news servers pooling their messages and exchanging them. How many news servers are there?
N: Tens of thousands.

Z: If you inject a message in any of them, will that message circulate normally?
N: More or less.

Z: So sysadmins have full possibility to falsify messages?
N: Yes.

Z: In tingsrätt you said that you were 99% sure that this message could not have been falsified. Now you say that it is possible.
N: Erm, it is not impossible.

Z: Can a system administrator inject a Usenet message via his own news server?
N: Yes.

Z: Can an individual do it?
N: Yes.

Z: And an organisation?
N: Yes.

Chair: So it is technically possible?
N: Yes. It can be done. However, the information about how it can be done is now more readily available than it was in 1996. If the court would search the net, I am sure that within five minutes, they would find a course on the net teaching them “How to make a fake posting”.

Z: How can you ensure that a posting is real?
N: By checking the logs that the provider keeps, by checking the telephone numbers that were used for dial-up, by checking who was logged in from where. You would need to have all log files.

Z: Having Tele2’s logs would give you a good chance of proving this?
N: Sure. I would first of all check the dial-up and then see from which telephone line the user phoned in.

Z: Can you fake that?
N: That is very, very difficult. You need to manipulate a really big system, but perhaps when you have lots of money…

15:00 done. Magnusson’s turn.

M: At your Tingsrätt deposition, you said that you had informed yourself about the possibilities to make false postings.
N: I spoke with experts and with Tele2.

M: Can you manipulate posting host and posting user?
N: Sitting at home it is more complicated, but it can be done.

M: And you say that this is easier for a sysadmin to do?
N: Yes, the discussions that I had show that it is possible.

M: Does a firewall make such things more easy?
N: A firewall is meant to bar unwanted requests. It blocks them. We have a few attacks each day on our own systems.

M: Can you fake a posting host or posting user via a firewall?
N: No, you must manipulate them at the server. The firewall is just a guarantee that things don’t get in.

M: Was it easy in 1996 to fake the posting host?
N: The information on how they to do that was less generally available.

M: [speaks about moving copies from the one place to the other; cached copies etc; previously, in primary court, Magnusson had tried to stamp each virtual copy that Zenon’s computer created as a separate instance of infringement]
N: That’s just a technical thing. When you have a file on a medium and you want to move it, you create a copy first and then delete the original. You must always first copy a file when you move it, even if both actions are accomplished with one single command.

M: Newsgroups, can you explain what they are and compare them to homepages?
N: A website is fixed in one place, you copy your files directly to that. Newsgroups get their information from many sources, and the messages jump from server to server to server.

M: If I want to copy text from my computer to a newsgroup?
N: [explains how to do that]

M: Thus, many virtual copies are made of my posting?
N: That is the nature of newsgroups. The Usenet system is not located in one place, it is copied around.

M: How many copies exactly are made of news postings?
N: That depends on how popular a newsgroup is and how often a particular message is requested. They just go to a news server and get replicated from there.

Zenon’s turn again. From now on, Magnusson and Zenon each pose a few question to the witness. It’s almost like a bidding contest.

Zenon: Do you know whether Tele2 demanded authentication on the news server in 1996?
N: I don’t think that they did.

Zenon: As for copies when files are moved: would you say that it is impossible to do without them, that the technical process demands them?
N: Yes.

Magnusson: In primary court, you said that you were 99% sure that it was not possible to falsify a newsgroup message. On what did you base this statement?
N: On talks, discussions, my general knowledge.

Zenon: Have you ever heard of the spamming of newsgroups?
N: Yes.

Z: In May 1996, there was a whole flood of false postings to a.r.s. Do you know that?
N: I know about spam attacks on newsgroups, but I do not know about this one.

15:45 – End of Nyström’s deposition.

The remaining 45 minutes of today’s session are taken up by procedural matters: evidence is listed and compared, and tomorrow’s schedule is decided.

ZENON AND I LEAVE court rather happy. Today’s session went well: we have caught Alexandersson with errors, and Nyström by now has admitted that it is not at all as difficult to fake a posting as he previously stated. Also, we note that Magnusson seems increasingly nervous. Today, we saw him smoking outside. He has never done so before.

When we have our cigarette just at the court’s door, a couple approaches us. The man, fifty-ish, asks who we are. He is looking for Zenon Panoussis. You see, he explains, his grandson has joined Scientology and now he is looking for information about them, and then his lover – he points at the young blonde who is accompanying him – found out about this court case on the net, and since he doesn’t know anybody who is familiar with Scientology, he thought that he had better come to court and ask us to impart our knowledge.

After a few minutes we decide to go to a café to talk.

Once there, we launch upon a one-hour explanation about Scientology, while warning the couple that our information is coloured and that they should check for themselves. They are increasingly unsettled at what we tell them. All your money? Space Opera? Reincarnation? Discipline? Intelligence division? Scientology has been convicted for theft, fraud, infiltration?

Five minutes after we entered, a guy comes in and takes the table next to us. He orders food and a glass of water and consistently stares at the television at the other end of the café. It is right behind us. He stares over our heads and our conversation seems to totally evade him.

I get uncomfortable. We are after all discussing rather weird and outrageous matters in a loud voice, and I know that if I had been sitting next to a table where such a conversation would be conducted, I would listen in a bit, and that my reaction would be visible on my face. Not this guy. He doesn’t bat an eye. Actually, he seems so impervious to our conversation that it becomes suspicious.

I have the feeling that the guy is a Scientology tail.

So does Zenon, as it turns out. The moment the guy gets up to have a leak, Zenon brings him up. And once he says so, the young woman says she has been wondering about his behaviour as well. We decide that once we all leave the café, Zenon and I will dash into a taxi and that the couple will keep an open eye. They might be tailed now as well.

THE NEXT DAY, after court is done and we leave the building, the man with the grandson in Scientology is waiting for us. He wants to tell us that not only did he go to the local Scientology org – to inform himself, as we advised him to do, and to get the other side of the story – but most of all that when he was about to enter the Org, he saw the guy who had been sitting next to us in the café exit the Scientology building.

We are being tailed.

[Unbiased columnism is a series of seven court reports on the proceedings of Scientology versus Zenon Panoussis. This series covers the Jan 2001 sessions. Next: Child games.]

McShane compliments Zenon

Stockholm, January 19, 2001

[Previous installment: Mangled material.] THE SCIENTOLOGY DELEGATION has changed configuration: there are two new guys. One of them is an extra interpreter. Today, McShane will be deposed and he needs a legal interpreter. Neither of the translators are Scientologists; that is apparent from the fact that they speak with us. The only other person who does this is William Hart, McShane’s lawyer. We joke a bit on occasion, especially when we’re outside to smoke. When we ask him whether he is a member of Scientology, Hart plainly states: “No. I am a Jew.” During one of these short conversations he tells us that Scientology is not his only client. He also does work for the MPAA, the Motion Picture Association. “Oh, in that case you must have come across me there as well,” says Zenon, “in the DVD case.” Yes, Bill is indeed doing a DVD case, but not the one Zenon is involved in.

Robin, who is to be Scientology’s main interpreter for the course of these hearings and who herself is no Scientologist, made a rather funny but embarrassing faux pas when she met RTC’s president McShane on the morning of the first hearing. “Oh, I downloaded something about you from the Internet,” she brightly stated. Internet. Wrong. “It concerns another court case that you are involved in, a libel suit. It seems that you lost.” She gracefully hands McShane a copy that he refuses to take. It is of course the infamous Time lawsuit, of which the last part was decided upon only a few days ago. “I don’t know about this one, it is minor,” mumbles McShane. Ouch.

10:30. MAGNUSSON STARTS EXPLAINING his grounds, something that he was asked to save until Zenon would have made his admissions, so that all discussion regarding points that Zenon concedes can be weeded out. Let’s hope that he does indeed skip quite a lot.

Magnusson claims that a copy of Zenon’s homepage from 1996 (containing the Fishman Affidavit) that Zenon filed a few days ago is “new evidence” and “new circumstances”, which should be rejected by the court. As it turns out, RTC itself had filed an identical copy of that same homepage already back in 1996. Exit objection.

Copyrights, transferred after Hubbard’s death as per testament, exclusive license, exclusive rights, RTC, bla bla bla, we know this. Magnusson recites the number of pages that were quoted of OT2, OT3 and NOTs. The Chair asks how the OTs and NOTs were filed at the US Copyright Office. Masked? Magnusson confirms. Was it the *originals* that were masked? Yes. In other words: has the Copyright Office seen the unmasked OTs and NOTs? Yes, of course, and the Copyright Office has even assessed the literary value of the OTs and NOTs, and found them to have dignity of work.

Magnusson is wrong: the Copyright Office has not seen the unmasked versions, as McShane will later on testify. Nice try, no cigar.

DISCUSSION ABOUT IDENTITY. Texts on Z’s hard disk, texts handed in to court.

These works are original, they have merit, they are registered, thus they are copyrightable, Magnusson drones on. Very often, he doesn’t make a statement himself but refers the court to the upcoming deposition of McShane. Zenon objects: first of all, an attorney needs to state his grounds for his claims himself and not let his client do this in a testimony. Secondly, a big part of McShane is going to be held behind closed doors, while whatever pertains to Magnusson’s ground ought to be stated in public. Magnusson continues about the damages that RTC suffered and the legal costs that Zenon has burdened them with.

Magnusson has no sense of humour whatsoever. He speaks in a deadpan voice, he never makes a joke, and what’s more: he hardly reacts when somebody else does. He doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t get inspired, he doesn’t get vehement. The only emotion he shows is embarrassment when Zenon makes at a hole in his legal arguments (and then he laughs, expressing his despair at such a stupid question or remark) or when he finds himself in a fix.

The Chair wants a clarification on a few of Magnusson’s points, or actually, about Zenon’s stance on them. One: the authorship of the OTs and NOTs. Zenon states that the NOTs were actually not written by Hubbard, but by David Mayo. The other point the Chair asks to be clarified is the matter of evidence: Zenon explains that RTC has to prove their copyright and it is up to the court to assess the evidence handed in, not up to Scientology itself, as has been happening up until now. And just showing the OTs and NOTs to the court will not be sufficient: there won’t be any time for a solid comparison, he argues.

ANOTHER DISCUSSION. Thomas Small, a lawyer, testified last time about how he helped to set up the license agreement between CST and RTC and how it was designed. What Zenon never knew and what Small certainly didn’t tell the previous court while he was being heard, was that he was at the time of his deposition actively employed as RTC’s lawyer. Zenon has found some correspondence dated a month after Small’s deposition in the Swedish court, in which he acted as RTC’s lawyer. That fact certainly questions his objectivity – actually, under US law he is not even allowed to say anything that could damage his client.

Magnusson raises the issue, claiming that the new evidence shouldn’t be allowed at all and that if it is allowed, RTC would need to depose Small anew. Nah, says Zenon, we have Small’s boss right here in the court room, we can simply ask whether he employs Small, can’t we? Magnusson mumbles, and then admits that yes, Small was in active duty of RTC while he was deposed in Zenon’s case.

ZENON OBJECTS to the closed doors that we will soon have. Last time, only three words were uttered that RTC actually considers to be confidential. (For your information: those three words were “body thetan” and “cluster”. We can summarise whenever we speak about the actual texts, can’t we? Magnusson hesitates: that could still constitute infringement. Well, if the Catholic Church had copyright to the bible and if I would then proceed to explain about God, heaven and hell, would I then be infringing? Zenon asks. Magnusson hesitates. Zenon has had enough of this. “What I want to say is five lines only, nothing more.” He gets up to Magnusson taking a paper with him. “These five lines is what I want to read.” Magnusson answers that these lines can only be uttered behind closed doors: secrecy has to be maintained. Zenon sits down again, exasperated. It is only a description and an argument, not a quote.

And here are these five lines, verbatim from Zenon’s notes: “The teachings are dangerous. The OTs and NOTs establish that sickness should be treated with auditing. This is also applied on children that do not have their own free will to abstain from medical care but are actually deprived of it instead (Lisa McPherson)”.

Zenon had wanted to expand upon it, explaining about body thetans – but Magnusson had no way to know this. Yet, he forbade Zenon to utter this quote in public. So instead, this will have to come in during the plea, with or without Magnusson’s consent, the only difference then being that Magnusson can’t reply to it. That’s secrecy for you.

11:05 McShane’s deposition starts.

SINCE QUESTIONS are asked in Swedish, translated into English for McShane while his answers are given in English and then translated, I have ample time to write down whatever McShane says. The following is more or less verbatim. The questions are usually left out, since I couldn’t understand them too well. Magnusson is asking questions. I am again – like in the previous hearings – Zenon’s biträde, that is: his legal aide, and I sit next to him.

McShane: I am the president of RTC and I have been an officer and a director of this organisation since 1983.

McShane: I have been employed by RTC since 1983 and became officer and director that same year.

McShane: I became president in 1984.

[How long have you been a member of Scientology?]
McShane: Twenty-seven years.

[What did you do before?]
McShane: I was a businessman, I had a construction company. I left that in 1980.

[Please describe the relation of RTC to the Church]
McShane: Scientology has a hierarchical structure. We have missions, churches, advanced churches, the mother church, and then, on top of that, RTC. RTC licenses the various trademarks and licenses specific advanced churches to use the material.

 
[Comment 1: this is the first time that I hear such a straightforward admission that RTC is not only part of Scientology but also its head. Earlier on, critics had to go at great lengths in order to prove this: that is why the affidavit of Vicky Aznaran, a former RTC officer, was so welcomed years ago. She said the same as McShane now states here: that RTC is the head of the church.]

[Comment 2: he did say “trademarks” and not “copyrights”. I assume this to be a telling slip of the tongue.]

[Comment 3: Larry Wollersheim might have good use for this statement in his efforts to make RTC pay CSC’s debts to him. McShane made it under oath and the entire deposition is on tape.]

McShane: RTC got exclusive licenses from the Hubbard estate in 1988, which gave us the right to distribute the material to the advanced churches and to protect the material against infringements.

[Has RTC taken a stance in other cases?]
McShane: Yes, RTC has brought other cases before court.

[Such as the Dutch case. Why was CST a co-plaintiff in that lawsuit?]
McShane: That was only due to specific law in The Netherlands, so that RTC could not sue by themselves. The licensee in that country couldn’t sue.

McShane: RTC is the only entity that has these rights.

McShane: In the Scientology religion, services are delivered in gradient steps, meaning that a member takes lower levels first and once he has completed them, he can move on to the next. We have two types of services: religious courses, where church members study Mr Hubbard’s texts and learn about them, and religious counselling, which is a service that the church delivers on a one to one basis through its ministers.
At a certain moment, members are eligible to go to higher levels. Of all the scriptures written by Mr Hubbard, circa 95% are publicly available. They can be obtained in the Church bookstores. They are available to the public. A small amount is not available and those are the unpublished, confidential writings by Mr. Hubbard. He mandated that. Unless somebody understands the basic principle, he can’t understand the higher principle contained in the OT material. This mandate is strict.

McShane: This is a matter of our religious tenets, that you need to be spiritually mature. It is hard to compare us to other religions, but other churches also have a similar practice of maintaining secrecy of their more esoteric principles.

[Who can do these higher courses?]
McShane: Only Scientologists who are qualified, not all Scientologists.

McShane: We call them OT levels. It starts with OT1 and it goes up until OT8. 1 and 2 are specifically used in those levels. The member, once he meets the requirements, is then permitted to go on to the next.

McShane: For instance,OT2, when somebody wants to do it, he does the OT2 course and in that course he would study the OT2 materials, and apart from that there is a lot that he would need to do. He has exercises to do, drills to understand, he is supervised. The supervisor ensures that he understands and duplicates the material. OT2 also contains films and tape recordings that are part of the course; they are also confidential. Once the member demonstrates his comprehension, he is allowed to do the OT2 auditing which he does on himself. Once he gets a specific religious result, he is allowed to continue to OT3. There, there is a similar procedure.
Now, as for the NOTs. In Scientology, as I said, we have auditing proceedings developed by Mr Hubbard to address spiritual travails. A member apply those proceedings to himself, under supervision, to oversee him.
NOTs is two things. The NOTs are OT5. It is not a course for the parishioner; it is meant to train ministers of the church to deliver NOTs, processes to members. The member cannot take that course. He never sees the actual NOTs himself.

McShane: The minister who is trained to deliver those processes asks questions designed to address certain spiritual questions.

McShane: In Scientology, we derive our revenues from a fixed donation system. Like other religions demand donations for their services, each one of our services has a fixed donation. The OT-levels too. For the OT3 course, it is 6000 USD. Each level has a specific donation rate.

[How long does it take to complete a level?]
McShane: That depends on the person. OT3, the actual course, could be done in one or two weeks. The counselling could vary from two months to two years.

McShane: NOTs is not a course, it is spiritual counselling, delivered in blocks of time. Twelve and a half hour is one block. There is a fixed donation for such a block. Within NOTs, that is 7000 USD per block.

McShane: We don’t think that that is expensive, but you have to understand that Scientology is a relatively new religion and it costs money to pay our church operations. We have to pay rent and mortgages, we have staff, there is the publication of books, promotion material – there are a lot of expenses involved. And quite some money goes to charity activities: drug rehabilitation, illiteracy programs, disaster relief. It takes a lot of money to keep this going.

[How does one get access to the OTs and NOTs?]
McShane: There are a lot of other requirements needed, apart from donations. For instance, the parishioner needs to have the correct qualifications and has to be of the correct moral character. He has to sign confidentiality agreements and has to agree to particular security precautions. He will be reviewed by RTC before he is, as we call it, invited to do these levels.

McShane: RTC has representatives in each Advanced Organisation and also staff within RTC do these assessments.

McShane: Seven advanced churches, and five specifically deliver OT2 and OT3 and the NOTs.

[What are your security measures?]
[Magnusson brings McShane the binder that contain impressive colour snapshots of RTC’s security system. Zenon protests, whether anything has been secured is irrelevant in this context and, besides, he is not disputing the current security measures. The court allows the evidence anyway and McShane flips through the binder, explaining as he goes along:]

McShane: This binder depicts what all parishioners have to go through. This is the confidentiality agreement. The security arrangements are explained to the parishioner. This is a picture of the course room. The actual binders with the material are plugged into a computer system that actually keeps track of the location of the material. You can unplug the material from its standard place and take them to a table where you study them, and there you plug them in. After you have unplugged a binder, you have thirty seconds to re-plug it elsewhere. If it is still unplugged after thirty seconds, the alarm goes off and all doors are automatically locked.

 
[Comment: and of course McShane is hardly an objective witness in this. The person who designs a security system or who ordered it, is not going to tell you about its fallacies and the holes in it…]

[Has the material ever escaped?]
McShane: In 1983, 3 ex-members of the church disguised themselves as high church officials. They travelled from England to Denmark, where they wouldn’t be recognised, and via a trick – they switched the material – they got the NOTs. Since then the NOTs have surfaced every now and then, and every time we sue, the material has been enjoined.

 
[Comment: McShane doesn’t seem to realise that his story of material having been “switched” in Copenhagen contradicts his previous explanation of the tight and automated security. If the material is not “plugged in to the computer system”, which it won’t be after it has been “switched” – surely you can’t simply open these plugged binders and just take out the pages – the alarms would have gone off and all doors would automatically have been blocked, right?]

[Magnusson hands McShane a price list that Zenon has filed. The OTs and NOTs are advertised there.]
M: These are folders from the advanced organisations and they advertise our specific religious activities, and of course they encourage members to progress.

12:10 – 13:30: Lunch break. Zenon and I prepare for our interrogation.

13:30 – Magnusson continues his deposition of McShane.

McShane: We have always had some security since 1968. The material was always locked; the sets were numbered; as technology progressed, we enhanced our security.

McShane: Before you can sue in the US, you need to have your texts registered with the US Copyright Office. I checked with them how to register while still maintaining secrecy. After some deliberations, they accepted masked copies.

McShane: The Copyright Office has not required nor looked at the unmasked texts. They only saw the first page or two, and accepted the masked versions. I made a carton mask, put those over the pages, and then copied them. Actually, my first attempt at masking them was rejected by the Copyright Office because the mask was too tight. I then made a slightly wider mask, but since you could then on occasion see full words, even confidential words, I proceeded to strike these with a black marker.

McShane: OT2 consists of 27 works. There are other parts of OT2 that are not confidential. OT3 consists of 37 works, plus non-confidential material that is part of the course. The NOTs consist of 55 works; the whole course is greater and contains non-confidential works.

[How many people have studied the OT3 and how many have studied the NOTs?]
M: OT3 has been studied by some 25,000 people. As for NOTs, I am not quite sure, but my best estimate would be 325 people.

 
[Comment 1: In May 1998, in Zenon’s deposition of him, McShane also stated that 325 ministers had studied the NOTs. That means that they have not had any NOTs completions since?]

[Comment 2: if 25,000 people did OT3, each ‘donating’ USD 6000, that amounts to USD 150,000,000. Hundred and fifty million dollars for the material only – not including the auditing that goes with it.]

[What is the damage that Zenon has incurred upon Scientology?]
M: Extensive damage. First of all, we have had a loss of revenue through people who have seen the material that Zenon Panoussis made available; they won’t become church members, mainly because they saw this material without the proper preparation. Secondly, the amount of effort we had to put into protecting the copies around here. Scientologists gave up their jobs, their family life, made great personal sacrifices to do so, just to prevent people who were not eligible from seeing the material. There were loopholes in the law that Zenon Panoussis took advantage of. It took us over three years to solve this. Lots of money and personal sacrifice went into this. Thirdly, the money involved in this litigation. This is one of the most complex cases I have come across. Zenon Panoussis has taken advantage of the system. It took tremendous expertise to counter him.

[At this point, Zenon puts his hand on his chest and nods to McShane, making a virtual bow. He takes this accusationas a compliment.]

13:45 – Zenon’s turn to question McShane.

Zenon: You stated that the inclusion of CST as a plaintiff in the Dutch case was necessitated by law.

Magnusson immediately protests that McShane is not a lawyer and cannot be expected to answer this. Zenon turns to the court and tells the court that in the earlier hearings, he could never finish a sentence while deposing McShane, because Magnusson kept interrupting him. Would the court kindly ensure that he wouldn’t be interrupted this time? The court nods. And indeed, Magnusson is silent the rest of the time.

Zenon repeats the question.
McShane: I am not a lawyer. Our Dutch attorneys informed us that the copyright owner, that is CST, had to be part of the case.

Zenon: So you can’t tell us for sure whether it was actual law or general legal principles that forced the CST to take part in the lawsuit?
McShane: No.

Zenon: We know from your answers earlier today that OT5 is the NOTs. What is meant by OT5 Solo Auditing? And what by OT5 Solo course?
McShane: There is no such thing. There are the OT6 and OT7 Solo Courses, but no solo courses of OT5.

Zenon: Regarding the NOTs, you explained that members doing OT5 get audited based on the material. But questions are only a very small part of the NOTs.
McShane: The NOTs serve as a background for auditors.

Zenon: The security that you described applies to all OT-levels?
McShane: Yes.

Zenon: And to all advanced organisations?
McShane: Yes.

Zenon: How come that doors didn’t automatically close when the NOTs were “switched” in Copenhagen?
McShane: [reluctantly] We didn’t have that security then.

Zenon: Who can subscribe to “Source Magazine”?
McShane: Flag members.

Zenon: Can other Scientologists subscribe?
McShane: Yes, they can.

Zenon: Is each member of Scientology allowed to subscribe the magazine “Keep Scientology Working”?
McShane: Yes, any Scientology member can get it.

Zenon: How many members do you have?
McShane: Circa eight million.

Zenon: When you visited the US Copyright Office, did they only see the first page unmasked?
McShane: The first couple of pages.

Zenon: In your case against Factnet, you claimed under oath that OT2 consists of 300 pages and OT3 of 200 pages. Of this, how many pages do you regard as confidential?
McShane: 166 pages of OT2, and 68 or 69 of OT3 were filed masked.

Zenon: The rest of those 500 pages were filed unmasked?
McShane: Yes.

Zenon: Your organisation uses a lot of abbreviations. On the distribution list of the NOTs for instance, —
Magnusson warns Zenon: no quotes from the NOTs here, only behind closed doors. Zenon retorts that he is about to quote from a distribution list that RTC itself filed unmasked.
Zenon: — On the distribution list of the NOTs, for instance, it says that it is addressed to “ACS Auditors” and “ACS C/Ses”. What do these abbreviations mean?
McShane: Case Supervisor Auditors, and [something I didn’t get]. The one is a subsection of the other. These are the only people allowed to see the NOTs.

Zenon: How big are both groups taken together?
McShane: Circa 325 people.

Zenon: With respect to the costs you had to make in this case, you spoke about people sitting here in court and in parliament in order to prevent others from seeing the material. How many people were involved in guarding the OTs and NOTs?
McShane: Circa fifty. I authorised them to sit with the material.

Zenon: Are they included in the 325?
McShane: They were only supposed to sit with the material, not to read it.

Zenon: The Fishman Affidavit contains fragments of OT2 and OT3. Did other parts of OT2 and OT3 ever get out?
McShane: Yes, in 1982, in 1983, in the Copenhagen theft.

Here, I shake my head vehemently and immediately reach for my computer, whispering to Zenon that the Copenhagen theft concerned only NOTs and that if anything else got out – as we know it has – it was elsewhere. McShane sees my opposition and suddenly remembers that he is under oath.

McShane: Well, there was a theft in the UK, in 1982, where other material was stolen.

Good. Scored again. First of all, Zenon has shown that the material is not at all as secure as McShane has implied. And secondly, I reminded McShane that whatever he says here is recorded and that he had better not lie: that I know about security leaks as well as he does.

Zenon: Can one reach the level of OT2 or OT3 by just studying the material? That is: without the tape recordings, without the films and without the supervision?
McShane: [hesitates, he knows what is going on] We wouldn’t consider that studying.

Zenon: Does the study of the written text only suffice to attain the corresponding OT level?
McShane: No, it doesn’t.

At 14:20, we are done. The Chair asks McShane a couple of questions on behalf of the court:

Chair: How many people did you say have read OT3?
McShane: Circa 25,000.

I see the court thinking: “but such an amount of people having read it establishes publication…! Twenty-five thousand people can never be a closed circle.”

Chair: Is registration in the US necessary?
McShane: Yes. Shortly before we registered, we discovered that there were squirrels, groups of people who used our material outside the church. We had to sue them, and thus had to register the OT material with the Copyright Office, according to US law. In the US – and I believe it’s the only country in the world that has this requirement – you can’t sue for infringement if you haven’t registered the work.

14:20 – Break.

14:35. McShane’s deposition continues as a closed session, in order to prevent any “confidential” phrases or words from becoming public. Only the lawyers (including Bill Hart), the two interpreters, Zenon and me – I am still his legal aide – remain in the room. Magnusson wants to show the court the OTs and NOTs, unmasked. Zenon objects. Previously, Zenon demanded that RTC would file the OTs and NOTs while Scientology protested; the lower court, tingsrätten, agreed with RTC. So why the heck would they show them now? And it is not real evidence, the court cannot really review these stacks of papers nor compare those to the OTs and NOTs that he posted and filed. Besides, viewing is a different category of evidence, that has not been announced in the due manner.

A short break ensues, the court needs to make a formal decision on this. After fifteen minutes they are done: they will allow Magnusson to show the OTs and NOTs to the same extent that he did in the district court.

15:15. Magnusson continues his deposition of McShane. As before, most questions are left out of my transcript.

McShane: Spring or summer 1996. Zenon Panoussis threatened to post our material and I instructed one of our attorneys to find out who he was and to inform him of our rights regarding these materials.

McShane: I downloaded Zenon Panoussis’ postings of the OTs and compared them to the originals.

McShane: I made the comparison myself.

McShane [opens one of the case binders that Magnusson has supplied the court with]: This is the comparison that I did before the lawsuit was filed. On the left side is what Zenon Panoussis posted and on the right side is a copy of the original, unmasked OT-levels, well, unmasked before I started this. I marked the similar paragraphs. I masked our comparison and then I went through them and blackened out the key confidential words so that one could see that they came from the same Hubbard work but still maintain confidentiality.

McShane: The first one is a NOTs issue, I think 28, all the issues are formatted in a similar way, they have a title of Hubbard Communication Office and it has the title of the actual work; then the body of the text itself, and then there’ll be a signature. If you turn the page, to NOTs 29, you’ll see Mr Hubbard’s signature at the bottom and the infringing copy even copied the copyright notice.

McShane: There’s a page titled OT2, and the infringing copy here has the computer address at the top right corner. And then I took this and compared it to the original, and if you look at the first issue after the blue divider, that page corresponds to OT2.

McShane: OT2 has 166 confidential pages and I believe that of these 16 were copied. Out of the 68 confidential pages of OT3, Zenon Panoussis infringed upon 39 pages. NOTs is altogether 177 pages, of which 141 pages were copied. In works, that means that 53 out of 55 NOTs were copied.

McShane proceeds to show the unmasked OTs and NOTs to the court. Unlike in my case, where McShane came with a selection of gold-plated suitcases containing the OTs, he now takes them out of a black bag. Out come three black binders: OT2, OT3 and the NOTs pack. They look definitely unimpressive. Everybody assembles in front of the bench. Everybody – except Magnusson’s aide. Yesterday, I rejected the thought that he was a Scientologist: although he has their general look and feel, he blinks too much. Later on, when I see his behaviour during breaks, I am forced to reconsider. While the lawyers invariably clutter together and discuss matters with McShane, Magnusson’s aide invariably chats with the Scientologists. While I was sitting next to Zenon, acting as his aide, I noticed Magnusson’s aide trying to stare me down. That was weird behaviour. And now he pretends to not want, or to not need, to see the OTs and NOTs. The guy is a Scientologist.

McShane leafs through OT3. Typoscript, handwriting, lots of typoscript and some more of Hubbard’s handwriting.

McShane shows a part of OT2. “See, this is what we consider to be a work.” He points at a page containing ten or twelve lines. “Other works are longer, for instance look at this OT2 work.” He leafs through four or five pages. Zenon, who is also standing there, recognises a part and interrupts. “This part is in the Fishman Affidavit, but while here you have a list of items and then a short description under each, in my Fishman Affidavit I only have the headings.” That can hardly even be seen as a quote, let alone as an infringement, Zenon implies. “But you must understand that these words have a very special meaning for us,” McShane objects. “And the one-page work that you showed us earlier? Can I see that again?” Zenon leafs through OT2 and finds the ten-liner. McShane cringes, a Suppressive is touching the OTs, and he can’t prevent it. Zenon takes the Fishman Affidavit, puts it next to this work from OT2 and shows the court that the Fishman version contains only half of these twelve lines. Zenon lets the matter rest. He has made two points, and he knows that the court understands it: what Scientology claims as full-fledged infringement is in fact often just a quote, and a “work” only containing 10-12 words on as many lines is not copyrightable to begin with.

McShane continues about the special meanings that words have. He points at a list and reads it aloud: “… Love …” and then proceeds to sing-song the rest; he finds it difficult to pronounce them under these circumstances, within this company. They really are sacred to him. He explains: “All the nuances of these words must be understood, and it is terribly important that they are understood properly. You can imagine how difficult it is to make an adequate translation…” The Chair suddenly looks up from the OTs that he is viewing, and asks McShane, with a certain surprise in his voice: “Are there any translations made of the OTs and NOTs?” “Yes,” McShane answers proudly. He doesn’t know that he is digging his own grave. Twenty-five thousand readers, translations… all this suffices to establish legal publication, and thus the right for individuals to have copies for private use and the right to quote them in public.

We go through attachment 126, the two hundred mangled NOTs. McShane points at a Rastafarian NOT. “You see, they just wrote the words funnily, and while I agree that the texts have been mangled: what can be processed can be reverted and *unprocessed*.” The court looks and compares. Actually, as they find out, words have been exchanged as well: all instances of ‘thetan’ have been changed into ‘watermelon’ and all instances of body thetan’ into ‘watchammecallit’. “There are no instances of the word ‘watermelon’ in the original?” the Chair asks McShane, to be sure what it is that he is seeing. No, McShane replies, that word was not used by Hubbard.

We look at some mangled NOTs. “I admit that the order of the words has been changed, and that the text has been reworked,” says McShane, “but you must understand that these texts still contain our confidential words.” He is actually implying that they have copyright on words.

At 16:05, we’re done. A ten minute break. At 16:15 we resume.

There is some more discussion. Amongst others, my summary of OT3 is brought up. That article has found its way into attachment 126, the Monkey NOTs, and during the previous hearings in May 1988 Scientology claimed that the article fell under their copyright. They wouldn’t allow Zenon a copy of that article, not even with all my Hubbard quotes stricken: it would still be infringing. The whole of attachment 126 is sealed and subject to confidentiality. That includes my article, the one that proudly sits on my homepage and over which I have been sued twice and been absolved twice by court.

Zenon requests a copy on my behalf. McShane states that “paraphrasing is infringement”. I blink with surprise. I know that McShane claimed exactly the same, also under oath, in RTC versus Factnet, [see www.spaink.net/cos/coskit/ks-023.html for the court transcript], but I never thought that I would hear such an absurdity. Paraphrasing is infringement?

Zenon asks him to repeat himself. McShane amends: “Paraphrasing could be an infringement.” Under his belief system, I understand him: since they claim ownership to certain words, any text that contains these words is indeed infringing – according to them. But the law, alas for them, states differently.

16:30. The court adjourns. It is weekend.

[Unbiased columnism is a series of seven court reports on the proceedings of Scientology versus Zenon Panoussis. This series covers the Jan 2001 sessions. Next: Magnusson becomes helpful.]

Mangled material

Stockholm, January 18, 2001

[Previous installment: Poor guy versus multinational cult.] SWEDISH COURT CASES ARE BORING and take too long. All proceedings must be verbal; the written preparations just serve as a background and what is not said, does not officially count. That is why this court case will last five days.

Magnusson, Scientology’s attorney, opens with a tiresome enumeration of Zenon’s misdeeds and misbehaviours. Posted this, webbed that, material filed here, copy made there, said this, did that, in September… in October… in May… I am on the verge of falling asleep, I know this song too well by now. Besides, Magnusson is not a gifted speaker. The court – five judges, one of them a trainee who serves as the clerk – listens without much interest. They know this story too. Magnusson is so slow that he doesn’t manage to reach the part where he outlines the grounds for his complaints. He’ll continue tomorrow. Now it’s Zenon’s turn first.

The court hopes that he will simply plead guilty on many counts, so that deliberations about those acts can be dismissed. And Zenon is quite willing to do so: he has never denied having webbed parts of the OTs nor denies having posted the NOTs, but Scientology accuses him of much more. That he will fight. And he wants to win at least one point. He is even prepared to settle or to admit guilt on all counts as long as he gets this particular one: a declaration that the OTs and NOTs are legally published.

From that one concession or confirmation a series of important rights and consequences follow, and Zenon is prepared to sacrifice everything in order to establish these rights: the right to possess copies of the OTs and NOTs for private use, the right to quote from them, and thus, of course, re-establishing every citizen’s right to demand a copy of the OTs and NOTs under offentlighetsprincipen. (If legal publication is established, the limitation that the Swedish law, after pressure exerted from Scientology and the US, has put on offentlighetsprincipen would no longer apply to the OTs and NOTs.)

In Zenon’s case, just like in mine, Scientology claims infringement in many more instances than they are willing to – or can – prove. With respect to the OT-fragments included in the Fishman Affidavit, Scientology in my case has only shown some evidence regarding OT2 and OT3. For the other fragments they claim copyright as well but they have refused to come up with even the tiniest shred of evidence. Zenon knows that they wouldn’t; after al, he webbed the Fishman Affidavit after my case had been brought before court, and he challenged them on their faint evidence and their all too extensive claims.

The case against him was already well on its way when Zenon filed a new, even thicker stack of NOTs with the court. Scientology immediately claimed copyright to those as well and demanded secrecy. They even had a notary public compare this thick stack to the original, unmasked NOTs, and upon doing a random comparison, she established that this thick stack contained nothing but pure, unadulterated NOTs.

BUT THEY WEREN’T original NOTs. That is to say: just a few were. Of this stack of two hundred alleged NOTs, only eight were authentic; the rest had been mangled. Zenon had posted on a.r.s., asking people to send him Monkey NOTs, and he had received them in abundance. Some ten of them were NOTs that had been ‘translated’ using programs that produce dialects: there were Swedish Cheffed NOTs, Jived NOTs, and Rastafarian NOTs – hence, satire, not originals. “Hjändle åll sjuch Björks ånd cljusters by blåwing them öff,” that kind of stuff. Moreover, hundred and eight-five were cut up and mangled. To mangle them, you do this: you take a paragraph from a text, use it as a ‘seed’ and input it to a program, and the output is a full page of mixed-up phrases, illogical sentences and weird grammar – but full of faintly familiar phrases. “Those are our NOTs!” Scientology exclaimed, and the notary public agreed with them. Not true: they are nonsensical, gibberish, Jabberwocky’ed texts, Zenon explained to the court, and what is more: the fact that Scientology claims copyright on these texts proves that one should take their claims with not a grain but a pound of salt.

The court looks confused.

“Take a look at page so-and-so of my appeal brief,” Zenon says, and points the court to a page that looks familiar: “… copyright infringement … taking into consideration that … plaintiff stated that … in a ruling dated …” The court nods, they know this text. It is part of the ruling of the previous court in Scientology versus Panoussis, the ruling that is being appealed right now.

“Please read the text carefully,” Zenon asks, and he is silent. The court raises an eyebrow and reads. After a few seconds, more eyebrows are raised. This text doesn’t make any sense, it has no head nor tail. It’s plainly gibberish. The judges look at one another, quizzed. “This text is the result of a real paragraph of the ruling having been mangled in the same way as the Monkey NOTs that I filed and to which Scientology claims copyright,” Zenon explains. No reaction. “I wanted to prove that Scientology claims copyright to any text that contains a few of their phrases, so I mangled a paragraph of the previous court’s ruling in order to demonstrate the scope of that claim. Scientology claiming that the mangled NOTs are theirs, amounts to this court accepting this gibberish as a valid and legal ruling.” Slowly, things start falling in place. The one judge after the other grabs the mangled NOTs, picks up the mangled ruling and compares it to the actual ruling, and they understand what has been going on. Fuck. So this is what Scientology claims copyright to? And they got a notary to confirm their claim?

We really need to investigate those claims, the court thinks. You can see it on their faces.

Zenon sits back, happy. This is exactly what he wanted to attain when he filed these mangled NOTs, and Scientology fell into the trap that he had set up for them. Point scored.

MAGNUSSON, SCIENTOLOGY’S ATTORNEY, coughs and reassembles himself. He informs the court that he has re-ordered the evidence that he has filed and has created a new set of binders for the court. Aides go up to the bench and to both parties, and deposit ten new binders in front of all of them. Zenon just got another ten kilos of paper thrown into my lap.

[Unbiased columnism is a series of seven court reports on the proceedings of Scientology versus Zenon Panoussis. This series covers the Jan 2001 sessions. Next: McShane compliments Zenon.]

Poor guy versus multinational cult

Stockholm, January 17, 2001

[This is a second series about Scientology v. Zenon Panoussis. Zenon dealt with a similar case as I was doing, although while I kept winning in the Netherlands, he kept losing in Sweden. The first series – from May 1998 – can be found here.]

BY THE TIME that this court case will be appealed, we will need a trailer. I am the beast of burden. I am sitting in my wheelchair with my laptop bag on my lap; on top of that, a huge Samsonite containing most of Zenon’s court files, and on top of that again a plastic bag containing the papers that wouldn’t fit into the Samsonite. My arms and hands are wrapped around the mountain of bags to prevent them from shifting and falling. Zenon is huffing and puffing: he needs to push twenty-five kilos more than usual. This court case is half my weight.

We are in Stockholm for the appeal in Scientology versus Panoussis. In 1996, Zenon did the same as I, and more than a hundred people, had done in 1995 in The Netherlands: he put the Fishman Affidavit on his homepage, a court file containing parts of Scientology’s higher course material, the so-called OT-levels. Zenon got sued by Scientology, just like me. The cult claimed copyrights and secrecy.

Zenon contacted me in 1996. We became friends and often mailed one another about our respective court cases.

But Zenon did more that we in The Netherlands did. He posted the NOTs, yet higher course material, and, according to Scientology, yet more secret. Moreover, when Scientology sued him, he deftly used the Swedish “offentlighetsprincipen”. This constitutional principle states that every citizen has the right to access all documents that are in the possession of the state, unless these documents contain state secrets or exclusively relate to private matters. Citizens may request copies of all government documents. Zenon filed the OTs and NOTs with the court and Parliament (riksdagen), thus ensuring that anybody could access these files or could ask for a copy for a small administrative fee. The result? The material that Scientology had chased with such vehemence – raiding providers, organisations and individuals over them; threatening, intimidating and suing people over them – these documents were suddenly legally available, official stamps and all.

Scientology got furious and managed to incite the US – the cult’s claws reach far – to start a diplomatic row with Sweden over this constitutional offentlighetsprincipen. The US even threatened Sweden with a trade boycott if Sweden didn’t stop its official distribution of the OTs and NOTs. After three years of diplomatic and legal bickering, Sweden limited the constitution that they took such great pride in: from then on, unpublished material from third parties was no longer covered by the offentlighetsprincipen.

Meanwhile, Zenon moved to Amsterdam. We became lovers. “We were brought together by Scientology” became our standard joke.

IN SEPTEMBER 1998 the ruling in Scientology’s case against Zenon was given: Zenon lost on most counts. The court ruled that neither the OTs nor the NOTs were legally published, and thus nobody was allowed to possess private copies, nor could one quote from them. They ordered Zenon to pay Scientology some 2000 USD damages and more than 150,000 USD in legal fees. Scientology had claimed almost two million dollars in legal fees, a ridiculously high amount for Swedish standards, but even this 150,000 dollars was unprecedented. Hardly surprising, Zenon couldn’t pay that money, and Scientology confiscated most of his salary in The Netherlands. For more than two years he has been living under the level of minimum subsistence; and yet, what Scientology confiscates every month doesn’t even cover the legal interest on the main sum. The most cynical aspect of all this is that afterwards, in my case the Dutch court ruled that the OTs should be regarded as having been legally published, a ruling that was to a great extent based on testimonies delivered – guess – in Zenon’s court case.

[Unbiased columnism is a series of seven court reports on the proceedings of Scientology versus Zenon Panoussis. This series covers the Jan 2001 sessions. Next: Mangled material.]

Final pleas, or: unprecedented legal costs

Stockholm, Wednesday, June 3 1998

[Previous installment: Questioning McShane. Note: I had had to go back to Amsterdam during the weekend. Zenon did the rest of the trial by himself and wrote this.]

True to my copyright terrorist instincts and traditions, I am happy to serve you the last UC of this bunch: a fake one, written by me in the absence of Karin, meant to ruin her reputation as a writer.

Today was the last day of the hearings. Somehow I couldn’t believe it would be. I had told Magnusson (and the court) that I would be in Holland tomorrow no matter what, and that I would not come to court, even if the hearings weren’t finished. I was absolutely sure that Magnusson would do everything he could to take up all day today, in order to force me to leave without pleading.

I also had double-crossed him and booked a flight that would allow me to to plead tomorrow anyway. This way, I estimated, he could make a fool of himself by taking up time and yet be disappointed at the results. Did he then? Of course he did. You press the button and he reacts as expected time and over again. Never fails. There’s a man you can trust.

But I must admit he started off nicely. “In flagrant violation… total disrepect of the law and courts…continued infringements…” steady pouring, good pace, firm tone. One hour. One and a half. Then he noticed the time, slowed down a bit. And a bit more. By 11.30 he was glancing at the clock on the wall every some 10 minutes, reducing his pace every time. He ended up spelling the words, just like last Thursday and Friday. Body language in court indicated a spreading unrest, irritation, boredom, disgust. I was affected the worst: waiting for the second boot kills me.

I was wondering how far the situation would go. I could protest, but it would be to no use. At worst, the chairman could propose a break, which would give Magnusson the opportunity to waste yet more time. Twice I saw Magnusson’s aide yawning. The chairman is a master of masters in keeping a stone face through anything, but even his irritation was somehow transpiring, although I couldn’t pinpoint how. At some point I grabbed my cigarettes and started making a move out. One more second and I would have left the courtroom in the middle of Magnusson’s plea. I controlled myself. I saw Magnusson himself trying to suppress a yawn. Then I realized that we were not going to have a lunch break before Magnusson decided to finish. The lunch break is usually at an appropriate moment in the proceedings, around 11.30-12.00. It was 11.50 and Magnusson was going on. The chairman looked less irritated. 12.10. The chairman began to look almost relaxed. It might be just my imagination – I was looking at very slight changes of face and posture – but I think I’m right. I think the judge decided to let Magnusson delay everybody’s lunch for just as long as he pleased, and let him feel that he was doing so. Around 12.20 Magnusson was still slowly leafing his papers, pronouncing a word per minute, desperately looking for either something more to say or a decent way to close. He failed with both. At 12.25, almost in the middle of a sentence, he gave up. Ready. Lunch. I was shaking.

At 13.45 we resumed and it was my turn. It seems I can’t get anything done except under pressure. I started working on the case late last Monday evening, on the eve of the hearing, trying to go through and sort out some 2 thousand pages which by then were still in disorder in a carton. Tuesday evening I put them in binders and started going though them, finishing at eight in the morning and going straight to court. I didn’t learn my lesson. I relaxed during the weekend, wasted most of Monday, run a million errands on Tuesday and began to preapare my plea around nine on Tuesday evening. It was ready at six in the morning, whereafter I slept for one hour and went to court. The question now was, was there any logic and coherence in the plea I had prepared in my half-ruined state at night? I hadn’t reviewed it.

It turned out there was plenty, but just a bit short of enough. The final touch, the polishing of the arguments, their correct order, it all could have been better. Yet, I think I made my points quite clear. It’s not easy: RTC’s case is one pile of legal shit, where all energy has been put into cheap rhetorics and none in sorting out the causes and effects and legal conditions and consequences of things. Typical CoS litigation, simply. If you clean out the irrelevant and sort the mess, what is left is just a few very simple issues that can be decided just as correctly in one way as in the other: matters of opinion. Which in turn means that there is no way of knowing – or even guessing – what the ruling will be. Due to holidays it’s expected on August 31.

So far so well. The next chapter deals with legal costs. These are generally fairly low in Sweden compared to other European countries and cannot be compared with what is awarded (or not awarded) in the US. The basic rule is that who loses a case pays his counterpart’s legal costs, within reason. To give you an idea, the lawyer that represented me from October 1996 to October 1997 and did a very good job at it, was paid by the state for about 120 hours of work some SEK 150.000 (USD 19.000). 20% more would still not have been unreasonable, but that’s about it. Plus necessary and reasonable costs. In her case it was another SEK 4.000 (USD 500). If the parties partly win and partly lose, they carry the legal costs proportionally to their gain and loss.

Now, hold your pants. RTC has only demanded SEK 25.000 (USD 3.125) in damages and I have all along expected that it was with the backthought that by trying to win the entire amount, they could aim at hitting me much harder with legal costs. I was expecting a bill of half a million and I was well prepared to dispute it. But when the time came, Magnusson’s aide got up and handed the bill to the chairman and to me without a word. I leafed past the introduction and looked at the figures. Fees SEK 4.500.000. Costs SEK 345.326. USD 562.500 and 43.000 respectively. I started to laugh. I tried to stop, to no avail. The amount is so absolutely ridiculous, so utterly absurd, so completely ludicrous, that you begin to wonder about your own sanity: no-one can be that insane as to ask for such a sum, therefore you must be hallucinating yourself. I looked up. The chairman was pronouncing the figures as if he was tasting every one of them and – first time – he had lost his stone face. A second judge had evidently a hard time to stop himself from looking too amused. I looked down again and turned the paper. It carried on. RTC’s costs for work and expenses: SEK 2.122.992 (USD 265.000). Legal opinions SEK 190.009 (USD 23.700). Notary public SEK 116.010 (USD 14.500). Witnesses SEK 181.115 (USD 22.600). Among them, Mikael Nyström, the computer expert, was billed with SEK 17.000 (USD 2.125) for one hour on the stand. Grand sum SEK 7.684.581.

RTC asked for legal costs. The amount they demand is unprecedented in Swedish legal history: 7,684,481 crowns, that is: circa 1 million US$. Scans of their calculations are included:

1. Legal bill 1/8
2. Legal bill 2/8 Explanation: 2.5 – Kerstin Calissendorff is Zenon’s former lawyer; the professors mentioned have been asked for their expert opinion.
3. Legal bill 3/8
4. Legal bill 4/8 Explanation: 5 — William Hart is Cowboy Boots, a hired lawyer for RTC.
5. Legal bill 5/8 Explanation [this is where the fun starts]: Magnusson claims to have spent 3,000 hours on the case; there are two tickets Stockholm / US for a magnificent amount; he claims to have made 100,000 xeroxes. Altogether, Magnusson’s office claims 0,5 million US$ in fees and costs.
6. Legal bill 6/8 Explanation: RTC claims to have spent an additional 1,000 hours on the case itself; McShane charged another 60,000 crowns; Bill Hart claims 450 hours at a rate of US$ 390 per hour [one would think him to be able to afford better boots, on such a salary].
7. Legal bill 7/8
8. Legal bill 8/8 Explanation: The grand total of 7,684,581 crowns, that is: something like 1 million US$. And it’s signed, too…

Discussion ensued. Magnusson defended the bill. I was still laughing, but I felt very tired. What is the point in spending so much time and energy in a case, if you are going to ruin any impression of seriousness you might have made, with such a bill? What is the point of spending two years in court against someone who ridiculed you, if the last thing you do to crown your case, is to ridicule yourself? How is Magnusson ever going to face a judge or a collegue in that court without thinking that they know him as “the famous bill”? Is this what Hubbard does to people, or are they born this way? Somehow I could neither pity Magnusson, nor despise him. The chairman said some words in a deliberately explicit low calm tone that reminded of his tone when he was trying to make us settle, and the hearing was closed. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Holland.

To sum it up, it was all a waste of time and money and legal resources. To begin with, we had a case that could have been refined to set some of the important delimitations between contradicting legislation; to determine where one right ends because another right begins. There won’t be much of this. RTC deliberately derailed the case into confusion, showing all too plainly that it neither believes in the legal system, nor in its own case. But if they don’t, why then bother to sue? The net result of this lawsuit and its offsprings is an irreparable damage to the CoS’ reputation in this country for all overseeable time. Why spend millions on that? I do dislike the CoS profoundly, but I still would like to understand what goes on in the heads of its heads, what makes them self-destruct in the way they do. I had a chat with McShane, and found it far easier than trying to talk to any low-level scieno I have met so far. I might be very naive, but I get the feeling that the top and the bottom of the CoS are mutually completing and equally mislead by their own total lack of independent critical thinking. Somehow I get the feeling that the entire CoS, top and bottom, is an asylum for people that should have been helped elsewhere.

Anyway, this is not the end. As soon as the ruling comes, RTC will appeal against it. They are bound to lose on some point at least (if only on their amazing bill) and we all know they always appeal. In the meanwhile I have invited them to sue me in Holland. I might feel sorry for them sometimes when I’m tired, but that is no excuse that they can use. If there is any chance that they really have spent half the amount they asked for in this lawsuit, I’ll gladly see to it that they spend another as much on a second front. That will keep them from using the money to more destructive ends (and keep providing amusement to alt.religion.scientology).

[Unbiased columnism is a series of seven court reports on the proceedings of Scientology versus Zenon Panoussis. This series covers the May 22,1998 – June 3, 1998 sessions. This was the last episode. In January 2001, I wrote another series during a second Scientology v. Zenon Panoussis court case.]