Editing Operating Thetan (section)

=== Legal issues and copyright ===

In March 2008, [[WikiLeaks]] leaked the [[Church of Scientology]]'s ''Operating Thetan'' documents.<ref>[[n:Church of Scientology's 'Operating Thetan' documents leaked online]]</ref> The Church of Scientology portrayed hosting the documentation as a copyright violation implying that the collection is Church doctrine. A court found that it was legal to download, use, read, and practice these teachings outside the Church.<ref name="metz" />{{Failed verification|date=November 2023|reason=Incorrect source; find another.}}

In 1997, [[Scientology and the Internet#Notable legal actions|Zenon Panoussis]], a resident of Sweden, sent copies of NOTs documents to various government authorities, thereby making the documents public according to the Swedish principle of public access to official records. The Church of Scientology responded by ordering members to continuously borrow the available copies in order to prevent non-members from reading them. The Church of Scientology also sued Panoussis for copyright infringement, since he had made the documents available online without authorization.<ref>{{cite web |last=Macavinta |first=Courtney
|date=30 March 1999 |title=Scientologists settle legal battle |publisher=CNet News |url=http://news.cnet.com/Scientologists-settle-legal-battle/2100-1023_3-223683.html |access-date=12 May 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103052054/http://news.cnet.com/Scientologists-settle-legal-battle/2100-1023_3-223683.html |archive-date=3 November 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

A similar incident occurred during the 1980s, during the trial of ''[[Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology]]''. When the OT III documents had been entered into evidence, 1,500 Scientologists crammed the courthouse in an attempt to block public access to the documents by each requesting to photocopy them, thus overwhelming the clerk's office so no one else could access them.{{r|atack|pages=350, 356–357}}{{r|wright|pages=178-179}}