Talk:Church of Scientology's 'Operating Thetan' documents leaked online

612 pages
I have gotten a slim start on this...which is 612 fricking pages long!! So I need some help... DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 21:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment
This is already starting to read like a book report, which I don't think is appropriate for a news article. Perhaps there should be less focus on what is in the document(s) and more on the reactions to the fact that this became public. --SVTCobra 23:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Feel free to jump in here. There are 612 pages so this will likely be a big report. Most of what I have added is previously undisclosed. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 23:44, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What I am saying is that reporting on the entire content is not important, and I certainly have no inclination towards reading it. IMO, it would be news if Scientology files a lawsuit to suppress it, similar to what happened in the Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit. --SVTCobra 23:54, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Copyvio?
Does quotes qualify as 'fair-use'? To me parts of this article tread close to being copyvio (something WMF projects) don't do.. More analysis to justify the use of the quotes is needed. As is a substantial piece on the response to the leak rather than the content. Wikileaks isn't exactly popular with some organisations at present, even less so after this leak... 62.56.111.179 23:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Quotes to my knowledge are fair use, and all these papers are signed by Hubbard. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 00:20, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * 62.56.111.179, you are right, using too many quotes can run afoul of this commonly accepted doctrine: "Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances." (source: "Can I Use Someone Else’s Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine?", United States Copyright Office). However, I do not see any evidence that we have exceeded these "fair-use" limitations. --SVTCobra 01:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Review
This is all I can really detail from the leak...Maybe someone can add background? I also e-mailed someone for a viewpoint. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 01:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Original?
I added OR because I basically read the whole thing...don't know if that counts? DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 02:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Certainly seems appropriate for the OR tag, yes. Cirt - (talk) 11:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Reaction
Some reaction to the leaks:

Will post other links/reaction as they become available. Cirt - (talk) 11:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not really news at all
"Although some portions of the manual have been leaked previously, this is believed to be the first time the full unedited version has been leaked."

This is untrue, or at least only believed by journalists. The file was compiled in 1999. It has been available at bittorrent sites since 2006 as part of a larger collection, which was itself circulated widely on CD within the Freezone for years before that. Everything in the file has been available for much longer, going back to when NOTs was stolen in 1983: A Piece of Blue Sky, Ch4

It's not a manual but a compilation of lots of documents. Within the Church of Scientology these would never be assembled in this form, as they are a series of levels which must be completed in sequence over a period of years. The famous Xenu story is one single page in one level, and is a brief explanation of why the student is doing the level. --Hartley Patterson - (talk) 17:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This is the first time it has appeared online in this context, and with this timing in light of all else that is going on lately, this certainly seems newsworthy.  did a good job of highlighting key portions, and it follows up to the Office of Special Affairs documents leaked online on Wikileaks recently, which was reported on in other media sources. Cirt - (talk) 22:04, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Buhaha. Yes, yes, it's the first time it has appeared on Wikileaks, that's right. That makes it newsworthy, clearly. Otherwise this is such an old hat (this pack of fake docs makes its way around on the net since at least 1997), that I really must admire your skill it making it appear new. Well spun. Misou - (talk) 05:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Common sense
Can we please exercise some common sense here? Hubbard did not smuggle his own material off the Freewinds in 1991. Hubbard died in 1986 BEFORE the Freewinds was taking passengers and before OT8 was released. This thing about reconstructing the level for memory and the "elites" was a defector in 1991 who gave it to the Freezone. In actual fact this entire 612 page doc is a Freezone mashup from 1995 that was not openly distributed on the internet until it was released as a Bittorrent in January of this year. I have already tried once to fix this for y'all and been blocked for my efforts. --JustaHulk - (talk) 03:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Lies rule here, didn't ya know, bro? Misou - (talk) 05:25, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Link seems to have died. (+Solutions!)
The main link to the wikileaks page "http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_collected_Operating_Thetan_documents" now seems to simply redirect to "http://mirror.wikileaks.info/" but the info-page can still be accessed from "http://www.wikileaks.ch/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_collected_Operating_Thetan_documents" and the pdf can still be downloaded directly from "http://193.198.207.6/wiki/file/scientology-ot-levels.pdf" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.65.109.10 (talk • contribs)
 * Thanks for the info. We don't edit articles to fix links after they've been published, but it's good to have updated links on the talk page like this so that people can still access the sources if they want to (provided that the sources still exist... often they don't after a few weeks. And that's what *we're* here for;). A permanent record of how events were preconceived at the time of the news event, with no paywalls to prevent access.). Gopher65talk 00:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)