Talk:Fishman Affidavit

Edits by Marbahlarbs

Added link to Scientology Fishman page

Why was the Church suing Fishman in the first place?

The suit was dropped on request of the Church. This is not mentioned. There's a lot missing from this article.

Marbahlarbs 08:49, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Innacuracy

This article states: "However, under United States law, while the copyrights of court documents are held by the US or state Governement, free reproduction and distribution of the materials are permitted. Accordingly these documents may be borrowed from the court library, or copied for a nominal fee. This practice differs slighly from public domain materials which may be freely copied and distributed and freely altered. Copyrights on court documents are preserved to ensure that court filings and decisions are consistently reproduced." This is not true and should be seriously reworded to reflect the truth. Arnie Lerma tried to do this and "freely distributed" some documents to USENET claiming his actions were protected by fair use. He lost the case and was convicted of copyright violation. Reference: ORDER, RTC v. Lerma, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Civil Action No 95-1107-A signed by Leonie M. Brinkema, United States District Judge, October 4, 1996. --AI 04:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

When copyrighted documents become part of a court record, the government can copy them for you and will do so for a small fee payable to the court. But individuals are not free to make or distribute copies themselves. The current version of the article doesn't explain this very well. But the point is that some people did obtain legal copies of the Fishman Declaration from the court, before Judge Harry Hupp sealed the file. --Touretzky 02:14, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Moved this statement from main article since it is confusing and may be incorrect:

Under United States law, while the copyrights of court documents are held by the US or state Government, free reproduction and distribution of the materials is permitted. Accordingly these documents may be borrowed from the court library, or copied for a nominal fee. This practice differs slighly from public domain materials which may be freely copied and distributed and freely altered. Copyrights on court documents are preserved to ensure that court filings and decisions are consistently reproduced.

Documents generated by the court are generally in the public domain.

Roadrunner 21:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

"He lost the case and was convicted of copyright violation" -- that simply isn't so; Brinkema found for the defendants. -- 98.108.208.207 (talk) 22:44, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The result of the case was that the Washington Post was off the hook completely, and that while Lerma had violated copyright, it was a minimal fine with no costs assessed for Scientology. That memorandum opinion appears to be where Brinkema is finding that there was no copyright (or trade secret) violation by the Washington Post, and not the final result. I'll check for a reference that best describes the result and add clearer wording. AndroidCat (talk) 02:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

OT VIII

The Fishman Affidavit contained among others, a version of the secret Scientology course called "OT 8". Some Scientologists have done this course and posted reproductions of it from memory to the internet. This proved that Fishman`s version of OT 8 was a complete fabrication. (emphasis added)

The text above was added by 80.61.135.225 (talk · contribs). The first sentence is factual and not in dispute. The second is probably true but is unreferenced. The third sentence is original research. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The discussion of what Fishman submitted in the case as OT VIII was removed with the edit summary that "cited source for Jesus information doesn't mention Jesus". The citation in that paragraph does not mention Jesus, but it is a citation for the statement that Fishman got his copy of OT VIII from a different source than he got the other OT levels from. Last time I checked, no one was disputing that the version of OT VIII submitted in the Fishman Affidavit contained that statement about Jesus, even if they disputed whether that was the real OT VIII, a forgery, or an old authentic version since superseded by a newer version scrubbed of such controversial parts. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Notable?

In general I don't think a primary document like an affidavit would be a suitable subject for an encyclopedia article. Steve Dufour 04:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Notability is established by the existence of multiple reliable sources and academic and journalistic discussion of the subject. It is not a matter of opinion. --FOo 04:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

In that case this article should be deleted. No one is discussing the affidavit itself, although they might be discussing its contents. Steve Dufour 04:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm really tired of this sort of repeated tactic as well as a series of completely gratuitous time-wasting AFDs. What happened to your "deal"? AndroidCat 14:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Nobody seems to be watching over Barbara's article. BTW there are about 400 Project Scientology articles, to me that seems to be about 360 too many for the importance of the subject. I would really prefer not to spend my time with them anymore. Steve Dufour 14:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Naturally, you are free to use your time as you wish. Since you are concerned with the wise use of people's time, I suggest you take WP:SNOW into account before proposing any more deletions. It is a waste of time to repeat this exercise for 360 more Scientology-related articles. --FOo 20:03, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

As stated, you are free to completely ignore the article, and any others. But the Fishman Affidavit is clearly notable, due to the widespread controversy and republication. Superm401 - Talk 04:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Fishman Affidavit/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

*Three citations. Article could use more citations, expansion, and some sort of free images, perhaps free images as a result of publication in public domain court documents... Smee 07:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

Last edited at 07:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 15:13, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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