Religious Technology Center v. Wikileaks [1]

On March 28, 2008, a lawyer for the Religious Technology Center (RTC) [2], the entity that owns copyright in the Church of Scientology's writings and religious materials, sent an email [3] to Wikileaks [4] alleging copyright infringement. The email complained that an unknown Wikileaks user posted [5] certain of Scientology's "Advanced Technology" works on the site. It demanded that Wikileaks remove the allegedly infringing material and requested that the website "preserve any and all documents pertaining to this matter and this customer, including . . . logs, data entry sheets, applications . . ., registrations, forms, billing statements or invoices, computer print-outs, disks, hard drives, etc."

In response, Wikileaks issued a press release [6] on April 7, 2008, in which it publicly refused to remove Scientology's documents and vowed to release several thousand pages of additional Scientology materials in the coming week. In the press release, Wikileaks also sharply criticized Scientology's history of litigation aimed at keeping its documents out of the public eye, arguing that the controversial religious group "aids and abets a general climate of Western media self-censorship."

As of April 14, 2008, Scientology has not taken further legal action.