This page created by Ron Newman.
Last revised sometime in April, 1995.
On January 11, 1995, a lawyer for the Church, Helena Kobrin <hkk@netcom.com>, sent a rmgroup message, which is an instruction to Usenet servers to delete the entire discussion group alt.religion.scientology. This message claimed that the group's very name infringed on the Church's trademark, and again complained that members of the group were posting infingements of the Church's copyrights. The "rmgroup" had little effect, because most Usenet system administrators regard such messages as purely advisory, and several quickly sent newgroup messages to re-create the group on any server that had removed it.
Internet World magazine asked Helena Kobrin for an explanation, and got a long letter back from her. I wasn't terribly impressed, and sent her a reply. The magazine's article appeared in the April 1995 issue. A shorter article (by net.personality Joel Furr) appeared in the April 1995 issue of the UK magazine Internet and Comms Today. Also check out the article in the April 1995 issue of the UK's .net magazine.
The rmgroup, along with the Church's legal threats against anonymous remailers, led Jon Noring to draft a Usenet petition in late January 1995, urging the Church to cease its attacks on the Net.
Return to The Church of Scientology vs. the Net main page.