Tape 6, August 27, 1998

Lawrence Wollersheim and Jesse Prince

L:	And get the testimony
J:	And get the testimony, and get the proceedings and get exactly what happened.
L:	OK. When somebody issues a -- Have you ever seen Scientology take an old policy, or had knowledge of this, where they would take an old policy that went out of copyright and was in the public domain and add a few new things and re-issue that policy as a revised policy and then copyright the revised edition?
J:	Sure. That's common practice.
L:	That's common practice. Were you aware that if you re-issue an old policy, an old document and make changes to it, and then you copyright it, the only thing that's copyrighted on that document is the changes that you made? If you put revised by the Board of Directors for L. Ron Hubbard, that paragraph is copyrighted, but anything else that was previously in the public domain, is not copyrighted.
J:	No, I did not know that.
L:	You can only copyright those, if you changed one sentence and said, "See sentence two," and you put that in parentheses or "See the HCOB . . ." and you added that, that would be copyrighted. Nothing else on the page.
J:	No, I had no idea. I am not a copyright expert or copyright law expert.
L:	Did you, did anyone inside of Scientology ever discuss the documents, many of L. Ron Hubbard's, or some of L. Ron Hubbard's documents were probably copyrighted incorrectly or in the public domain?
J:	Yes, and I've given testimony about that in the declaration affidavit that I gave and in this extensive deposition. Sure.
L:	You were at a meeting.
J:	With Dave Miscavige. I'll just go through it again. Where, prior to bringing up, bringing up this RICO lawsuit which we discussed, we were thinking of what type of action could we bring. And at that point, it was noted that the copyrights themselves (Yawns). Excuse me. As far as having a record of it and maintaining them and doing that, that was something that the old GO had the responsibility of doing and they never did do it, never did do it to Dave's knowledge or satisfaction to where it would be legal or valid. And then also, as a result of the 1977 raids, a lot of those per David Miscavige were just missing and didn't know where they were anyway. Then he kind of registered, you know early registration, and you know, in looking at this case, the specific one we're talking about here, the majority of the copyrights are copyrighted 1980 to 1983 through 1987. However, these issues, we're talking about issues within `58, `67, 1970, so - What? What? What? How can that be? How could they, how could we be copyrighting something in 1983 that's been out 20 years, that had no previous copyright, notice of registration, or anything like that? And on a lot of them, it's like that. You can't file anything from the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s that says this work was ever copyrighted. Except in the compilation which happened in 1970, but what about `53, `50, that's a 20 year period.
L:	Right. During those 20 years, how much of that was in public domain?
J:	Every aspect of it. Every part of it was in public domain.
L:	Did you ever hear them say that they feared that this was in public domain?
J:	Oh, yeah. They said, "Please let's not do anything with the copyrights, and then Dave Miscavige and that's when this project got going with Pat Brice, to actually collect. And in some instances they do have things that were copyrighted. They have 1955. But it's still, I don't know what the year periods is, but a lot of them are three or four years later. And some - I mean, you can just go through that evidence.
L:	Was this a huge project in 1982 and 1983?
J:	Yeah. Up through '87, yeah.
L:	How many staff members do you think were involved full-time?
J:	I know of one, but I know they probably engaged many others for several hours.
L:	Do you have any estimate on how many documents, how many things they probably copyrighted in those years?
J:	All 1900.
L:	1900.
J:	Every one of those exhibits, you will see they have a current between those years.
L:	Between `82 and `87.
J:	`87.
L:	Nothing is copyrighted earlier. It's all in the project that David Miscavige started.
J:	Yes. Now, some things do have earlier registrations, which they did find. But you will find the vast majority of them do not.
L:	So then, it's your understanding, or you believe that Miscavige knew that some of this stuff had fallen out of copyright?
J:	He knew the great majority of it had, and argued with Pat Brice incessantly about it because she came to him and said, "Look. There's nothing we can do about this." And he told her, "Do what you have to do to get it done. I don't care what you have to do." Don't bring me the problem. You know they replied to that.
L:	So he told her do what she had to do, and she told him that these were out of copyright and nothing could be done.
J:	Right.
L:	You remember that conversation.
J:	Yes.
L:	You were there.
J:	Yes. Indefensible, she says, "A lot of this stuff we can't do nothing with." " Maybe we shouldn't even bring it up" was her theory. "Just leave it alone, because if you bring it up then it's gonna be obvious that there's no copyright protection on this stuff."
L:	So in that situation, they knew that most of the stuff or a large portion of the stuff was not copyrightable. David Miscavige told her, "Do what you have to do."
J:	And screamed at her, put the fear of God in her, made her do it, called her CI [?], "What the hell you wanna do, see the church lose its stuff? What do you mean? There's a way, there's always a way to do something. Find it and do it."
L:	Find and do it. So then she proceeded to file potentially thousands of false copyright applications?
J:	Right. And then she was gone after that. Shortly thereafter she left the church.
L:	She left the church.
J:	Yeah.
L:	Do you know where she might be located?
J:	Somewhere on the West Coast. Portland/Seattle area, I'm thinking, San Francisco. The last I heard, she had gone and was irretrievable. She had gotten away. Because David Miscavige talked to me about this and she was, I think she was either paid money or something, but she was like, "Leave me the hell alone. I'm not coming back." But then they were still going to see her.