Scientology versus Sweden. The story of a legal battle.

It is 1996. A greek of swedish nationality named Zenon Panoussis is browsing the internet for nothing it all, bored. Just before he's about to stop for the night he finds a server in the Netherlands where he downloads the bible of scientology. This spawns an idea in the mind of the brilliant Panoussis.

Since 1766 there's been a law in Sweden called "Offentlighetsprincipen". The principle of public/openess. The idea is that if a document is held by a swedish department it is, by default, open for the public to read if it is not infringred by confidentiality.

Zenon has this idea: If he proceeds to spread the copyrighted material, the Scientology church will be provoked to act against him. The documents in question will then have to be brought to court, putting the documents in the hands of Swedish departments in general, making them public.

The rest of the story is a long one. Zenon challanged the Scientology church openly, daring them to sue him, which the Scientology did. He spread the documents to several swedish departments, making them open to read for anyone.

Swedish Scientologists took turns at swedish departments, literally sitting on the text so that no one could read them during opening hours. But as they were spread to too many departments, people just needed to go a couple of meters between them to find examples of said texts.

But Zenon wasn't done. When The Swedish Enforcement Authority watned Zenon that they would come to his house and take the copyrighted material, Zenon sent the documents to a norwegian server and put a copying machine in his home. The documents were then, before the eyes of an attending crowd he had invited to his appartment, copied, not from his computer but from the server. In front of the officials, Zenon stated that they were free to take away the documents but not the copying machine, as he didn't have the documents. The officials, baffled, left without taking the papers.

Demands of copyright started coming in from the US, warning Sweden that further provocation with this "offentlighetsprincip" versus Copyright laws would be problematic. At first, one swedish department wanted to yield, and another, Stockholms tingsrätt (a department of justice in Stockholm), decided that the documents fell under Swedish founding law.

In the end, Zenon was fined for copyright infringements, but the freedom of information granted by the offentlighetsprincip held firm. To this day, a swedish citizen is free to read the holy books of Scientology.

The public image of the debacle damaged the Scientology church in Sweden, which has never grown like it has in Denmark, and people came to see Scientology as dangerous and idiotic. Swedish radio even gave an excerpt of the documents, teaching the Swedes about Xenu and his galactic empire in prime time.

Zenon has, to this day, not paid his fines to the Scientology church.

TLDR: Sweden won against Scientology.

Source: Swedish radio. P3 dokumentär, "Svenska kuppen mot scientologerna 1996".