The growing popularity of the Internet has spawned discussion groups that offer something for just about everyone, from lovers of Jean-Luc Picard (try alt.sexy.bald.captains) to haters of a certain children's television program (alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die) to obsessives consumed by politics, computer lore, comic books or the hidden messages embedded in a single rock song (alt.meter-maid.lovely.rita). Few newsgroups, though, have drawn the kind of following now evident on alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.), an international debating circle concerning the Church of Scientology. Always controversial, in recent months ...

BOULDER — A computerized attack on the Church of Scientology was halted yesterday when U.S. marshals raided the homes of two church detractors. The marshals turned over the computers and documents to officials of the church. "Marshals just hauled out all kinds of public records," said detractor Lawrence Wollersheim of Boulder. " . . . attorney-client privilege documents, books legally purchased at any B Dalton bookstore. This was a Scientology cult raid to seize the confidential records of FACTNet." FACTNet is ...

AS USE OF the Internet grows, one thing that's becoming uncomfortably clearer is just how much of existing communications and copyright law depends on the physical limitations of records and publications kept on paper. A copyright infringement suit brought recently in Alexandria, concerning dissemination via the Internet of supposedly secret and copyrighted documents belonging to the Church of Scientology, brings some of these newly problematic issues into sharp relief. It's only one of a string of recent cases that show how ...

It was 9:30 and Arnie Lerma was lounging in his living room in Arlington, drinking his Saturday morning coffee, hanging. Suddenly, a knock at the door — who could it be at this hour? — and boom, before he could force anything out of his mouth, they were pouring into his house: federal marshals, lawyers, computer technicians, cameramen. They stayed for three hours last Saturday. They inventoried and confiscated everything Lerma cherished: his computer, every disk in the place, his client ...

ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 13 — The Church of Scientology is battling a band of on-line dissidents who have used the Internet to mail out globally its secret scriptures, for which some members must pay thousands of dollars. On Saturday, as a result of a copyright infringement lawsuit, United States marshals here seized the computer of a former church employee who had electronically posted a 136-page text that he said was available in court records. The former employee, Arnaldo P. Lerma, 44, ...