Watchtower Lawfare — Copyright as a Weapon Against Critics

The Watchtower organization that fought for free speech in the Supreme Court — winning landmark cases protecting anonymous pamphleteering, door-to-door advocacy, and the right to distribute literature without government permission — has spent the 21st century systematically using copyright law to silence critics, unmask anonymous whistleblowers, and suppress the publication of its own internal documents. Since 2017, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society has filed more than 72 DMCA subpoenas in U.S. federal courts — not to pursue copyright infringement lawsuits, but to identify the anonymous former members who post leaked internal materials online. In case after case, the subpoenas have been used as a tool to discover the identities of current and former Witnesses who share internal letters, policy documents, convention videos, and the secret elders' manual — materials that expose the organization's handling of child sexual abuse, its shunning policies, and its internal decision-making.

The organization has never used the information from these subpoenas to file a single infringement lawsuit against the person it unmasked. The purpose is not to protect copyright. The purpose is to find the moles.

The DMCA Subpoena Campaign

The Scale

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes a provision (Section 512(h)) allowing copyright holders to obtain subpoenas compelling internet service providers to identify users who have allegedly posted infringing material. The process is simpler and cheaper than filing a full copyright lawsuit — it requires only a filing fee and a declaration of infringement, with no requirement to prove the claim before the subpoena is issued.

The Watchtower has exploited this mechanism on an extraordinary scale. As documented by the Consumer Law & Policy Blog (affiliated with Public Citizen) and reported by Techdirt, the organization filed approximately 72 DMCA subpoenas between 2017 and 2022, targeting users on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms. The subpoenas sought the real names, addresses, and identifying information of anonymous users who had posted Watchtower materials — including leaked internal letters, convention videos, elders' manual excerpts, and data-collection policy documents.

The critical fact, identified by multiple legal analysts: the Watchtower has never used the information obtained from these subpoenas to file a copyright infringement action against the identified individual — with one exception (the Truth and Transparency Foundation, discussed below), where the subpoena had actually been denied. This pattern strongly suggests that the true purpose of the subpoenas is not to enforce copyright but to identify internal leakers — "moles" within the organization — so that they can be subjected to disfellowshipping and shunning.^[1]

The Legal Strategy

The Watchtower's DMCA campaign is coordinated through its law firm Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C., with attorney Paul Polidoro — the same attorney who argued the Watchtower v. Village of Stratton case before the Supreme Court — leading many of the subpoena actions. The choice of attorney underscores the irony: the lawyer who defended the Watchtower's right to anonymous door-to-door advocacy is now leading the effort to strip anonymity from the organization's critics.

A federal judge in the Southern District of New York, Judge Cathy Seibel, took notice of the pattern. In a 2020 case involving a YouTube user known as "JW Apostate," she ordered the Watchtower to explain why it had filed 59 subpoenas without ever bringing an infringement lawsuit. She wrote: "The Court can imagine reasons for that fact (if it is a fact) that do not evidence lack of good faith, but Watchtower should address (by declaration or affidavit of someone with knowledge) whether it is true, and if so, why I should not conclude that it evidences lack of good faith."^[2]

The Darkspilver Case: EFF vs. Watchtower

The most significant legal battle in the DMCA campaign involved an anonymous Reddit user known as "Darkspilver" — a lifelong, active Jehovah's Witness who posted on the r/exjw subreddit.

What Darkspilver Posted

Darkspilver made two posts: (1) a copy of an advertisement from the back cover of a Watchtower magazine encouraging online donations, and (2) a chart they had reformatted showing the types of personal data the Jehovah's Witness organization collects and processes from its members. Both posts were intended to inform fellow members and spark discussion about the organization's fundraising practices and data-collection policies.

The Subpoena

In February 2019, the Watchtower filed a DMCA subpoena compelling Reddit to hand over Darkspilver's identifying information. Reddit notified Darkspilver, who reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for help.

EFF's Defense

The EFF filed a motion to quash the subpoena on March 26, 2019, arguing that Darkspilver's posts constituted lawful fair use of the material and that unmasking them would violate their First Amendment right to anonymous speech. The EFF's filing laid out the stakes with unusual clarity:

"Doe's lifelong experience with that community makes Doe afraid to question or doubt religious doctrine or administration in public. Doe believes that dissenting points of view are strongly discouraged in the Jehovah's Witness community, and that those who express them are likely to be labeled 'apostates' and expelled."

The EFF argued that the Watchtower's true goal was not to protect copyright but to identify and punish a dissenter — that unmasking Darkspilver would result in disfellowshipping and the loss of all family and social relationships.

The Ruling

After initial proceedings before a magistrate judge (who partially sided with the Watchtower), the case went to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In a ruling that became a significant precedent for online speech and fair use, the court held:

"The record establishes that Darkspilver made fair use of the Watch Tower ad and chart. Consequently, he did not infringe Watch Tower's copyrighted works, and there is no basis in the DMCA for a subpoena to compel disclosure of his identity."

EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry stated: "This copyright claim was absurd from the start. The DMCA subpoena process is not supposed to be a pretext for unmasking lawful speakers."

The ruling established that even non-U.S. citizens posting on U.S. platforms could rely on First Amendment protections for anonymous speech — a significant expansion of online speech rights.^[3]

The Kevin McFree (DubTown) Lawsuit

The Watchtower also targeted Kevin McFree, creator of the popular DubTown Lego stop-motion animation series. In 2018, the Watchtower filed a DMCA subpoena seeking McFree's identity after one of his videos included approximately seven minutes of footage from leaked, then-unpublished Jehovah's Witness convention videos.

McFree challenged the subpoena, and the case stalled for nearly three years. In May 2021, the Watchtower escalated by filing a full copyright infringement lawsuit — alleging that McFree had obtained "purloined copies" of four unpublished videos leaked from inside the organization. The Watchtower alleged that production team members had signed confidentiality agreements and that McFree had obtained the footage through an internal leak.

The case highlighted the organization's real concern: not the seven minutes of footage in a Lego animation, but the existence of moles within the production team who were smuggling unreleased content to critics.^[4]

The Truth and Transparency Foundation

The largest and most consequential copyright action was the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society v. Truth and Transparency Foundation lawsuit, filed on April 30, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Foundation

The Truth and Transparency Foundation (TTF), founded by Ryan McKnight and Ethan Gregory Dodge — also the founders of MormonLeaks — operated the FaithLeaks website, a "religious document archival project" that published leaked internal documents from multiple religious organizations. The site had published over 23,000 Watchtower documents — including internal letters to elders, policy manuals, and convention materials — as well as 487 copyrighted literary works and 74 convention videos.

The Lawsuit

The Watchtower alleged willful copyright infringement for the 74 videos, seeking injunctive relief and statutory damages. It argued that FaithLeaks had reproduced complete, unaltered copies of copyrighted works without authorization. TTF asserted a fair use defense, arguing that the documents served the public interest by exposing the organization's handling of sexual abuse, data collection, and internal governance.

The Settlement

TTF launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $40,000 for legal defense. The campaign raised less than $14,000 — hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, which dominated public attention and activist fundraising at the time. Unable to fund a defense, TTF was forced to settle in July 2020:

• All 23,000+ Watchtower documents were deleted from all TTF websites
• McKnight and Dodge agreed to never again publish copyrighted material owned by Watch Tower
• TTF paid $15,000 in damages to the Watchtower

Suppressing Historical Publications

The Watchtower's copyright campaign extends beyond leaked internal documents to its own historical publications — materials it has quietly removed from its own digital library.

The organization's Watchtower Library software and jw.org website do not include older publications that contain embarrassing teachings: pyramidology, anti-vaccination articles, Beth Sarim promotion, the organ transplant "cannibalism" ruling, and numerous failed prophecies. When third-party sites like jws-library.one (which archives Watchtower content from 1880 to the present) make these materials available, the organization has pursued takedowns — using copyright claims to suppress access to its own published history.

The effect is a form of institutional memory control: the organization publishes material, distributes it freely to millions, then — decades later when the content becomes embarrassing — claims copyright to prevent anyone from making it available for study, criticism, or comparison with current teachings. Sites like AvoidJW.org and JW Leaks have been repeatedly targeted through DMCA actions, though many operate from jurisdictions where U.S. copyright enforcement is difficult.^[6]

The Pattern: Copyright as Information Control

The Watchtower's DMCA campaign is not an intellectual property protection strategy. It is an extension of the organization's information control apparatus — using secular law to enforce the same secrecy that the Shepherd the Flock of God manual enforces internally.

The pattern is consistent:

1. The organization produces material — internal letters, policy documents, convention videos, the elders' manual — that it distributes widely within its own membership but classifies as confidential
2. Insiders leak the material to critics, journalists, or archival sites, often because the material reveals practices the public has a legitimate interest in knowing about (child abuse handling, shunning policies, data collection)
3. The organization files DMCA subpoenas seeking to identify the leakers — not to pursue copyright claims, but to discover who inside the organization is providing information to outsiders
4. If identified, the leaker faces disfellowshipping — the loss of family, friends, and community — the same punishment the organization claims it would not use the information to impose

See Also

• Legal Legacy & Civil Rights Impact — The free speech rights the organization once championed
• Legal Battles & Financial Penalties — Other legal fronts
• Information Control & Thought Reform — The internal system copyright law extends
• Shepherd the Flock of God — The secret manual the organization fights to keep hidden
• The ExJW Movement — Key Figures & Resources — The targets of the DMCA campaign
• Disfellowshipping & Shunning — The punishment that makes unmasking so dangerous

References