Many of us know that Watch Tower (yes, two words in this case) has issued a subpoena to Reddit to try to gain Darkspilver's identity due to accusations of copyright infringement:
Tl;dr: On April 9, Watch Tower filed a response to the EFF's motion to quash (filed March 26) regarding the subpoena submitted to Reddit in an attempt to find /u/Darkspilver's identity.
The WT response is publicly available here as a PDF, from the site Court Listener.
A number of other documents relating to the case are available on the same site, here.
And the EFF's motion to quash is available on the EFF's website here.
Details: As I'm sure many of us know, Watch Tower (yes, two words in this case) has issued a subpoena to Reddit to try to gain /u/Darkspilver's identity due to accusations of copyright infringement. Specifically, Watch Tower is claiming copyright infringement for two things: First, Darkspilver posted the back page of the November 2018 Watchtower which was an article entitled "What Gift Can We Give to Jehovah?” which explained how to donate. Secondly, Darkspilver posted an internal organization document regarding the handling of information after the passing of the European GDPR law which was "not intended for wide-spread public dissemination" according to Watch Tower.
Edit: My favorite quote from the Watch Tower response so far:
If widespread unauthorized reproduction and display of Watch Tower’s works online were permitted, there would be virtually no need to visit Watch Tower’s website – JW.ORG. Diverting traffic away from Watch Tower’s website could result in a significant decline in readership of Watch Tower’s content .
Edit 2: The paragraph below, again from Watch Tower's April 9 filing, is probably the most trickily-worded section I've found yet. I'll explain afterwards:
Watch Tower is not Darkspilver’s local church and has no ability to excommunicate him from his local congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. See Polidoro Decl., at ¶10. Not a single person that has been the subject of a Watch Tower-sought DMCA subpoena has been excommunicated from their local church as result of Watch Tower obtaining their identity from a DMCA subpoena. Id. Watch Tower has never publicly disclosed the names of the individuals who were the subject of DMCA subpoenas. Id. Some of the subjects of Watch Tower’s DMCA subpoenas who were active Jehovah’s Witnesses before they became the subject of a Watch Tower DMCA subpoena, remained active Jehovah’s Witnesses after Watch Tower received identifying information about them.
Statements I take issue with:
WT is not DS's local church and cannot excommunicate him. This is strictly correct, although WT absolutely exercises notable control over local congregations and can by all means influence this action to be taken.
Not a single person has been DF'd as a result of WT obtaining their ID through a DMCA subpoena. The act of WT obtaining their identity isn't what gets them DF'd. WT sending that identity to a local congregation certainly could have that effect, though.
WT has never publicly disclosed the names of DMCA subpoena recipients. I don't think anybody ever expected them to, nor would it be required in order for DS to get DF'd.
Regarding DMCA subpoena recipients who continued as Witnesses: If such subpoenas were issued to Witnesses who chose to use the JW.org logo on merchandise or websites, of course they wouldn't be DF'd. They just got overzealous in trying to spread the "good news".
Zing