MsMcDuckett: please note the first word in the First Amendment: "CONGRESS ...."
The Constitution and the Amendments to it concern what rights and privileges individuals have vis a vis the Government. The First Amendment applies to the Federal Government and via the Fourteenth Amendment to the State governments.
Private persons, of which a corporation is legally deemed, have no 1st Amendment rights against each other.
The Government cannot prevent you from speaking or preaching from your soap box in a public forum or in the public byways but a private person CAN prevent you from speaking or preaching on their doorstep.
regarding the Quotes site, the site had numerous problems involving copyright infringement, including the offering of CD-ROMS of copyrighted material for SALE. In my opinion too, Mossier erred by not including "comment, criticism, evaluation, etc." all of which is expected and the REASON that Fair Use or Fair Dealing is permitted as an exception to copyright law. He boasted that what he was reprinting were the words of the Watchtower and only the words of the Watchtower without any "editorializing" and that is exactly what is not permitted to be done with copyrighted material. Thus, the Quotes site was legitimately attacked.
It is not a question of combatting CRITICISM as can be seen by the continued operations of many websites which have been functioning for many years and also the publication of books and other publications which have been published since the beginning of the Organization that have been critical of the Society/JWs and sometimes made limited legitimate use of copyrighted materials.
It should be noted that this is a different viewpoint than for example, the Church of Scientology, which has viewed certain writings as trade secrets and copyrighted, and made attempts to keep the material secret and within authorized user's hands. Thus Scientology has agressively litigated against persons and websites that had such "secret" material. In contrast, with a few exceptions, like service manuals and the elder's manual, most material is meant by the Society to be distributed to the public.
Secondly, the CoS has adopted policies which are meant to discredit and, if possible, overwhelm any source of criticism whenever possible. Thus it or its members or certain affiliates have engaged in aggressive litigation, counter-PR, mud-slinging, etc. against any and all critics, even when the legal claims have been meritless or the information is known to be untrue or obtained in illegal or immoral ways.
In contrast, thus far it would seem, the Society has not engaged in such tactics. (With some limited exceptions pertaining to Olin Moyle, Merriman and May, and to a lesser degree Carl Olaf Jonsson, Walter Salter, Ray Franz, et al., and other former Witnesses (deemed apostates) who were "bad-mouthed" in their home territories.)
The Society is not actually too eager to squash all criticism since as its culture drifts closer to the mainstream, and as it as a religious organization is more accepted worldwide, criticism (and especially any form of government oppression or religious persecution) are reinforcing to the theology and worldview. JWs see themselves and the Organization as the only true religion (church) and thus expect that Satan and his dominion will persecute it. The need for this is even greater now that there are few other mechanisms (or doctrines) keeping members anxious about Armageddon.
-Eduardo
