Quotes lawsuit

John Doe

Do you think the wtbts made a mistake in suing the quotes site owner? I think doing such was a huge mistake on their part, and here's why:

1) They were not able to bury the information. The site is available to anyone who wants to look a little bit. Simply because the original Quotes owner can not host the site, didn't stop the site from being reproduced in different lands under different laws. In effect, the information was not contained.

2)In my opinion, the public will not view kindly an organization who sues in order to cover up its own literature. The beauty of the Quotes site still exists--it was all direct quotations with labeled references. Instead of confronting their past, the wtbts attempted to cover it up--never a wise public movement.

These two points seem self evident and obvious, and I'm sure the wtbts must have considered them before filing suit. This makes me conclude that I must be overlooking some aspect. What do you all think?

reneeisorym

True. It was kinda dumb.

Gopher

Yes they wasted their time and their adherent's money.

1) They were not able to bury the information. The site is available to anyone who wants to look a little bit. Simply because the original Quotes owner can not host the site, didn't stop the site from being reproduced in different lands under different laws. In effect, the information was not contained.
2)In my opinion, the public will not view kindly an organization who sues in order to cover up its own literature

Point #1 was a learning for them out of this. They cannot control the spreading of what they have already published. That horse is out of the barn.

Point #2 - they don't really care about what the "informed" public thinks. That's not their target audience now and won't be in the future.

John Doe

So Gopher, do you think that perhaps they're no longer trying to increase, but rather merely trying to maintain a stranglehold on what they've got? Seems to me like that's a recipe for failure, but then again religion is a curious thing.

WTWizard

I hope that stupid stunt really burns them big time. What this tells me is that they are trying to control the truth. The last time an organization was successful in doing that was when St Augustine led mankind into the Dark Ages, since one cannot control the actual truth. I hope people get p*#$ed off at the Watchtower Society for trying to start another Dark Age.

The other message is for those who are thinking of joining. Anyone who joins now is supporting the genesis of the Second Dark Age. And, if you know what is going on and join anyway, you are in effect saying that you want another Dark Age to come. They might just succeed in getting their new order, but it will not be a paradise--if they keep trying to silence the critics, they will only stop the flow of knowledge that man needs to keep progressing. With that done, we stagnate. And if the Craptower gets the monopoly on "truth", we go right back into the Dark Ages. This is not the sort of new order I want to be in.

monophonic

i wish there was more of a public declaration against it, or news coverage, to get to those who are 'in' the borg to make them think about the possibility that they're under blatant information control.

Arthur

It seems that the WTS's constant drum beat about the "dangers of the internet" and "internet apostates" are only having a reverse-psychology effect.

When an organization is constantly telling people to "avoid independent thinking", and is continuously using psychological manipulation methods, some begin to intuitively sense that something is very wrong, but they can't quite put their finger on it.

When the same organization constantly tells people to avoid any internet information that is unflattering about itself, it is only going to move these ones to want to investigate further.

It's like a husband who is acting strange while telling his wife over and over never to look in the garage. Yeah, that's going to work.

It is their own lack of transparency, secrecy, authoritarianism, and use of mind control that has come back to bite them in the rear. Their attempts to shut down websites are incredibly stupid. It just reinforces to people that they have something to hide.

In regards to your last comment, I do believe they are just trying to keep the membership here in the industrialized nations intact. The parts of the world that have free and open access to information (public libraries, internet) are showing very little growth. The parts of the world that are experiencing more growth are the areas where people cannot gain this information.

Gopher

So Gopher, do you think that perhaps they're no longer trying to increase, but rather merely trying to maintain a stranglehold on what they've got? Seems to me like that's a recipe for failure, but then again religion is a curious thing.

It seems they'll try to increase, they just have to market their literature more to the less-Internet exposed regions like Africa and Eastern Europe, and some of the poorer immigrant populations. From what I've read here, their growth rate among non-Spanish speaking Americans is practically zero, for example.

"Stranglehold" is a good word, as they continue to try to shield their members from the Internet and from higher education, trying to keep them uninformed and loyal.

I think they're already failing to grow a dynamic organization. At least they were able to keep it somewhat exciting during the growth periods (1960's, early 70's and for a while in the 80's and 90's) when they milked false promises and didn't have an internet to contend with. Now their literature is just boring cut-and-paste "loyalty to the organization" mush.

alanv

Good points made Arthur, My son is still in the org. and at present he can't believe it is the increase in info. on the internet that is having such an effect on their numbers in the western world. I imagine many feel the same way and just feel it is proof that the witnessing is nearly finished in the stagnent areas.

MidwichCuckoo

I think it was a daft move on the WTBTS part, for the same reasons - those quotes are all over the Net if we need to find them, and there are mirror sites. It looks as though the WTBTS was making a point - almost a threat. It shows that the Org feels threatened by its own past.

If I was currently a Dub, I'd be wondering why the Org wanted to stifle the 'Word of God' which it has always distributed freely.

Quotes lawsuit

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