The new Kingdom Ministry School Textbook, "Shepherd the Flock of God--1 Peter 5:2," that is the subject of this thread, is a copyrighted work, and the "fair use" doctrine to which reference has been made here doesn't permit the authorized use or transmission of any of the material contained in this textbook in any forum since to quote from a book that isn't available to the public is to copy another author's work to which no balancing test can be applied, and which action would constitute a violation of the copyright. This textbook is not a secret manual, for while only elders have received copies of it, ministerial servants are permitted to read it, although copies of it have been provided to just the elders. BTW, a copyright on a writing need only be declared by its author; the formal publishing of a work either in print or electronically, and distribution of it whether or not for compensation doesn't change the character of the copyright held by the copyright holder. (In the digital age, this means that it isn't always the case that a copy of a copyrighted work may be listed in a Library of Congress catalog.)
I wanted to say a couple of things, one of them related to something that was raised here by both Simon and Lady Lee regarding the conduct of some of the folks here that have posted comments to this thread: If you care about the future of Jehovahs-Witness.net, you will not allow your angst for Jehovah's Witnesses to drive you to engage in the criminal course that you have undertaken on this website (and off!) against the copyright held by the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, the copyright holder of the new textbook that some here have been making electronic copies via PM and file sharing sites by continuing to do what you've been doing.
For those who do not know, the publishers are the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., and the International Bible Students Association in Brooklyn, NY, USA, also known as Jehovah's Witnesses, who provides financial support for the work done by this printing corporation, which both publishes and distributes the publications distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide. While all such copyright infringement can interfere and adversely impact the work of Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, including the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, the point I'm making here is that the inclusion of links to copyrighted material that one is not authorized to disseminate in writing or electronically violates the copyright held by the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania.
If you have obtained a copy, enjoy it, but you should know that you are complicit in a crime by providing a link to it in any written or electronic communication you make, and that if a federal injunction should lead to this site being temporarily unavailable to everyone here as a result of any ongoing investigation into such criminal activity on this site pursuant to a federal subpoena, it would behoove Simon to remove all PMs sent to anyone containing a link to this publication, whether that link should now be living or dead, for these PMs can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you are not now under federal subpoena, then I see no reason why you shouldn't reset all PMs as a part of normal maintenance anyway (since we cannot rid ourselves of them ourselves!), and then back up this site so that you will be in a position to confidently move this site elsewhere with the content intact (sans the suspect PMs, of course).
I have found many of the comments made in this thread to be irresponsible. Back in 2007, the Recording Industry Association of America won a jury verdict of $220,000 against Jammie Thomas for making some 1,700 MP3s available over Kazaa, and she wasn't charging anyone any money and didn't know who it was that had downloaded any of the MP3s through Kazaa. To win damages, all RIAA had to do was match Thomas' username with her IP address. If you have any sense at all and care about Simon and this website, you will stop blatantly emailing links or electronic copies of the textbook to others, for each such email communication constitutes a criminal count, and pasting links to your posts themselves may further subject Simon to criminal liability for permitting you guys to do this without his or Lady Lee's removal of such messages as is done here when, for example, someone recently thought it would be funny to include an image of a penis to his post (as if no children at all have access to this web site).
If anyone here should think engaging in criminal conduct like this is just harmless fun, it's not harmless, and such a lawsuit could potentially impact your family economically, exposing you to having to pay legal fees to the attorney you are forced to hire to represent you in court, and to your having to pay a sizeable jury award for copyright infringement. If anyone here has a hatred for Jehovah's Witnesses, I think one should sever their relationship with Jehovah's Witnesses and leave its ranks, and maybe join some other church group (or not!), and throw away those NWTs and other WTS publications from which you keep quoting here so that you will not be reminded of your former association whenever you should see one of them, since these Bible translations and publications were produced by Jehovah's Witnesses primarily for use by Jehovah's Witnesses anyway in connection with their beliefs and their evangelization work, although they are currently still being made available to the public by Jehovah's Witnesses (but probably not for too many more years).
@djeggnog
