Protestia

Apparently, federal copyright law has a more biblical doctrine of accusation than the men surrounding G3 Ministries. Yesterday I posted one screenshot from Ramah Baptist Church’s publicly available worship stream, accompanied by commentary critiquing the hypocrisy of Scott Aniol attending Ramah rather than his own church (he has denied his own church members this right in the past). Ramah lead pastor @CharlesHuckaby apparently did not appreciate the commentary, so he filed a DMCA takedown to have the media removed from X. Here is the ironic part: federal law would not allow Huckaby to make his accusation anonymously. To accuse me of copyright infringement, Huckaby had to provide his name, church, job title, email address, physical address, authority to act, good-faith assertion, and signature. He had to identify the specific material and publicly stand behind his charge. He even had to acknowledge that knowingly materially misrepresenting infringement can create liability under 17 U.S.C. §512(f). In other words, the world’s copyright system told him: If you are going to accuse someone and demand consequences be imposed upon him, you must identify yourself and accept responsibility for the accusation - a clearly higher standard that Scott Aniol and the Pray’s Mill elders should have applied when they accused Tom Buck. They assembled anonymous packets, mailed them using FBC Lindale return labels, concealed the identities of the accusers, and created the impression that the accusations had come from (or at least carried the involvement of) Buck’s own church. They wanted the accusations to have consequences while the accusers escaped scrutiny and accountability. Ramah’s other pastor, @LaramieMinga, is G3 Ministries’ Director of Operations. To be perfectly clear, I have no evidence that Minga participated in preparing or mailing those packets, and I am not accusing him of doing so. But the institutional irony is impossible to miss: At the intersection of Ramah and G3, a secular DMCA form has now required more candor, identification, and accountability from an accuser than these churchmen required when attempting to damage the reputation and ministry of a fellow pastor. Apparently Caesar understands that an accuser should have to put his name on the accusation. The church of Jesus Christ should have a higher standard of justice than Twitter’s copyright department—not a lower one. And Huckaby’s accusation is itself sinfully deceptive. My post used one frame from a 78-minute public video as necessary documentary evidence accompanying commentary. It did not reproduce the sermon, replace the worship stream, or harm any market for it. His complaint actually emphasizes that the screenshot was “without cropping or alteration,” as though accurately preserving the evidence supporting my commentary somehow makes its use unlawful. It does not. Fair Use exists precisely so copyright owners cannot veto criticism by withholding permission to publish evidence supporting their critiques. I have demanded that Huckaby retract the takedown and am filing a formal counter-notification. He is welcome to disagree with my commentary. What he is not entitled to do is weaponize copyright law to make inconvenient evidence disappear and censor critique. These men should be ashamed that the federal government’s takedown paperwork demonstrates a more serious commitment to accountable accusation than they have.