Kiwi Farms Challenges DMCA Subpoenas as Tools to Unmask Anonymous Speech

A new lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York offers a clean example of something that keeps happening and keeps getting ignored: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act being used to censor speech and unmask anonymous speakers.

The case is Lolcow LLC v. Fong-Jones, filed on March 12, 2026, and it pits the operator of the web forum Kiwi Farms against Liz Fong-Jones, an activist and field Chief Technology Officer at SaaS observability platform Honeycomb, who has been filing DMCA subpoenas in an attempt to identify anonymous forum users.

The content Fong-Jones wants censored is a screenshot of a Fong-Jones Bluesky post and an edited version of a Fong-Jones headshot, both related to what Fong-Jones has previously described publicly as a “consent accident.”

Forum users posted and discussed those images. Fong-Jones responded by claiming copyright ownership and filing DMCA subpoenas to force the site to hand over the identities of the people who posted them.

The copyright claims seem thin. Kiwi Farms operator Joshua Moon argues that the screenshot is a derivative work over which Fong-Jones holds no copyright, and that the edited headshot represents a textbook case of fair use, given that the image has no commercial value and was modified specifically for purposes of criticism and commentary.

That argument carries weight. Courts have long recognized that transformative use of images for commentary or ridicule sits comfortably within fair use protections.

What makes this case useful as a case study is less the copyright question itself and more the mechanism being exploited. The DMCA subpoena process, codified in Section 512(h), allows copyright holders to obtain a judicial subpoena to unmask the identities of allegedly infringing anonymous internet users just by asking a court clerk to issue one and attaching a copy of the infringement notice.

No judge needs to review the merits. No adversarial hearing takes place first. The anonymous speaker can be exposed before they even know a claim has been filed.

This is a feature that has been routinely abused to strip anonymity from people whose real offense is saying something someone powerful doesn’t like.

The EFF has documented this pattern extensively. Copyright law is “an all-too common method used to silence lawful speech,” and the DMCA subpoena is the sharpest version of that weapon because it sidesteps the normal protections a lawsuit would require.

The standard DMCA process works like this, and it tells you everything you need to know about why Fong-Jones chose it: Under the DMCA, posts must come down first, and then the user who posted them must reveal their real identity and accept the risk of being sued and threatened, or else the posts stay down permanently. For anonymous forum users, the options are brutal. You either give up your identity to someone with a demonstrated history of legal aggression, or you accept the permanent censorship of your speech. The chilling effect is the point.

More: How the DMCA has become one of the biggest threats to online speech

Fong-Jones has campaigned against Kiwi Farms for years. Moon characterizes the DMCA approach as the latest tactic after technological and financial efforts to force the site offline have failed, describing it as probing “legalistic avenues” to achieve what deplatforming campaigns could not.

The copyright route is more dangerous, and it’s designed to be. Instead of pressuring companies, it goes after individual users. If Fong-Jones’s DMCA subpoenas succeed, anonymous forum participants could be exposed by name.

Lolcow LLC’s suit seeks a declaratory judgment that the copyright complaints are false, along with attorney’s fees.

There’s an important precedent worth understanding here. A 2022 ruling in the Northern District of California confirmed that the First Amendment’s protections for anonymous speech apply even in DMCA cases, and that copyright holders issuing subpoenas must meet the Constitution’s test before identifying anonymous speakers.

In that case, involving an anonymous Twitter user who posted photos while criticizing a private equity billionaire, it was established that a court should apply a two-step test before unmasking anyone. The court found that even if the copyright holder had established a valid infringement claim, the subpoena should still be quashed because the user’s interest in remaining anonymous outweighed the copyright interest.

The parallel to the Kiwi Farms situation is obvious. Fong-Jones claims copyright over a Bluesky screenshot and an edited headshot. The forum users posted those images as part of the discussion and commentary.

The question is whether copyright law should be available as a shortcut to unmask and silence anonymous speakers engaged in commentary about a public figure.

Courts have thankfully been skeptical of exactly this kind of move. The EFF has argued that courts “must apply robust First Amendment safeguards to prevent DMCA abuse that either seeks to suppress speech or to identify anonymous speakers.” The Northern District of California agreed, ruling that “it is possible for a speaker’s interest in anonymity to extend beyond the alleged infringement.”

Moon has been open about the financial stakes, noting that approximately $125,000 was crowdfunded three years ago for litigation costs, that most of it has been spent, and that the site’s annual legal expenses exceed $25,000. He’s asking users to contribute to a legal fund, and the outcome could determine whether the site survives. If Fong-Jones wins the copyright dispute, Moon says, “the site is gone.”

The broader pattern here matters more than any individual piece of forum content. Copyright claims are becoming a preferred weapon for people who want to censor speech they find offensive or embarrassing, and the DMCA gives them a loaded gun.

The subpoena process was designed to help copyright holders protect their creative works. Fong-Jones is here accused of using it to try to identify anonymous people who posted a screenshot of a public social media post and a mocked-up photo.

Lolcow LLC has already shown a willingness to fight these free speech battles. The company, alongside 4chan, filed a separate lawsuit in August 2025 challenging the UK’s Online Safety Act, arguing that enforcement of the Act against American companies is “intended to deliberately undermine the First Amendment and American competitiveness.”