Topic The Commune
SannyasWorld.com has been closed for a few days as a result of a DMCA Take Down notice served on our hosting provider by Osho International Foundation. What follows is a more detailed explanation of what has happened.
The story so far
On the 8th Feb 2008, Davis & Gilbert, a legal firm specialising in copyright law acting on behalf of Osho International Foundation, New York, served a DMCA take down request to Westhost Communications (who supply the web site hosting). Westhost promptly informed us that we had seven days to remove all material that infringed on the copyright of OIF. In typical corporate fashion, the take down notice was served last thing on a Friday evening to delay any potential discussion.
OIF had also instructed that Westhost not reveal the contents of the take down notice to us, so we had no specifics on what material was considered to infringe their copyrights. In view of that, and the fact that it was Friday evening, we decided to simply close down the site until we'd sorted out what to do.
We did manage to obtain a list of the URLs that OIF had objected to and it contained a list of all the Osho quotes on the site.
There are more details on the DMCA and what it means later on, but basically it allows a corporation to threaten the OSP (Westhost) with legal action, rather than the site owner. The OSP will have no knowledge of the facts of the matter and no reason to refuse, so they will normally close the site down.
In the short term we will remove the Osho quotes that have been listed in the notice.
In the longer term, there are a number of interesting options:
- Continue to use Osho quotes and allow OIF to pursue legal remedies. In short, martyrdom. However, Westhost will be legally bound to close the account before that happened.
- File a DMCA counter-notice, which will mean that OIF have to provide a court-imposed restraining order until the matter is satisfied in the courts.
- Move the site outside the jurisdiction of the DMCA, for instance, to Canada or China.
- Have the quotes available for registered users only. This has the advantage of keeping them out of the search engines and therefore out of sight of OIF, at least in the short term.
- Remove the Osho quotes, or at least keep them within the provisions of fair use, along with anything else that OIF may object to.
- Close the site altogether.
Why has this action been taken?
The main reason for serving a DMCA notice is to have material removed from a website that is copyrighted and is being used illegally. "Illegally" can mean many things, but the usual meaning is to use copyrighted material without the permission of the owners and without being able to claim 'fair use'. 'Fair use' means using the material for review, critique, even for parody. One of the deciding factors of 'fair use' is whether a site has material gain from the copyrighted work or whether it reduces the copyright owners 'market effect'. It is assumed that this is the angle that OIF is taking.
How much the quotes on sannyasworld.com reduce the market of OIF is debatable. It is arguable that many more people become interested in Osho through reading the site and therefore go out and purchase the books and this would be a net gain for OIF.
OIF also have a problem, outlined here by Sangeet, a lawyer, that they may not have any proof of their ownership of the copyright, making it all the more important that they assert control over it. There have been rumours of an Indian group releasing all of Osho's works under a Creative Commons license making it more imperative.
oshospeak.blogspot.com received a DMCA notice on Sept 16 2006 (see Chilling Effects record). This is a small personal blog and it's hard to understand that it would have any effect on OIFs market presence. In fact, the cost of lawyers (at $500 per hour?) surely outweighed any possible losses that OIF may have incurred.
In 2005, Devakrishna's OToons was told to remove Osho quotes. Again, it is hard to see how a site consisting mainly of cartoons and humour would have a negative effect on book sales.
OshoBuddha has also announced that it is closing, apparently through the actions of OIF.
If anyone else has had problems of a similar kind, we'd be interested in hearing about them.
At the same time, all of Osho's books are available for free on OshoWorld and on other sites around the web. OshoWorld is stongly against the Osho Resort and OIF, so the message from this is rather confused. Fight against OIF and you can operate freely. Be supportive and lovers of Osho and have legal problems. Hmm, go figure.
sannyasworld.com has been in existence since November 2001, which is over six years. So why has this action been taken now?
What is the DMCA?
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act has a number of different parts. The area that effects SannyasWorld.com is the responsibilities of the Online Service Provider. The DMCA provides protection (safe harbour) to OSPs against being legally reponsible for copyright infringing materials on their network. There is a whole procedure for informing an OSP of possible copyright infringement and one for rebutting that. Most of it involves lawyers.
To make use of the safe harbour protections, an OSP has to promptly remove any infringing material as soon as they are informed of said material. The site owner then has the opportunity to respond. In the vast majority of cases, the complainant is a large corporation and the respondent is 'a guy with a website' (although not always, see Viacom vs. YouTube). This is the reason that the Chilling Effects site has that name, the DMCA can be used in lieu of censorship simply by threatening action against the OSP. The OSP has no responsibility to ascertain whether or not the material is infringing copyright or not, nor to ascertain whether the person serving the take down request is legally allowed to do so. The burden for this is on the defendant. Guilty until proven innocent.
Note that the DMCA is not concerned with whether something is or isn't copyrighted, it provides a procedure and set of protections in cases of alleged copyright infringement.
The future
The site will continue much as before, sans Osho for now. Although it would be an interesting copyright test case, it will have to be someone with more resources than we have to take it on. SannyasWorld.com is not a commercial operation and makes no money.
We hope the closing of the site will have highlighted the problems that many Osho oriented sites have. As Osho lovers, it is a natural feeling to want to share his vision and his words with people and that is, unfortunately, increasingly difficult without running the risk of legal problems. Eventually Osho's words will be so freely available on the Internet that it will be pointless to try and shut down sites that make use of them. But until then it is problematic.
Some emails blame the Inner Circle for this situation, but it needs to be clear that this is an action of the OIF in New York. Some on the Inner Circle have expressed their reservations on these kinds of actions and it may be possible that they will act to reign in the New York office.
Many thanks to all the supportive emails we've received over the last week. It is the feeling that people enjoy the site that makes it worth doing.
Love, Life and Laughter!
|
