Religious organization Elan Vital, whose leader Prem Pal Singh Rawat claims to promote a message of peace, has for the second time in two years made use of the DMCA - Digital Millennium Copyright Act - in an attempt to block free expression.
On June 21st 2005 Elan Vital's General Manager Larry Leblang filed a DMCA complaint with the company that provides Internet Services to the Prem Rawat Maharaji Info website. The complaint alleged that Elan Vital owned copyright on virtually all of the graphics material used by PRMI. Leblang's complaint followed his submission on the June 9th 2005 of a wholly false statement of what the disputed material actually was.
The first submission caused PRMI to lose Internet access for several days, and compliance with the DMCA provisions caused a further two days of down time and the removal of all graphic material from public view. PRMI's registered owner challenged both the false statement and the Complaint.
The DMCA regulations required that Elan Vital declare within 10 working days of the challenge to the Complaint that it (Elan Vital) intended to pursue its Copyright claim via court action. Elan Vital failed to make any such declaration and as of 12th July 2005 PRMI received the agreement of its hosting company, that all graphic materials previously used on the site should be restored to public view.
Elan Vital used this same DMCA strategy in 2003 against the EPO website which contains material that is critical of both Elan Vital and its leader Prem Pal Singh Rawat. As with the current PRMI case, Elan Vital failed then to back its copyright claim with appropriate legal action. This lack of legal action seems to demonstrate that the church's only intention on both occasions was to intimidate those it considers to be apostates, and to force removal from public view, material that appears damaging to the Elan Vital cause.
An introduction to the Elan Vital controversy can be accessed at:
http://www.prem-rawat-maharaji.info/index.php?id=68
The DMCA can be accessed at:
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm
Criticism of the DMCA can be viewed at:
http://anti-dmca.org/faq_local.html
Other Sources:
EPO: http://www.ex-premie.org/
Elan Vital: http://www.elanvital.org/events2004/faq_nam.htm
TPRF: http://www.tprf.org/
Freespeech:
http://prem-rawat-critique.org/free_speech.htm
Original: LEGAL MUGGING BY 'CHURCH'