Copyright Notice to OSHORAJNEESH.COM & MESSAGEFROMMASTERS.COM
OSHO INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT NOTICE TO OSHO WEBSITES
OSHO INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT NOTICE TO OSHORAJNEESH.COM & MESSAGEFROMMASTERS.COM
To Whom it may concern: We have identified your company as the hosting provider for a web site named www.messagefrommasters.com
This firm represents Osho International Foundation (“OIF” or “the Copyright Owner”). OIF is a public non-profit organization of Switzerland and the estate owner of all IP of an author named Osho.
In that capacity and pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 V.S.C. §512 (“DMCA”), I am writing to provide you with a notification of claimed infringements on the Websites located at: www.messagefrommasters.com
As set forth in Section 512(c)(3) of the DMCA, I am hereby providing the following elements of this notification:
(i) I am authorized to act on behalf of OIF. My signature appears on this email / letter as /Klaus Steeg /sent via electronic mail.
(ii) There are copyrighted works that have been infringed. The copyrighted works are various text/books and photos all copyrights which are owned by OIF. All such copyrights are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. The website is being used to offer these files of OIF’s copyrighted works without license.
(iii) Below are the locations of the web sites claimed to be infringing (the “Infringing Web Sites”), which we request be removed and access to it be disabled: All text by Osho as identified by infringer are copyright of Osho International Foundation.
All Osho-Images used on the mentioned web pages are copyright Osho International Foundation. The site also promotes other copyright infringing web pages like http://www.oshorajneesh.com offering copyright protected content for free without authorization.
(iv) You may contact me as the authorized representative of the complaining party at: Klaus Steeg OSHO INTERNATIONAL 410 Park Avenue, 15th Floor -New York, NY 10022 T. +1.212-231-8437 Fax: +1.212.658.9508 klaus.steeg@oshointernational.com – www.osho.com/oshointernational
(v) I have a good faith belief that use of the material on the Infringing Web Sites is not authorized by OIF, or by law.
(vi) Under penalty of perjury, the information set forth in this notification is accurate and I am authorized to act on behalf of OIF. Pursuant to the DMCA and international copyright law, we respectfully request that you act expeditiously to remove and disable access to the infringing content.
SWAMI RAJNEESH REPLY TO THE ABOVE LETTER
Klaus Steeg / Pramod
Osho International 410 Park Avenue 15 floor New York NY 10022 9 august 2011
in response to your various false claims of copyrights OIF false claims of ownership and your notice claiming infringement by website www.messagefrommasters.com and www.oshorajneesh.com
first i challenge OIF to show any legal court order / court ruling with clear judgment stating their legal ownership of oshoʼs spiritual works
your false claims over worldwide copyrights of oshoʼs legacy and his spiritual works for all of humanity present and future are issues of great implications and vast magnitude
OIF has publicly lied and misrepresented these copyright ownership matters and stolen / high jacked these materials illegally as no one has challenged them in any legal court. this opens the pandora box to hundreds of unanswered questions about who own legally oshoʼs spiritual works
QUESTIONS / how is OIF osho international foundation claiming copyrights
1. there is no signed document or legal transfer nor any last and final will left by osho who left his body in 1990
2. how is OIF legally claiming these / or any such copyrights ?
3. where are court order / legally signed documents of such ownership ?
4. if copyright were transferred then by whom / or which authority / organization transferred these copyrights to OIF new york ?
5. if copyrights were transferred then was it transferred to OIF new york or OIF switzerland and by which legal authority ?
6. how does OIF switzerland or OIF new york own copyrights ( if by any indian trust exists ) is it by transfer commission or royalty arrangement with the indian trust and how are these payments made and by whom ?
7. is there an authorized trust in india who legally own these copyrights ??
8. if yes, then show us their legal documents of copyright ownership and how they transferred them to OIF switzerland
9. how is OIF a public non profit organization of switzerland and where is swiss registration of this non profit status ??
10. it is learnt that osho international OI new york is just a trading name for a privately held british company “ master zones ltd “ how has the claims of copyright of the OIF switzerland trust illegally transferred copyrights to a private individual british company while claiming to be a public trust and non profit organization ?
11. how have these thousands of original works / material of oshoʼs books audio video photos artwork been smuggled out of india illegally as OIF switzerland claim it belongs to some indian trust who owns these materials in their applications before the charity commissioner bombay.
if these are claimed to be owned, property of a non profit organization trust based in india then how have they been illegally transferred physically removed / smuggled out of india to new york, switzerland, england and given to a private company “ master zones ltd “ to publish illegally for profits by selling / claiming false copyrights to hundreds of foreign publishers to make personal profits aboad.
there is a clear violation of trustees financially cheating the indian trust and also a clear violation of stealing copyrights materials that supposedly belongs to an indian non profit charity trust. OIF should be held for theft.
12. publication royalties for books videos audio and such materials need to be paid into indian trust accounts and should be made accountable. if millions of dollars in royalties are being made in england new york and switzerland then they are violating FERA indian foreign exchange act and robbing the indian trustees of their copyright incomes
13. the indian charity commissioner bombay has given the osho ashram poona a charitable non profit status and is being cheated by OIF who claim the non profit status in foreign swiss accounts misusing indian charity trust rulings while taking millions of dollars into personal bank accounts through copyright sales and book royalties
14. even with false claims of oshoʼs copyright applications in the US what is the jurisdiction of US copyright laws over europe, india or china ??
15. copyright jurisdiction laws / ownership of copyright materials remain properties of india which can claim loss of revenues and theft of royalties on intellectual properties created in india
16. misuse of non profit charitable status in swiss banks by claiming direct non profit organization status in india is a criminal offence. this is a indirect attempt of trustees to steal from the trust and avoid taxes in both countries. have hundreds of international book publication deals been notified to the indian charity commissioners office ?
REPLY TO / osho images-as per your placed document ( images osho pdf )
1. this pdf / document only shows a general casual registration application of a few photographs that supposedly OIF claim to own copyrights. there is no actual photograph shown of the exact photos in question
it may be out of hundreds of thousands of photographs commonly available worldwide of osho from various people
2. thousands of seekers, general public took thousands of personal public photographs of osho which are now commonly available for all everywhere and cannot be claimed as copyright as these are private photos offered by individual photographers willingly
3. photos taken of osho professionally when he was alive as works of hire perhaps could be understood as copyrights, which then also require signed affidavit of the said hired photographer to the said assignment
4. please furnish exact photograph claimed with the photographers assignment papers proving the said copyright and also showing how OIF have any legal authority copyrights over those said photographs
5. this document shows the year of “ creation of work “ as 1997 whereby osho left his body in 1990…is this registration application dated 1997 for a photo of his ghost ??
6. the entire application document is partial, incomplete with no section completed, just general and vague without any photo attached
REPLY TO / books – as per your placed document ( bondage to freedom pdf )
1. this pdf shows a general application claiming copyrights in 1997 of a book stating amendments / changed version of the book of another publication of 1990 ( with that registration still pending approval ) although we challenge even this initial claim to copyrights in the first place, it is nowhere shown the “exact book” this present 1997 application is pending for, as it is obvious from
this application that there are several versions of this book with similar titles. they need to prove that this application was successful and also the exact same book, with these particular amendments this application has been made for, is exactly the same book as on our website
2. once again the original question to prove that they have legal authority and documents over copyrights to this particular book in question.
REPLY TO / books – as per your placed document ( the inner journey pdf )
1. this pdf shows another general application absurdly claiming copyrights of an english book titled “ the inner journey “ in 1997 from the translations of a hindi book previously titled “antaryatra “ published in india 1996 with new additional text
2. please show us the original hindi book title ownership and publication rights for the hindi book along with written permission / agreement of hindi book title owner in india to transfer and give you rights to translate and thereafter also claim copyrights for such translated materials
3. they need to prove that the exact same book with particular translations and design amendments is exactly the same book as on our website
BROAD QUESTIONS / books
1. show us any legal court signed documents of any of the following… acharya rajneesh, bhagwan shree rajneesh, shree rajneesh, osho, stating his transfer of his works copyrights materials
2. in 1969 as acharya rajneesh set up “ jivan jagruti kendra “ trust for few of his early hindi books only with no signed copyright papers
3. in 1978 as bhagwan shree rajneesh “ rajneesh foundation “ trust was given conditional publishing licence, but again there is no signed original documentto authenticate this
4. osho left his body in 1990 with no written agreement or transfer of any copyrights to anyone
5. osho is a renouned enlightened spiritual master and has been traveling worldwide as a speaker, speaking in open public and to masses, answering thousands of spiritual questions for seekers worldwide in open spiritual discourses
6. in india spiritual discourses are not written like text novels fiction books like writers and authors, but are spontaneous religious discourses of wisdom given to public and open audiences
7. question answered by wise enlightened masters are considered spiritual guidance and are personal to the questioner. these discourses are freely distributed in india perhaps even as religious discourses
8. these publicly spoken words cannot be copyrighted as they are answers given to individual spiritual seekers. the questioner has the right to ask questions at these discourses which have been personally attended and a certain donation been paid for attending and listening
9. the questioner / question answered have their rights to these spoken words and also have rights to publish the answers received as they are open public religious discourse
10. many of the spoken words / books are initially taken from hundreds of known spiritual books with commentaries and modern interpretations.
these arecommentaries on old spiritual books and we need to see if permissions have been taken from the original text and their authors. as has been seen from the USA court case regarding OSHO trademark
Osho Friends International Holland vs Osho International Foundation ( OFI holland versus OIF new york ) where Osho International Foundation tried to bully the whole osho sannyas world by misleading the world movement and attempting to illegally take over all OSHO trademark worldwide under their control
OIF then misinformed Google and misused DMCA laws to ban and bar other OSHO meditation centers from using OSHO name before their centers… this case was lost by Osho International Foundation with strong observations and wordings against OIF by the US Courts. ( court order and document attached ) as Osho Trademark Decision
this new matter and claims of copyrights made by OIF is false and i again challenge them to take this matter to the courts which serve their copyright claims jurisdiction and prove their ownership before threatening our websites which are offering available materials freely that are also available openly on hundreds of websites.
osho is free from your personal financial exploitation… and misuse and blatant theft of sannyasins inheritance worldwide with attempts to cheat millions of new seekers on the path of truth…
see you in court of you dare !!!
swami rajneesh
www.oshorajneesh.com www.messagefrommasters.com
some reading matter from Sangeet ( legal adviser for OFI Osho Friends International Holland )
Osho sometimes spoke about His world headquarters, and made it clear that headquarters was His secretariat:
The world headquarters will simply function so that you can have a connection with me. Otherwise you donʼt have any place to whom to ask where I am, what is happening to me. The world headquarters is not in any way a power over any sannyasin, over any other sannyas centers, ashramas, communes. It has nothing to do with that. It is my secretariat. OSHO The Last Testament, Vol. 5, chapter 12
The world headquarters for Oshoʼs work operated wherever Osho and His secretaries were. At one point it was in Bombay (now Mumbai), then in Pune, then in Oregon, then in various places on the World Tour, then in Mumbai again, and then back to Pune, where Osho left His body
Osho had several secretaries through the years including Laxmi, Sheela, Hasya, Neelam, and Anando. Osho had several secretaries at one time to avoid abuse of power. The offices of these women were called secretariats in the British style, and the secretaries had staffs that helped them with the work of communicating with thousands of people around the world. Secretaries and their staffs were volunteers who donated their work out of their love for Osho
At the time of the name change Osho had three secretaries:- Hasya: His international secretary who communicated on Oshoʼs behalf with centers and individuals around the world outside of India. – Neelam: His secretary for India, who communicated on Oshoʼs behalf with centers and individuals in India. – Anando: His legal secretary, who dealt with legal and business matters.
When Osho was in different places, Osho centers, trusts, and foundations provided living space for Him and some of the people around Him and office space and support for the activities of the secretariats. Osho had no direct legal connection with any of these entities except one, which weʼll discuss in a moment. Osho never set up any hierarchy or transferred any legal rights over His work to any of these entities.
Osho did have a connection with the first trust that was set up in India to spread His teachings. It was called Jivan Jagruti Kendra (later Rajneesh Foundation [RF]) and Osho was named an advisor for life at the time the trust was created in 1969. Osho may have given RF a conditional publishing license for a few of His books in 1978, but no original document has been produced to authenticate this.
Osho connected with His people in two major ways. He gave names to centers, ashrams, institutes, therapies, and so on, and He answered questions sent to Him and gave suggestions to people. In the early days in Mumbai (Bombay) and Pune Osho made this contact partly through his then secretary, Ma Yoga Laxmi, and her assistants, and partly in personal meetings with His sannyasins.
At those meetings He sometimes gave out name certificates to people He had asked to open centers around the world. When He became ill late in Pune I, He stopped meeting regularly with people and carried on contact with sannyasins almost entirely through His secretaries.
His secretaries prepared and gave out name certificates to centers on Oshoʼs behalf. During the World Tour from 1985 to 1987 Oshoʼs secretaries kept people informed where Osho was and how He was doing.
At the time Osho left the body any intellectual property rights He might have owned had never been transferred to anyone else. When someone leaves the body they no longer have the legal power to own anything. Oshoʼs secretaries had acted as His agents during His life, and when He left the body any authority His secretaries might have had through Him ended. His last secretaries continued to work as volunteers for several years explaining Oshoʼs wishes to people, but they had no special authority any longer. Osho had dissolved into His people, dissolved into His varied and farflung successors.
After a few years Oshoʼs secretaries all left Pune to move on with their lives and there was no longer any headquarters in the sense that Osho spoke of it, though the Osho center in Pune continued to function.
Some people have tried to lead others to believe that the ashram/commune/resort in Pune is some kind of headquarters or a “mother church,” but there is no legal basis for this idea. There never was a legal headquarters of Oshoʼs work at any time. Osho Himself was the spiritual center of the movement. When He left His body He, in His own words, dissolved into His people. In other words, there was no longer any spiritual center, but a group of individuals spread around the globe who were all equal successors to Osho.
Pune is a place where many different legal entities (at least 10) operate. These legal entities are independent and are not legally connected with foreign corporations like OIF, Zurich. (India has strict laws about charitable trusts and foreign corporations.)
Around 1988 Osho asked that an office of volunteers be set up in Pune that would be called Global Connections (GC). In those pre-Internet days these volunteers were to gather and provide information about people involved in Oshoʼs work anywhere in the world. If someone was getting transferred to Singapore for a job, for example, and wanted to know if there was an Osho center there, he or she could ask GC. GC would tell the person what centers were in Singapore, where they were, and what activities they had.
GC was provided an office and office equipment by the group of legal entities that worked together at that time to support the programs in Pune. Several different legal entities were involved, but GC was never legally associated with any one of them. GC was always just a group of volunteers. It has never been a legal entity. GC compiled a list of centers, and over the years, particularly after Vatayana got involved, GC started to set conditions for centers being included in its list.
For example, if the center didnʼt offer a regular meditation schedule it had to list itself as an information center or GC wouldnʼt put it on GCʼs list. As the Internet grew the GC list became meaningless, since many centers put up websites and several websites listed various meditation centers around the world. GC was no longer needed as a list keeper.
After Oshoʼs secretaries left Pune GC also took over the job of sending out gifts of name certificates for new centers. Before He left the body Osho asked that all new Osho centers simply be called Osho Mediation Centers, without any other name, like Viha, Miasto, or Rabia. Osho knew He would no longer be there to give centers names and He never assigned or gave that job to anyone to do on their own, though His secretaries had sometimes done it on His behalf during His life. Before He left the body He ended the tradition of giving special names to centers. After He left the body people in Pune continued the tradition—which was nothing more than a tradition—of giving out name papers to people who opened new centers. Those name papers were Osho Meditation Center or newer designation Osho Information Center
In the US trademark trial GC claimed, for the first time, that what it was really doing by sending out name certificates and compiling information about centers was legally controlling the centers on behalf of OIF, Zurich. This was news to everyone in the sannyas community.
If you look closely at the evidence in the US trademark case you will see that the entities in Pune donʼt claim to have authority over anyone outside of India. Vatayana from GC claims that she is an agent of OIF in Switzerland and that she controls centers outside of India under the authority of OIF, Zurich, not through any authority in Pune.
On the other hand, OIF in Zurich admits that it does not claim to own the trademark for Osho in India. OIF in India, a completely separate Indian trust, has applied to register trademarks for Osho in India. In order to legitimately register trademarks for Osho in India, OIF, India would have to own the trademarks in India by completely controlling all the uses of Osho in India since Osho changed His name in 1989.
This would be a bit challenging, since OIF, India wasnʼt created until 1991 and centers in India began using Osho independently when Osho changed His name in 1989.
Itʼs important that OIF, Zurich doesnʼt claim to control the centers in India and doesnʼt claim that any entity located in Pune has authority to control Osho centers outside of India. This can be confusing, because OIF, Zurichʼs agent, Vatayana, operates out of Pune, so some people have gotten the mistaken idea that she is claiming to exercise some authority of “Pune,” or some legal entity located in Pune.
So what is the role of Pune in OIF, Zurichʼs claim to own trademarks for Osho in the US, Canada, Australia, and the EU?
We are the world (of Osho) OIF, Zurich basically tries to make itself out to be the controller of all things related to Osho, including all the activities that are carried out by various legal entities based in Pune. OIF has claimed that it now controls all the activities in Pune and around the world.
Originally OIF, Zurich admitted that Osho worked directly with the centers, made decisions about His publishing, changed His name to Osho, and asked centers and individuals connected to His work to use Osho too. Then it became apparent that if this was true (as it certainly was), OIF, Zurich didnʼt own any trademarks. So OIF changed its story midstream in the US trademark case and began to argue instead that OIF, not Osho, was controlling everything and that OIF directed centers to “rebrand” to Osho in 1989. OIF then denied that it had ever claimed Osho directed His own work and the use of His name.
Pramod (Klaus Steeg) testified under penalty of perjury that Hasya, Oshoʼs International Secretary, was not representing Osho, but was an agent of OIF, Zurich (or sometimes of RF), so that when Osho gave names to centers through Hasya, it was actually OIF, Zurich /RF licensing and taking control of the centers. Pramod also claimed that people around Osho were told that Osho was directing things, but this was a lie, and OIF/RF was really in charge.
Pramod claims all of this, though he admits that OIF, Zurich has never operated in India and that no legal entity in India (such as RF) has ever transferred any trademark interest to OIF. Hasya always presented herself as a volunteer who was acting as a personal secretary to Osho, and there is no competent testimony or documentation to disprove that. Pramod [Steeg], OIFʼs only witness on this, was not even in Pune at the time of the name change, had no personal knowledge about Hasyaʼs relationship with Osho.
If Hasya was not an agent of OIF, Zurich and neither Osho nor any legal entity in India ever assigned trademark rights to OIF, Zurich (and OIF admits they didnʼt), then Hasyaʼs activities have nothing to do with OIF, Zurich.
Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the hypothesis that Hasya was the agent of OIF, Zurich, instead of Osho, in 1989 and earlier, thereʼs no evidence that OIF owned any legal rights that gave it the power to license the centers through Hasya. OIF keeps trying to do things in a backward way, to bootstrap itself into a position to claim what it doesnʼt actually own. OIF claims to have taken control of the centers secretly, by telling the centers that they were getting name papers from Osho himself.
OIF claims that this underhanded trick would give it the legal right to control the centers, but, fortunately, thatʼs not how it works. OIF would have to acquire ownership of the legal right to control the names of centers before it could issue any licenses. Once OIF had that legal right, it might be able to license names to the centers. But OIF had no basis for owning center names in the time period of Pune II (1987–1990). Osho never transferred any legal rights to OIF and no other legal entity ever transferred any rights in center names to OIF. OIF never ran a center itself. Therefore, OIF had no conceivable claim to legal ownership of centersʼ names and no legal rights to license centers during Pune II.
I can lease you my neighborʼs car, but since I donʼt own the car, the lease means nothing at all. Thereʼs no evidence of any licenses to centers in Pune II, but even if there had been, OIF would have to have owned the car before it could have leased it.
Osho never claimed to be using His name as a trademark or transferred any rights in His name to anyone else. He gave names to centers that included His own personal name through His secretaries, without any legal restrictions. Given that situation, no one else could have had the right to license those centers to use His name. OIF had nothing to license to centers in Pune II or at any time since.
But wasnʼt Pune an organization? In the US trademark case OIF, Zurich argued that it wasnʼt true that Osho was against organization, because there was an organization in Pune. Osho did point out that centers need some kind of organization and rules to run from day to day. The bigger the center the more rules needed, so He favored small centers:
“I don’t want very organized communes, for the simple reason that whenever you become very organized you start losing something for which you had started to organize in the first place. Other things become more important. or example, in Poona there was a totally different quality. People were coming from all over the world. They had small centers. There was no centralized domination over the centers; all the centers were free to do whatsoever they wanted to do. To me it was far more beautiful.” OSHO Light on the Path, Chapter # 3
Osho was talking directly about His own activities in Pune where He was located at the time. His point was that He had the right to direct the center where He was working in the way He saw fit, just as people around the world were entitled to direct the centers where they lived and worked as they saw fit. Osho completely honored the independence of the other centers and never tried to control them. He, quite reasonably, wanted sannyasins to give Him equal respect and not try to tell Him how to run the center were He was working.
The key point is that though Osho recognized the legal necessity of having charitable trusts and nonprofit foundations with tax-free status, He never authorized any legal control of one entity over another. In fact, He strongly opposed the idea.
Osho left the basic legal structure and day-to-day organization of various centers to the people involved. He never asked to see their by-laws or other organizational documents or told them how to operate. Some centers were small gatherings in peopleʼs houses and some were legal entities with their own organizations, residences, and businesses. Osho was clear there should never be any entity or organization that had legal control over those running other centers.
“I would like all the communes that want to continue to be autonomous: not dependent on any central world headquarters; related, but not dependent; related just because they are sannyasins. The world headquarters is their headquarters. It is not somebody else dominating them and making them do things whether they like it or not.”
OSHO Light on the Path # 28
Throughout its claim to own all trademarks related to Oshoʼs teachings OIF, Zurich has tried to confuse itself with other entities in order to appear to be the all-controlling trademark holder for Osho. The articles show these claims are not based on either law or fact.