The website that I'm loosely associated with "Prem's House of Maharaji Drek"  (PHOMD) (see http://drek.us) was caught early on by a Elan Vital hit-and-run DMCA take-down back in late 2000.

At the time, Elan Vital had put out a flurry of DMCA take-down notices to silence their online critics.  PHOMD was the only website that was not hosted on Yahoo or Geo-Cities, which were free at the time.  However, the websites on these free hosters didn't stand a chance because they were simply cut-off by the ISP (Yahoo, Geo-Cities) with little or no reason given.  I forgot who it was, but he documented all his emails to back and forth to Yahoo and all he ever got was shut down and a run-around with no answers.

Interestingly enough Ex-Premie.org (http://www.ex-premie.org/) was not served with a DMCA notice at that time.  However, on April 24, 2003, Strook, Strook & Lavan of Los Angeles did file a DMCA takedown on behalf of Elan Vital against EPO.  And this DMCA effort also turned out to be just another hit and run where Elan Vital was once again bluffing.

My ISP in Seattle at least had the courtesy to call me.  Well, maybe because I had once dated a woman who worked there might have helped.  The guy's name was J. and he was in a panic.  He was a young guy and had absolutely no experience with legal matters.    He had absolutely no understanding of the new-ish DMCA and his immediate response was to simply shut my website down and refund my money and be done with it.

Interestingly enough, I never did get a copy of the DMCA complaint, so I was never certain of what the problems were (specific items that were allegedly copyright.)  The ISP person, J., read on the phone part of the letter to the ISP to me and it had the most memorable phrase 'pejorative images of Maharaji' and copyright and libel.

However and most importantly, there was no list of specific items that were copyright infringed.  And I believe that such a list is required as part of the DMCA.

The ISP person calmed down and later agreed to keep the website up for two weeks as required by DMCA and then take it down.  Actually, I think he got it backwards that he had to immediately take it down to absolve himself and the ISP of any responsibility and then after two weeks unless something formally happened the website would be restored.

Anyway, the ISP person called me back or emailed me after recognizing his misunderstanding and that the website was immediately taken offline or quarantined and password protected and that I could have access to get my files off the server for awhile and then the account would be cancelled.

I did a little research and got back to the ISP contact and told him that he did not fully understand the DMCA and that I would in turn sue him and the ISP for not following what the DMCA provides as a process of working these matters out.

I guess that did the trick and the ISP contact talked it over with other management and they got their attorney involved.  From this point things could proceed as the DMCA intended because now we had enough people on the case who were savvy enough not to be totally intimidated by legal papers coming from the law offices of Robert Jacobs of the very high priced, high powered Milbank, Tweed Hadley and Mccloy of New York City. 

At this point in time it would appear that Maharaji and Elan Vital are using the services of Strook & Strook & Lavan under the guidance of media attorney brainiac Charles Glasser of Bloomberg News, also of New York City and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City.

I contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) and got some great and free assistance from attorney Robin Gross.  However, when it came down to it I had to write my own response.  I had no team of lawyers doing my work.  I only got advice.  I spent a lot of time getting up to speed on DMCA and copyright issues.  In my response I stated unequivocally that I would fight them on this and I stated that Maharaji was a Public Person and pejorative images are protected under the law.  I also stated that I had used the alleged copyright infringed material under the Fair Use doctrine of the U.S. Copyright law.  I also put forth that my use of the alleged copyright infringed material did not harm Elan Vital from a lost sales aspect since to my knowledge none of the alleged material was currently for sale and the sales of such material was not the primary business of Elan Vital.

I sent my response to the ISP and Robert Jacobs.  Sometime later, I  got a response back that included a list of eight (8) specific items that were claimed to be Elan Vital internal documents.  Actually, these documents were silly documents saying that children shouldn't be allowed into the satsang hall and things like that.  These documents are on the web today.

The documents are currently available on Ex-Premie.org and they are:

CHILDREN ATTENDING EVENTS
(see http://www.ex-premie3.org/papers/doc1_children.htm)

What is an Event for Learning More about Knowledge
(see http://www.ex-premie3.org/papers/doc_PR_learningmore.htm)

EV's president to City Contacts in June 1998
(see http://www.ex-premie3.org/papers/doc1_legal.htm)

What an Elan Vital 'video event' looks like
(see http://www.ex-premie3.org/papers/dummies.htm)

And there’s a few more, but I think you get the point.

Rather than fight for the right any further I removed the items on the list and waited for a few days for Robert Jacobs and others to verify and comment.

My ISP contact called me about a week later and said that Elan Vital or Robert Jacobs looked at the changes and that they were satisfied and Prem’s House of Maharaji Drek was back online.

It does appear that Elan Vital and Maharaji are following a pattern of abusing the DMCA in an attempt to silence their critics.  The expensive lawyers are paid to do the basic leg work and yet I very much doubt that Elan Vital takes their advice when it comes to whether these DMCA actions are winnable or not.  And this last DMCA against PRC Org was the lamest attempt yet where there was no legal counsel to be found anywhere and the ISP alone was savvy enough to see it as nothing more than bluffing.