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Ghosh Yoga College Claims Copyright Infringement Over Netflix Documentary On Bikram Choudhury

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While the volume isn't enormous, I would still say that there are entirely too many Techdirt posts on the topic of yoga. Most of those center around yoga instructors somehow thinking that a specific progression of yoga poses is somehow deserving of copyright protection or patents. The whole thing feels antithetical to yoga practices to begin with, which are at least in part about bringing a calm spiritual experience into a healthy living style. Paywalling that is an odd choice.But it gets all the more strange when a yoga organization somehow thinks that a documentary using footage to tell its story runs afoul of copyright law. That is what's happening in a public war of words between Netflix and Ghosh's Yoga College, where Bikram Choudhury studied early in his career. The documentary is entitled Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, and it details the story of Choudhury and accusations from those in his classes that he'd used racist invective and has been sexually inappropriate towards them. Where Ghosh's Yoga College comes in, however, is to complain publicly that the film used video of Choudhury practicing at its facilities.

Ghosh’s Yoga College, based in Kolkata, is claiming video footage and photographs used in the film is actually theirs, and want its immediate removal, according to the report.  In the film, early footage of Choudhury learning yoga at the school is aired as he attended the site and built his craft.“For the past four years, I have worked hand in hand with Ghosh’s Yoga College as one of only three people who have permission to use family specific photos and material to preserve the legacy of Bishnu Charan Ghosh,” Ida Jo, ambassador for Ghosh’s Yoga College, told Metro in an interview. “They trust me to represent them around the world.“When the production team reached out to me to get photos and materials for their new film about Bikram Choudhury, I relayed this information to the Ghosh family,” she added. “They said they had no interest in being involved. I told the filmmakers ‘No.’ Despite explicitly telling the producers they would need permission to use materials owned by Ghosh’s Yoga College, including photos and the contents of Yoga Cure, they used them anyway.”
Perhaps we need to invent a "fair use" yoga pose. I'm not sure what that would look like, but I'd certainly expect to see Netflix strike such a pose if any legal action is initiated here. The college can claim protection on these images all it likes, but Netflix would surely have a strong Fair Use case if it got to court. Bikram Choudhury is undoubtedly a public and controversial figure. Suggesting that historical footage of such a person could be walled off through a permission structure, particularly given that footage's relevance to the documentary material, would be crazy.The public comments from Jo thus far read like a copyright dispute, but any such dispute would run squarely into fair use. More likely, the college probably would prefer its name not be associated in the film with the controversial Choudhury and is flailing around trying to figure out a way to keep that from occurring.Unfortunately, that's not how copyright law in America works.

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posted at: 12:00am on 20-Dec-2019
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Elon Musk And SpaceX Just Backed Down From Earlier Promise To Release SpaceX Photos To The Public Domain

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Well, this is very disappointing. Back in 2015, you may recall that there was an effort to get SpaceX to put its photos into the public domain. As you hopefully know, all NASA photos, as works of the US government, are in the public domain -- which let us post photos like this one:

But as more and more spaceflight gets privatized, there were concerns that future space photos may increasingly get locked up behind copyright.After an initial outcry, SpaceX initially agreed to use a Creative Commons license, but one that restricted usage to non-commercial efforts. As we pointed out at the time, that really wasn't good enough. Why does SpaceX need copyright as incentive to take photographs?After people pointed this out to Elon Musk, he said that they had a good point and that he changed SpaceX's policy to dedicate all the photos to the public domain. And that's how it's been for over four and a half years.Until now. As Vice's Motherboard reports, SpaceX has now gone back to a more restrictive Creative Commons license, one that says no commercial use is allowed. While using CC is better than going all out with full restrictions, this is still a very disappointing move. The company has told reporters that news organizations can still use the images, and many will have to rely on that promise. While Creative Commons has put a lot of effort into "clarifying" what is meant by "non-commercial" in recent years, including highlighting that for profit news orgs should still be able to make use of such works, that's not really been tested in court.And, considering that Elon Musk has an occasionally antagonistic relationship with the press, you could see an unfortunate situation in which he decides to go after a journalism organization that upsets him by claiming that they were misusing the "NC" part of the license on a SpaceX photo.So, once again, we have to ask: why is SpaceX doing this? Why is it going back on Musk's earlier promise that all SpaceX photos would be in the public domain? Why does SpaceX need the restrictions of copyright as an incentive to take photos? Isn't just being able to get to space enough incentives to take some photos?

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