Yoga Piracy
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Yoga Piracy
Bikram Choudhury made a series of claims that his yoga practice, Bikram Yoga, was under copyright and that it could not be taught or presented by anyone whom he had not authorized, starting in 2002. In 2011 Choudhury started a lawsuit against Yoga to the People, a competing yoga studio founded by a former student of Bikram's and with a location near one of the Bikram Yoga studios in New York. As a result of that lawsuit, the United States Copyright Office issued a clarification that yoga postures (''asanas'') could not be copyrighted in the way claimed by Bikram, and that Yoga to the People and others could continue to freely teach these exercises. In 2015, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that the Bikram Yoga Sequence was not copyrightable subject matter. Background Bikram Choudhury goes by his first name, "Bikram". He is most known in popular culture for mass marketing his yoga practice into a franchising system of 900 yoga studios as of 2004. He in ...
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Bikram Choudhury
Bikram Choudhury (born 1944) is an Indian-born American yoga guru, and the founder of Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga consisting of a fixed series of 26 postures practised in a hot environment of . The business became a success in the United States and then across the Western world, with a variety of celebrity pupils. His former wife Rajashree Choudhury assisted him in the yoga business. In 2009, he began a series of copyright claims to protect the series of postures of Bikram Yoga; this was ultimately unsuccessful, and other studios continue to teach the series. Choudhury was the subject of civil suits alleging sexual assault and discrimination against racial and sexual minorities. In 2017, a court awarded $7 million to his former lawyer, Minakshi Jafa-Bodden, who gained control of his yoga business when Choudhury fled to India without paying her. Since then he has continued to train yoga teachers outside the United States in countries including Spain and Mexico. Life and w ...
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Franchising
Franchising is based on a marketing concept which can be adopted by an organization as a strategy for business expansion. Where implemented, a franchisor licenses some or all of its know-how, procedures, intellectual property, use of its business model, brand, and rights to sell its branded products and services to a franchisee. In return, the franchisee pays certain fees and agrees to comply with certain obligations, typically set out in a franchise agreement. The word ''franchise'' is of Anglo-French derivation—from , meaning 'free'—and is used both as a noun and as a (transitive) verb. For the franchisor, use of a franchise system is an alternative business growth strategy, compared to expansion through corporate owned outlets or "chain stores". Adopting a franchise system business growth strategy for the sale and distribution of goods and services minimizes the franchisor's capital investment and liability risk. Franchising is rarely an equal partnership, especially in ...
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Federal Register
The ''Federal Register'' (FR or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains government agency rules, proposed rules, and public notices. It is published every weekday, except on federal holidays. The final rules promulgated by a federal agency and published in the ''Federal Register'' are ultimately reorganized by topic or subject matter and codified in the '' Code of Federal Regulations'' (CFR), which is updated annually. The ''Federal Register'' is compiled by the Office of the Federal Register (within the National Archives and Records Administration) and is printed by the Government Publishing Office. There are no copyright restrictions on the ''Federal Register''; as a work of the U.S. government, it is in the public domain. Contents The ''Federal Register'' provides a means for the government to announce to the public changes to government requirements, policies, and guidance. * Proposed new rules and regulat ...
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Otis D
Otis may refer to: Arts and entertainment Characters * Otis (Superman), in the films ''Superman'' and ''Superman II'' and related DC Comics media ** Otis Graves, in the TV series ''Supergirl'' * Otis (''The Walking Dead''), in the Image Comics series * Otis the Aardvark, on Children's BBC * Otis Campbell, in the TV series ''The Andy Griffith Show'' * Otis Driftwood, in Rob Zombie's ''Firefly'' film series * Otis Flannegan or Ratcatcher, a DC Comics character * Otis Johnson (comics), a Marvel Comics character * Otis Johnson Jr., a Marvel Comics character * Otis, in ''The Adventures of Milo and Otis'' * Otis, in the 2006 film '' Barnyard'' * Otis, in the 1997 film ''Good Burger'' * Otis Blake, in the 2009 film ''Crazy Heart'' * Otis Milburn, in the TV series ''Sex Education'' * Otis Otis, in Heather Brewer's book series ''The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod'' * Otis Owl, in ''Jim Henson's Pajanimals'' Film and television * ''Otis'' (film), a 2008 American comedy horror film * "Otis" ...
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Hot Yoga
Hot yoga is a form of yoga as exercise performed under hot and humid conditions, resulting in considerable sweating. Some hot yoga practices seek to replicate the heat and humidity of India, where yoga originated. Bikram Choudhury has suggested that the heated environment of Bikram Yoga helps to prepare the body for movement and to "remove impurities". Styles The first style described as hot yoga is that of Bikram Choudhury, who claimed to have devised it from traditional hatha yoga techniques, but then increased the temperature of the studios while in Japan to represent the heat of India. Bikram Yoga resulted, and became popular in the early 1970s after Choudhury moved to the United States. The style incorporates 24 asanas and 2 breathing exercises along with a room heated to . Each class is 90 minutes long and has a fixed sequence of movements. The class ends with a two-minute shavasana (corpse pose). Bikram Yoga differs markedly from other hot yoga styles, as shown in th ...
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Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creative community of New York City. It ceased publication in 2017, although its online archives remained accessible. After an ownership change, the ''Voice'' reappeared in print as a quarterly in April 2021. Over its 63 years of publication, ''The Village Voice'' received three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Press Foundation Award, and the George Polk Award. ''The Village Voice'' hosted a variety of writers and artists, including writer Ezra Pound, cartoonist Lynda Barry, artist Greg Tate, and film critics Andrew Sarris, Jonas Mekas and J. Hoberman. In October 2015, ''The Village Voice'' changed ownership and severed all ties with former parent company Voice Media Group (VMG). The ''Voice'' announced on August 22, 2017, that it would cease pu ...
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The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of Short story, short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous Fact-checking, fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue. Overview and history ''The New Yorker'' was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a ''The New York Times, N ...
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Cease And Desist
A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not discontinue specified conduct, or take certain actions, by deadlines set in the letter, that party, i.e. the letter's recipient, may be sued. When issued by a public authority, a cease and desist letter, being "a warning of impending judicial enforcement", is most appropriately called a "cease and desist order". Usage for intellectual property Although cease and desist letters are not exclusively used in the area of intellectual property, particularly in regards to copyright infringement, such letters "are frequently utilized in disputes concerning intellectual property and represent an important feature of the intellectual property law landscape". The holder of an intellectual property right such as a copyrighted work, a trademark, or a pat ...
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Asana
An asana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose,Verse 46, chapter II, "Patanjali Yoga sutras" by Swami Prabhavananda, published by the Sri Ramakrishna Math p. 111 and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses. The ''Yoga Sutras of Patanjali'' define "asana" as " position thatis steady and comfortable". Patanjali mentions the ability to sit for extended periods as one of the eight limbs of his system. Patanjali ''Yoga sutras'', Book II:29, 46 Asanas are also called yoga poses or yoga postures in English. The 10th or 11th century '' Goraksha Sataka'' and the 15th century '' Hatha Yoga Pradipika'' identify 84 asanas; the 17th century ''Hatha Ratnavali'' provides a different list of 84 asanas, describing some of them. In the 20th century, Indian nationalism favoured physical culture in response to colonialism. In that enviro ...
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Mass Marketing
Mass marketing is a marketing strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and appeal the whole market with one offer or one strategy, which supports the idea of broadcasting a message that will reach the largest number of people possible. Traditionally, mass marketing has focused on radio, television and newspapers as the media used to reach this broad audience. By reaching the largest audience possible, exposure to the product is maximized, and in theory this would directly correlate with a larger number of sales or buys into the product. Mass marketing is the opposite of niche marketing, as it focuses on high sales and low prices and aims to provide products and services that will appeal to the whole market. Niche marketing targets a very specific segment of market; for example, specialized services or goods with few or no competitors. Background Mass marketing or undifferentiated marketing has its origins in the 1920s with the inception of mass ra ...
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Modern Yoga
Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches. The scholar Elizabeth de Michelis proposed a 4-part typology of modern yoga in 2004, separating modern psychosomatic, denominational, postural, and meditational yogas. Other scholars have noted that her work stimulated research into the history, sociology, and anthropology of modern yoga, but have not all accepted her typology. They have variously emphasised modern yoga's international nature with its intercultural exchanges; its variety of beliefs and practices; its degree of continuity with older traditions, such as ancient Indian philosophy and medieval Hatha yoga; its relationship to Hinduism; its claims to provide health and fitness; and its tensions between the physical and the spiritual, or between the esoteric ...
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The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Economist Group, with its core editorial offices in the United States, as well as across major cities in continental Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2019, its average global print circulation was over 909,476; this, combined with its digital presence, runs to over 1.6 million. Across its social media platforms, it reaches an audience of 35 million, as of 2016. The newspaper has a prominent focus on data journalism and interpretive analysis over original reporting, to both criticism and acclaim. Founded in 1843, ''The Economist'' was first circulated by Scottish economist James Wilson to muster support for abolishing the British Corn Laws (1815–1846), a system of import tariffs. Over time, the newspaper's coverage expanded further into ...
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