Bogus Legal Threat By Amma Kali Devotee To Ex-Amma Forum

 Message from the excellent Ex-Amma forum which was vandalized by one of Amma's thuggish devotees because Amma is afraid of free-speech which would ruin her PR image carefully maintained by Taavi Kassila and a former Disney marketing executive.

 "Mrs Beryl Bowden" asserts that she is connected to Amma's lawyers The senior managers for Amma might be running a fake persona bowdenberyl@yahoo.com to mess with the mind's of the ex-Amma group. How can a photograph of a product, a doll, be a copyright issue? Amma has tried to ban devotee photos of her reaching the Internet. Is Amma afraid that we will see her rolling on the floor, frothing at the mouth with her eyes popping out of her head as she mimics occult Kali spirit possession?

From Bronte:

As the Ex-Amma moderator, I have an amusing story to report. I received an email yesterday from a woman calling herself "Beryl Bowden" ordering me to remove the photo of the Amma doll from our Ex-Amma home page, on the grounds that it's a copyright violation and that she will get the Ammabot lawyer after us and try to shut down our yahoo group on the grounds that we are in copyright violation, if we don't comply with her demands.

After some research into the matter, the question of copyright violation turns out to be a murky one. Ms. Bowden claims Amma owns the copyright to all photos anyone has ever taken of her - including any photos of the Amma dolls. I find that rather hard to believe, but don't wish to fight over a point I find legally obscure - especially in light of the fact that Marnie (who I shared all this with) responded with the idea that we should substitute a photo of Kali, since that's who Amma claims to be. She provided a wonderful, bloody photo of this entity - with blood dripping from her hanging tongue, and from her necklace of human skulls ... a picture that's been in the public domain for centuries.

This will give us a much more powerful home page than the picture of the cutesy Amma doll did, and I predict Ms. Bowden will be regretting her words. I've added the following paragraph to the home page, to explain our new choice of art:

"We had a photo of an Amma doll here on the Ex-Amma home page, and were warned by the Amma people that they would sue on copyright grounds if we did not remove it. So we have replaced it with a photo of the goddess Kali, who Amma devotees believe Amma channels and embodies. Kali is a depicted in Hindu art with a bloody tongue hanging out and with a necklace of bleeding human skulls. She is "the destroyer" (supposedly of "evil"). Since this is the figure Amma identifies herself with, it seems a fitting replacement on the Ex-Amma home page for the forbidden photo of the Amma doll."

I thought the membership would enjoy a good laugh over this one, and would like to know why our home page has changed.

Bronte