Sports
Notice to IPL inaugural organisers over music copyright
Kolkata, April 5
An organisation that works to
protect the rights of artists has issued notice to the IPL governing
council, the West Bengal government and event managers claiming that the
organisers of the IPL-8 inaugural show are "reluctant" to pay the fees
for playing music, a statement said on Sunday.
Bollywood stars
Farhan Akhtar, Shahid Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Pritam and Hrithik Roshan
are all set to light up the ceremony, which will take place in Kolkata
after a gap of two years at the state-run Salt Lake Stadium -- the
Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan.
The Indian Performing Right
Society Ltd. (IPRS), which has around 3,500 authors, lyricists, music
composers, publishers, and film producers as members, is responsible for
issuing licences to those playing music in public or commercial
establishments and then distributing the fees as royalty among members.
It
sent notice to organisers (Encompass Events Pvt. Ltd.) of the IPL-8
opening ceremony, Ranjib Biswal, chairman, BCCI-IPL and CEO of the
stadium for payment of 'Performance Licence (Royalty) Fees' for playing
music as per the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957.
"As in
previous years, this year, too, the IPL matches music licences have been
procured by the organisers (DNA Entertainment Networks procured
licences) but the mandatory Public Performance Licenve for playing music
at the opening ceremony has not yet been procured," Avishek Basu,
regional head, IPRS, said on Sunday.
"We were pursuing the
payment of royalty fees for quite some time, only to get avoidance and
indifference from the organisers of the show. The organisers are
reluctant to pay the requisite fees. This has forced us to serve legal
notice to them," Basu said.
According to Basu, most of the music
genres (over 10 million), be it film music or non-film music, pop, rock,
ghazals, bhajans or classical and international music of more than 100
countries are included in the society's repertoire.
"Any
performance of musical and literary works by way of live performance or
by usage of recorded music, without a licence granted by the owner under
Section 30 of the Copyright Act, 1957 is illegal," Basu said.
The
organisers have been informed that they would be "liable for infringing
the copyright in musical and literary works belonging to members of
IPRS under Section 51 of the copyright act, if you permit or authorise
the exploitation of musical and literary works for which permission has
not been obtained" from the IPRS.
It has urged the three organisers to "ensure the event doesn't begin without a proper licence being obtained from us".
Musicians
like A.R. Rahman, Anu Malik, Gulzar, Bappi Lahiri, Ravinder Jain, Jatin
Pandit (of duo Jatin-Lalit), Shravan Rathod (of duo Nadeem-Shravan),
and IIayaraaja are members of IPRS.