Copyright claims of Thyagaraja songs by recording labels

[Nick H]

A music company claims copyright; Yuotube assumes that a music company knows what it is talking about. Apparently, there are only a handful of organisations to whom the procedure is available. I have said that youtube is merely a "middle man," but they have made assumptions about the veracity of music labels that cannot be supported.

RSachi, IIRC, Youtube was not created by Google, it is one of their acquisitions. Its purpose is not to allow people to share,but, as in all things Google, to collect advertising revenue and data which is also monetized. Youtube is under some sort of legal requirement to police copyrights: if it does not do this then it, itself, will be outside the law.

We have been caught up in an international problem. Indian "labels" may be getting on the bandwagon, but the entire road has been made and paved by the MNC music giants, including lobbying and manipulating national laws to their advantage. Over past few years, I didn't think I had to do anything other than scan headlines on this, as it wouldn't really affect me: how wrong I was!

[Rsachi]

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006, on which users can upload, view and share videos - source Wikipedia

[Rsachi]

Ravi,
Someone told me that the moment a label uploads their content rights with track data (to IPRS.org and YT) such as details of song, raga, tala, composer, musician, date, etc., they own the copyright.
I am having it investigated.

[Nick H]

Someone told me...

Sadly, such people often don't know any law.

Please check back to previous posts here as to the difference between rights in a song (eg, 150 years old, so no rights in the song) and rights in a performance of that song.

[clmweb]

Claims are made by all record labels (As you can see in those FB images),the folks pretty aggressive on that front are Sa Re Ga Ma,Lahiri and the IPRS( Indian Performers Royalty Society http://www.iprs.org/cms/) is the enforcing agency,they have a team of executives whose yearly bonus is directly proportional to the amount they collect as royalties. Non Film music is their new opportunity sphere i guess.
...

T-Series is another serial offender. It is not so much a question of aggressive enforcement, rather a blatant fishing expedition. Regarding the channel I manage, these goons kept claiming Thyagaraja and Dikshitar kritis and withdrew their claims only after repeated complaints and threats of legal action.
-Karthik

[rshankar]

threats of legal action.-Karthik

Back to the monkey and the stick - kOl eDuttAl (dAn) kurangADum....!

[parivadini]

Ok So we got one more today,went and submitted the dispute for sigh.. another thygaraja song copyrighted by SaReGaMa
Only to see the youtube server CRASH!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

[VijayR]

Sadly, such people often don't know any law.

Please check back to previous posts here as to the difference between rights in a song (eg, 150 years old, so no rights in the song) and rights in a performance of that song.

Spot on, Nick.

[pattamaa]

vishnu sahasranamam also come under copyright act !! what next ?? valmiki ramayanam, vedas etc...

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/che ... ref=tpnews

[Nick H]

Please see my quoted post in the post above yours.

I have no idea if this recording was lifted from a commercial CD, or a radio or TV performance. If so, same applies.

[eesha]

vishnu sahasranamam also come under copyright act !! what next ?? valmiki ramayanam, vedas etc...

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/che ... ref=tpnews

Of course it is a violation to upload that recording in youtube.

Even today Vishnu Sahasranamam by MSS is being sold commercially

By uploading it in youtube, the uploader has deprived the recording company of its legitimate revenue

The recording company is not claiming rights for the sanskrit verses

It is claiming rights for the recording, for which it has incurred costs to publish the recording

[vasanthakokilam]

Eesha, right. This incident is not in the same category of YouTube algorithms blocking a live program consisting of Thyagaraja Krithis. That is what Parivadini faced. Hindu can definitely do better.

This is a great opportunity for someone to make hay out of this vacuum. Sing/recite a great version of it with as close to the quality of MS ( voice, lyrical and musical enunciation etc ) and upload. You will get a lot of hits. It better be very good since you will be compared to the gold standard and let the second best be not too far behind.

Let that be blocked after your version becomes famous (pray for such algorithmic stupidity) , then hopefully you will get further publicity ( hopefully The Hindu will be there to report) that silly SaReGaMa is claiming copyright on an ancient work of Hindu devotion!

[parivadini]

When Sruti Sagar spoke to me, I asked him the same question. He mentioned that other performances of Bhaja Govindam and portions or Vishnu Sahasranamam exist and those are not the ones recorded by HMV (now SaReGaMa). Apparently, these ones are blocked too and that is the trigger.

[SrinathK]

I have to agree with eesha. Despite the fact that this has appeared in the newspapers today morning, the fact is that the recording of Vishnu Sahasranamam by MS Amma still sells in the market, so you can't blame Sa Re Ga Ma for taking that down as it is well within their rights to do so. Perhaps the album can upload their own video of it as many albums are doing nowadays.

But the false positives is another story all together. Perhaps we outta tweet our telecom ministry about it.

[vasanthakokilam]

But the false positives is another story all together. Perhaps we outta tweet our telecom ministry about it.

Right.

Parivadini can confirm but if I recall right the false positives were eventually released by the label. Still, those are the ones that irk us, rightfully so.

[Nick H]

Could Do Better

...is what teachers used to write on my minimal-effort homework.

Well, Google, surely, could do better. Do they not employ the worlds greatest (or equal to) engineers in the fields of search, comparison and identification of data? Cannot they actually identify a specific performance? They must sharpen their tools.

But... not to forget that, in this instance, eesha tells us, that the tools worked fine: it was a recording in which the rights are owned by SaReGaMa, and they and Google/YouTube did no wrong. It seems that, if we want that particular recording, we should go out and buy it!

[vasanthakokilam]

Nick, just to be sure, the tool is the same faulty one. Yes, it happened to do the right thing in catching the MS rendition but it also detected false positives, as per parivadini's post above, of other's rendering of the same. So the tool is still the same faulty tool as before.

[parivadini]

We are tired of disputing claims. I don't do that anymore. As a result some of the videos are blocked either in some locations or completely blocked. The last dispute that got "REJECTED" by SaReGaMa was on "Maitreem Bhajatha" rendition of Amrita Murali.

[vasanthakokilam]

The last dispute that got "REJECTED" by SaReGaMa was on "Maitreem Bhajatha" rendition of Amrita Murali.

Shaking my head in disgust.. May be Kanchi Mutt should have a word ( preferably publicly with the help of Sruti Sagar/The HIndu) with SaReGaMa about this for appropriating something that does not belong to SaReGaMa

[VijayR]

We are tired of disputing claims. I don't do that anymore. As a result some of the videos are blocked either in some locations or completely blocked. The last dispute that got "REJECTED" by SaReGaMa was on "Maitreem Bhajatha" rendition of Amrita Murali.

Sad, but inevitable... This is exactly why the labels get away with what they do (in this and other cases). With the mismatch in resources, this was never going to be a fair fight. Sooner or later, people will get worn down.

[vasanthakokilam]

Wife: Have you seen our Maitreem Bhajatha CD?
Sundar: No, I will help you search for it later, I am a bit busy running a 500B company.
Wife: <making a face>, ok big shot, I will find it myself, you go back to whatever you were searching
Sundar: ( who could have kept his mouth shut )..But if you want to listen to it now, why don't you just youtube it
Wife: 'Oh yeah.. that never occurred to me!,' smacking his head with a gmail envelope, 'I tried it but it is all taken down, Mr.Don't Be Evil'
Sundar: Hey, I never said that but I am stuck with it. Anyway..sure, M.S. Subbulakshmi's commercial version is not allowed but at YouTube we welcome the whole world to sing that song about world peace and upload to us. It is positive karma for the uploader, google, you and listeners around the world. Search for them. There has got to be 1000 pages of search results
Wife: <shaking her head, muttering under her breath> You keep thinking that, Mr. Ostrich
Sundar: What did you say?
Wife: NOTHING....

[VK RAMAN]

I had several hundred renditions; but after a long appeal process, SaReGaMa released all of them

[sridhar_ranga]

Wife: Have you seen our Maitreem Bhajatha CD?
Sundar: No, I will help you search for it later, I am a bit busy running a 500B company.
...

how good are the chances of Anjali Haryani, raised in Kota - Rajasthan, searching for that CD?

An MSS Meera Bhajan CD stands a better chance, perhaps?

[vasanthakokilam]

ha.ha.. "

Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, unless you can't think of anything better"