* Swabhumi restrained from playing music and literary works at events without license from IPRS
MUMBAI: The Indian Performance Rights Society (IPRS), had filed a suit against Swabhumi- Kolkata on 21st December 2010 the Civil Court of Kolkata, which came up for hearing on 23 December, has received an injunction order against Swabhumi, restraining them from playing musical and literary works at events scheduled on the 24th and 31st December 2010 without a licence from IPRS.
Kunal Sarin, Sr. General Manager – Licencing at IPRS Ltd, told RadioAndMusic.com that IPRS was forced to take the legal route against Swabhumi because the latter had been avoiding IPRS for the last three to four months, and this resulted in a huge loss of royalties to our members….
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The Civil Court of Kolkata’s injunction order restraining â€?Swabhumi’ from playing Music of IPRS Members, reads: â€?The prayer for ad interim order of injunction allowed. Accordingly, the defendant /responder is hereby restrained from communicating the literary and musical work of the petitioner by any medium at its promises on the 24th December 2010 and / or 31st December 2010 without obtaining an Events License from the petitioner till 21.01.11. Plaintiff to comply with the provision under Order 39 Rule 3 (a) (b) of the CPC….
The order has created a ripple effect in and around Kolkata, Sarin told RnM. A lot of event organizers are coming to us on their own to take the public performance licence from iprs. Swabhumi had no other option but to reach iprs office and request IPRS to take the requisite licence royalty….
Sarin said Swabhumi was one of the main entities avoiding taking licenses from IPRS. A lot of venues were already taking iprs licences, like Nazrul Manch, Nicco Park, Netaji Indoor Stadium, to name a few,… Sarin said. He is happy that Swabhumi has not only obtained licenses from IPRS for the upcoming events, but has also promised to obtain licenses for all future events.
As a system, the Licencing Team visits all major venues to educate them about iprs licences and also gives them the license tariff linked to their premises and business,… Sarin said. The details of events are mainly collected through newspapers and a letter is thereafter sent by the local IPRS office for the particular event with the invoice after calling them up….
The same process was adopted for the â€?Swabhumi’ event, and they completely refused to comply for the Musical Performance licence,… Sarin said. The Kolkata team of IPRS tried their level best to convince them but their efforts went in vain. Thus we decided to go legal against them….
Sarin said the main issue that remains is: Although users know that without a licence the performance of musical and literary works in commercial venues is an infringement of copyright, businesses still try and avoid paying the fees. They should understand that creativity would live forever if they come forward and pay the licence money and contribute to its growth, instead of paying a lawyer to fight a case which is already lost in principle, because no court would condone illegal activities like a performance of Musical and Literary works without paying the legitimate and law-ordained license fee for its use….
I just hope that everyone respects copyright and encourages creativity,… Sarin said.
