Re: Quiz
Sreenivas Paruchuri (sreeni@ktpsp2.uni-paderborn.de)
Sat, 13 Dec 1997 14:16:41 +0100 (MET)
> > P.S. well, plagiarism did/does exist; esp. in film music industry.
> > But as per Indian copyright act, theres no copyright on tunes.
> Sad, but true. A recent example, when a A.R.Rahman song "Thillana
> Thillana" was copied
> makki ki makki in Hindi by Nadeem-Shravan, N-S were sued by
> K.Balachander (who was
> the producer of the ARR movie). No, K.B didn't have a chance. He
> lost easily..
Hmm! Had Balachandar informed himself about earlier cases, he wouldn't have
filed a case :-).
Since 1958/1959 its known that there are no copyrights on tunes. It all
started when susarla dakshiNa Murthy used the "Eruvaaka saagaarOy...."
tune from Telugu: rOjulu maaraayi (1955) for the MGR starrer:
madurai veeran. The all-powerful HMV company filed a suit against him,
claiming that they own the music rights on "Eruvaaka ..." song/tune.
Also the Vinjamuri-sisters (Sita and Anasuya) claimed that the tune is
originally theirs and Master vENu plagiarized it in rOjulu maaraayi.
But all these arguments were ruled out by the court.
Later, S.D. Burman went on to use the tune in his "Bambai ka Babu" (1960)!
BTW, VAK Rangarao writes that much before the Vinjamuri-sisters
their "guru" Valluri Jagannadham recorded that famous song on disk.
That was in 1920s!!
Regards, --Sreenivas