T-Series plays cop

Talk about a complete turnaround. Music company T-Series, which was once upon a time accustomed to being regarded as the culprit-in-chief of the Indian music piracy scene, has now turned cop. In the past couple of months, T-Series has taken on the global big boys of the Internet, Yahoo and Google, to defend its intellectual property.

Last fortnight, the Delhi High Court issued a notice to Yahoo on a suit filed by Super Cassettes Industries Limited (SCIL), owner of music label T-Series, for infringement of copyright by ‘unlicensed streaming’ of SCIL’s copyright works on Yahoo’s website, video.yahoo.com. “What biggies like Yahoo and Google are doing is unfair. They attract traffic to their sites by allowing visitors to upload and download copyrighted content on their sites. That, in turn, gets them advertising. As people who generate and own copyrighted content, we are the biggest losers,” says Vinod Bhanushali, Vice President for Marketing and Promotions, TSeries. “People won’t pay for anything that they can get free,” he adds.

Bhanushali also says that Yahoo has responded by taking refuge under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), an American law, and asked T-Series to notify Yahoo in accordance with DMCA. Yahoo officials were not available for comment.

Last year, T-Series had filed a case against YouTube.com and its parent company Google for a similar infringement. T-series obtained an interim restraint order against YouTube and Google. “We are talking to Google now,” says Bhanushali. The case for Google is coming up for hearing in July while the Yahoo case hearing has been posted for end-September.

—T.V. Mahalingam