Monday, June  30, 2003		Feature

Kaanta Laga, Saathiya and Babu ji Zara Dhire Chalna may sound great as ringtones. But did you ever wonder how legal is it to download pop numbers. Those in the industry say many portals and cellular operators are jumping on to the bandwagon but a majority of them operate illegally, according to industry sources.

Since these ringtones are music notes of the original songs, the service provider needs to take the permission from the company concerned or the person under the Copyright Act, they say, adding anyone providing them without the consent of the "rights owner" does so illegally.

According to copyright rules, for using a sound recording of the original track, the company concerned has to take a licence from the Indian Music Industry (IMI), a consortium of over 50 music companies representing over 75 per cent of the industry. But if the tone is re-recorded and is not a copy or extract of the original sound track then the service provider has to take a licence from the Indian Performance Right Society, which is the sole custodian of the intellectual property rights of the industry, they say.

"Even as the industry is struggling to weed out the menace of piracy in the cassette and CD segment, the ringtone sector is posing a new challenge to us," says V J Lazarus, president, IMI.

"The awareness level regarding the Copyright Act applicable to ringtones is low in India. While some major portals do take the requisite licence before listing the tone on its site, a large majority do not bother," says Lazarus.

While there is no estimate of the turnover of the ringtone sector in the country as yet, a survey by a UK-based Internet monitoring company says the massive intellectual property abuse has the potential of costing the world music industry as much as $ 1 million per day.

Pointing out the portals providing these services were "easily recognised", Lazarus says they have been issuing notices to those sites that were providing the services illegally.

In some cases, the portals have realised their mistakes and have taken steps to take necessary permission from the composer or the music company.

Even as the industry continues to issue notices to the portal providing these services, a debate has started in the Western countries as to whether the persons using these "illegal" ringtones on their cellphone were also guilty of infringement of the Copyright Act.

Industry sources here say that this problem has not been addressed at the CD and cassette levels and for any such measure the Copyright Act has to be made stringent.

Representatives of the mobile companies plead ignorance about the "legal status" of the ringtones they offer to their customers saying the business of procuring the rights of the tones wrests with the portals they tie up with for providing the service. While some service providers only charge the cost of SMS to its subscribers in return of the service a few of them also charge something between Rs 5 to Rs 7.50 for the same.

Industry sources say very little revenue generated from these transactions reaches the "music industry" and will continue since the process of proving copyright violation in the country is tedious and time consuming.

"Also the guilty can get away with very little ‘cost’. If the violation of the Copyright Act has to be reduced then this has to change," Lazarus notes.