Composers & Lyricists hold a ‘flop’ of a news-conference: Crying wolf, once too often?

The composers and lyricists of Bollywood held a press-conference last week, complaining once again about music companies trying to cheat them of their dues and of the attempts being made to circumvent the copyright amendments. (You can see the conference over here) This was the same story before the amendments and frankly, it is getting a little tiring to hear the same old complaints from Akhtar & Co. a whole year after Akhtar promised Parliament that they were enacting a law that would correct a historic injustice against the composers and lyricists of the Indian music industry. If things continue at this rate, the composers and lyricists runs the risk of being perceived as the ‘boy who cried wolf’ once too often.

I specifically use the word ‘flop’ because the news-conference was not covered by anybody from the mainstream media and almost nobody from the trade magazines.

'The boy who cried wolf'. Image from here

A part of the reason for this flop performance was the super-technical narration of events by Sanjay Tandon & Javed Akhtar, without providing any worthwhile information. After a life-time in Bollywood, you would expect Akhtar & Tandon to have learnt the basics of a good story: first you need a villain & second in this age of scams galore, you need to give journalists a figure of the money involved. Although Sony does get a brief mention in the context of the post amendment negotiations, there isn’t a squeak from anybody in the news conference about the main players in the fiasco that is IPRS. As for the exact amount of money involved in the scam, Akhtar was specifically asked by a journalist of an estimate of the unpaid royalties, to which Akhtar replied saying that he didn’t know the sum involved since he had no idea how much IPRS was earning. But the earnings of IPRS, PPL and Select Media are public knowledge. With such little information being put into the public domain, it is no surprise that Milind Shrivastav’s resignation from IPRS got more coverage than the press-conference by Akhtar & Co.  

In the circumstances, I would advise the composers and lyricists to recruit themselves a PR agency.

Throughout his conference, Akhtar makes the occasional plea to the government to enforce the new law – surely he knows that it is up to the Courts and not the government to enforce this law – composers and lyricists have to start litigating their rights – case law has to be created – precedents have to be set – that is the way our judicial system works. The angels of the law aren’t going to waltz into Mumbai and change the minds of the fat cats running the music industry. As for the affairs at IPRS, the composers and lyricists should know that if the Central Government has not intervened in the last 9 years to rectify the situation – they are not about to step in now to set things rights. There is also the question of what the composers and lyricists have done to set things right at IPRS – as things exist today, the music labels, have on paper, taken over IPRS, as per the law and none of their acts have been challenged in court by the composers or lyricists. If a majority of composers and lyricists are being screwed over by IPRS, why have they not filed a petition for oppression and mis-management before the Company Law Board (CLB)? If I’m not mistaken, the law in India requires a one/fifth of the entire membership of a company, without share capital, to sign on to such a petition. Even presuming that the numbers weren’t available, what is preventing the composers and lyricists from filing a shareholder derivative suit, much the way that Saregama did before the Barasat Civil Court? If Akhtar & Co. haven’t got royalties from IPRS, why have they not filed civil suits for a breach of contract?

This refusal to exercise their rights before the judiciary gives rise to suspicions of whether there are in fact any rights which can be enforced before the judiciary. Instead Akhtar makes an open appeal, in the news-conference, for the government to intervene. It is necessary to understand that IPRS is first and foremost a company under the Companies Act, 1956 – if the Board of IPRS so wishes it can pass a resolution seeking to annul its effort to be registered as a copyright society – what is the Government going to do then, under the Copyright Act? The answer is nothing.

Like god, the law helps only those who help themselves – its time the composers and lyricists woke up and smelt the coffee. Things are the same one year down the line after the amendments and nothing has changed.

Why is that so?

Ask the right questions to get the right answers.