Ilaiyaraaja is above everybody: counsel
“Yes, I am above everybody,” said music composer Ilaiyaraaja’s counsel on Wednesday, while opposing an appeal filed by Echo Recording Company Private Limited before the Madras High Court against a single judge’s 2019 order recognising his ‘special, moral right’ over 4,500 songs composed by him.
When the appeal was listed before Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq, senior counsel Vijay Narayan, representing the appellant, said that the single judge had erred in interpreting the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957. He said that the judge had permitted the composer to exploit his songs, though such a right had not been contemplated under Section 57. When the counsel for the appellant accused the composer of thinking that he is above everybody, the musician’s counsel replied: “I may sound arrogant but that is what it is...I am certainly not above God but below him, I am above everybody.”
Mr. Narayan said that music composers in the film industry in India would lose all their rights, except the right to receive royalty, once they received remuneration from a film producer for a particular movie. Therefore, whether Mr. Ilaiyaraaja would fall under the definition of ‘author’ under the Copyright Act was in itself a question to be decided in the appeal, he said.
The senior counsel said that Echo Recording had purchased the rights for around 4,500 songs from the producers concerned, and had been exploiting them commercially till the composer filed a civil suit in the High Court in 2014 seeking a permanent injunction against the recording firms and obtained a decree from the single judge on June 4, 2019.
Though the judge had permitted Echo Recording, too, to commercially exploit the 4,500 songs strictly in the form and manner as contained in the cinematograph films without any distortion or mutilation, the composer filed an appeal against that portion of the order and obtained an interim stay against it from a Division Bench of Justices M. Duraiswamy and T.V. Thamilselvi in February 2022. Utilising the other portion in which his ‘special, moral right’ had been recognised, “he [Mr. Ilaiyaraaja] has now given licence to Spotify to use those 4,500 songs for which I [Echo Recording] hold the rights. He is now getting royalty from me and money from Spotify also for the same songs,” Mr. Narayan said.