T-Series and the sue-sue business
T-Series is on a sue-sue (pun intended!) spree – after suing YouTube and Yahoo, they have filed lawsuit against Guruji, MSN, BharatStudent and MySpace (who is left?)!
For?
All of these companies allow users to upload T-series’ copyrighted content onto their platform.
T-Series, which has a catalogue of over 35,000 albums and about 30,000 film and video clips, accused all the above companies of allowing users to upload its copyrighted content onto their platform. “It is my view that anyone who facilitates or provides a platform for others to upload illegal content that has been acquired without paying is equally guilty of the crime of copyright theft,”
The company said that Guruji.com, which is essentially a search engine, is offering meta data-listing and tagging of songs-instead of merely displaying links related to the search term. Bharatstudent.com also lets users upload and share videos on its site, most of which is naturally copyrighted and thus restricted. [ET]
MSN, BharatStudent, MySpace is all fine – but why Guruji? They are just a crawler and their recently launched music search infact helps t-series in cracking down on the piracy (instead of befriending them and using Guruji’s service, they are suing them!).
India vs. MNC Game
T-series is playing an interesting emotional game – that of Indian vs. MNCs companies!
Why should Indian music companies keep getting robbed by MNCs?”
The fight seems to continue and my only advice to startups that are involved in this battle is to make big noise out of it. File petition, ask people to sign, generate PR, make something out of the whole deal!
T-Series is one of those awesome companies that ‘leeched’ on biggies – their way to fame was Gulshan Kumar’s understanding of legal loopholes which he used to combat the exorbitantly priced cassettes – by selling cheaper cassettes with decent quality.
What he essentially banked on was a loophole in Indian copyright law which ‘doesn’t disallow’ anybody to create cover versions of copyrighted songs!
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
Google’s QuickLinks, Universal search; Yahoo’s Glue, SearchMonkey
do more than merely displaying links. I am surprised, we haven’t seen the greedy[*] people sue the deep pockets YET!!
BTW, From T-Series perspective: Isn’t it very natural for its Legal dept. of T-Series to move on from Defense to Offense to stay relevant in the company. In a ideal world, lawyers would be banned from staying too close to Business
They organize Business discussions in courtrooms.
IMO, Guruji made it to the sue-list purely because its VC funded(Sequoia)
[*] E.g of recent greediness: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/17/channel-intelligence-sues-just-about-everyone-who-offers-wishlists/