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Biased: Is the copyright debate film-focused?Premium

Biased: Is the copyright debate film-focused?

Why on earth is everyone suddenly going jhing-a-la-la-ing about copyright? All talk shows and news-hour debates have suddenly discovered the importance of copyright and a proposed amendment to the Copyright Act. After all, copyright and the proposed amendment have got to be important issues if you have Aamir Khan, the quintessential jhing-a-la-la man, himself embroiled in a celebrity spat with Javed Akhtar over the issue. These, unfortunately, are the parameters by which we now judge whether or not an issue is important enough to be featured on prime time news. Now that the celebrities have kissed and made up, the issue too has become passé and need no longer be discussed hotly. Well, that’s the way it is folks. We are, finally, a nation that is completely in awe of Bollywood and its celebrities, and to a lesser extent, television celebrities.

If that isn’t true, then we need to holler out to dear Sib and say “Wake Up Sib" because you need to reassure us that there’s more to the amendment than just the jhing-a-la-la brouhaha. But to give dear Sib his due, I’ve got to stop being irreverent and get down to brass tacks. So this is the last time you will hear me Sibbing away irreverently about Mr Sibal, our hon’ble minister for human resource development and one of the leading legal experts in the country. My apologies, hon’ble minister, sir, and ne’er again shall I err as I have in this column. Not unless you stick to your inexplicable decision to include only representatives from the film industry in the panel that is said to have been formed to discuss and sort out differences between producers, record labels, artistes and creators, all of whom will be affected by the proposed amendment to the Copyright Act.

Biased: Is the copyright debate film-focused?

It surprises me then that people from the film industry (who work as an ensemble with specialists and artistes from different genres joining hands) should be opposing this fair and reasonable sharing of revenues. It surprises me even more that a discussion on an issue of such abiding importance should be convened officially with a panel that does not include representatives of different forms and genres, including art music, folk music, ghazal and regional music. Further, the opinions of producers and artistes from different parts of the country must be taken into consideration or else, life will definitely not be jhing-a-la-la!

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

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Published: 06 Mar 2010, 12:30 AM IST
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