Oct 12, 2006

Rahman and Om Shanti Om

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see how this develops. The people actually creating the songs get no residuals when the songs are licensed out to other media. Unlike credits in CDs, though, this deals with money, and I hope other major figures in the industry support ARR in this worthy cause.

Unknown said...

Makes sense.

Does it happens in writing industry too? Does publisher and writer both have copywrites.

But, I hope ARR doesn't demand royality as well.

J Ramanand said...

Manish, I'm not going to be 100% certain about this, but again, it depends on the kind of deal a writer strikes. I think at the highest level, authors do have an equal say in how their work will be used. For instance, I have heard this in the context of moviemakers approaching authors and their publishers for rights to make their book into a film (in fact, there is a notion of an "option" where the filmmaker pays an initial amount to indicate his interest and "lock" the rights for a short period during which he can think of converting the book to film - if that lapses, other filmmakers can ask for the rights)

I think royalties are part of the copyright. There are many instances in the western world where each time a person's tune or song is used, he gets a small royalty. It keeps going to the heirs of the person as well until the copyright expires (there must be a default like in publishing). See a movie "About a Boy" for an hilarious example of this :-)

Abhi T said...

...because in India, the film soundtrack belongs to the producers of the film....

Not with the producer, but with the music company. Thats why, people like Yash Chopra started their own music companies.

Somewhere (HT I think), Rahman mentioned he was happy even to share the royalty with the producers. Can't locate the article.

Ajay said...

The copyright expiry timeframe is a pretty contentious issue in US copyright law. Copyrights at this point expire in 75 years or somewhere thereabouts. Suspiciously, this period is extended every time the copyright for Mickey Mouse is close to being up.

Search for "sonny bono legislation" for more information on this :-)