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News |  25 Mar 2009 12:11 |  By AnitaIyer

Will IPL face the music in South Africa?

MUMBAI: IPL franchisees, that dealt with hawk eyed licensing bodies PPL and IPRS in India last year, may have a far more difficult task on hand with the venue shifting to South Africa.

With copyright laws being more stringent in countries outside India, PPL sources say the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchisees will have to be more cautious in ensuring that the music they play in stadia is well accounted and paid for.

According to IMI stipulations, all public performances of music need to pay royalties for recording rights, performance rights and literary works copyrights. The franchisees have to procure licenses for cheering their teams from the respective county hosting the series from 18 April. During the first year, Indian Music Industry's (IMI) licensing wing- Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) issued licenses for the matches in India.

Several of the franchises had to face the music, when PPL and IPRS issused legal notices and dragged them to court for failing to get permission to play copyrighted music in the stadia.

Explains PPL CEO Vipul Pradhan, The franchises have to incur licenses from the local society specific to the country. The rights of the songs can be licensed by the original owners in India or local society equivalent to IMI there. The rights work on a reciprocal basis where we license their songs in India and they license our rights abroad....

The amount of license fee would be according to the rates applicable in those markets which could vary with the Indian rates. The licenses amount would then be divided on the basis of songs and sent to Indian licensing bodies who will further distribute it among the labels. In cases where the music labels have their offices in international markets, the amount would be directly sent to them by the respective licensing bodies.

Pradhan insists that this year the process of procuring licenses would be more stringent. The copyright laws are more stringent in international markets and the franchises would not prefer to take on the local licensing bodies....

Last year, the licensing bodies had initiated legal action against some of the franchises owned by teams in the IPL series for non payment of music royalties. To surpass each other, the IPL teams had roped in singers like Daler Mehendi, Kailash Kher, Illa Arun, Shibani Kashyap, ace drummer Shivmani and Hariharan among others to perform live at the venues without obtaining the requisite licenses to do so.

While IPRS had taken legal action against the franchise owners of the Mukesh Ambani's Reliance owned Mumbai Indians, GMR Holdings' Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals owned by Emerging Media Group for not responding to their repeated warnings, PPL was also dealing with some IPL teams. Pradhan adds that after initiating legal actions, the teams had paid their dues to the licensing bodies.

IPRS has last year dragged Kolkata Knight Riders to the court for using 14 popular Hindi film songs like Om Shanti Om's 'Dard-e-Disco' and 'Mauja hi Mauja' from the film 'Jab We Met' without its permission during the IPL matches at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

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