Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:57:13.538Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Rock ‘n’ roll in Bangladesh:protecting intellectual property rights in music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

Peter Gallagher
Affiliation:
Inquit Communications
Patrick Low
Affiliation:
World Trade Organization, Geneva
Andrew L. Stoler
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
Get access

Summary

The problem in context

‘“It's daylight robbery in Murder,” screamed a cult Bangladeshi rock band, and its plea has been heard’, writes the Telegraph of Calcutta in its front-page story on ‘tune-lift’ in the Hindi movie Murder (Telegraph, 20 May 2004). Miles, a very popular Bangladeshi music band (see box) has accused music director Anu Malik, a music-mogul of the Mumbai movie world, of committing pure piracy of one of its original compositions.

On receiving messages from fans in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and India that their song ‘Phiriye Dao Amar Prem’ (Give me back my love) had been copied in the soundtrack of Murder, Manam, Hamin and other members of Miles collected a copy of themovie and sat down to watch it themselves. When the song ‘Jana Jane Jana’ was being played, the band members could hardly believe their ears. Only the language was different – Hindi. Otherwise, ‘the lyrics are a shadow of ours, the tune is the same. Even the beat break-ups, the use of guitar and filler notes are the same. How could Anu do such thing?’ wondered Hamin, one of the guitarists and vocalists of Miles. ‘Even when a musician is inspired by a song, he can only copy eight measures. But this is a complete copy of Phiriye Dao,’ added Hamin (Bombay Times, 18 July 2004).

The Bengali song ‘Phiriye Dao’ was composed by Miles for its music album ‘Prathasa’ (Hope) in 1993.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×