Keywords – FIR , Congress leader, Section 63, Music, Section 482, Indian Penal Code , Karnataka High Court.
The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday ( 28/06/2023) rejected to rescind in the FIR inscribed by Music Company MRT music against the Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Jayaram Ramesh and Supriya Srinathi. The fir was registered by the music company alleging that the politicians infringed on their copyright by using a song from the popular Kannada movie KGF chapter 2 in a promotional video for the congress’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The fir was filed alleging criminal conspiracy dishonest misappropriation of property and forgery under the Indian Penal Code along with offenses under the copyright act and the information technology act, it is worth nothing that along with the fir MRT music had also filed a civil suit for damages, in this suit a civil court in Bengaluru had directed the blocking of all social media handles of the congress party and the Bharat Jodo Yatra however, this order was challenged by the congress party in the Karnataka High Court and Karnataka High Court set aside the civil court’s order in appeal on an undertaken given by the party to take down the offending videos.
Rahul Gandhi and the other leaders in this proceeding had approached the Karnataka High Court previously with the petition under Section 482 of the code of criminal procedure to quash this fir, Senior Advocate Vikram Hugoyal appeared for the petitioners and argued that the allegations of the infringement were under Section 63 of the copyright act and the same has a heightened threshold of infringement further he said that section 63 of the copyright act speaks of knowingly infringing the copyright but, there is no whisper of that in the complaint “All that Rahul Gandhi had actually done had walked and depicted to be walking with the music in the background by being portrayed in a video would that amount to Rahul Gandhi knowingly infringing to copyright? Onus in section 63 is to show that a person knowingly infringed a copyright.”
Senior Advocate S.C Ranga and Pranav Kumar Mysore appeared for the complainant M Naveen Kumar and argued that petitioners inculpate had taken the source code meddled with it and superimposed the video “ The act provide for civil remedy and criminal prosecution in the case of such infringement the outcome of one does not depend upon the outcome of another, subject to all just exceptions.” The court waste also told that it is not only audio in the background that is used but everything of their work including font, lyrics and animation was also used the logo was changed. A single judge bench of Justice M Naga Prasanna reserved the order in the matter on June 23rd . Today ( 28/06/2023) the High Court has pronounced its verdict in the matter the single judge bench observed “The petitioner appeared to have tampered with the source code could amount to infringement. copyright of the complainant is taken for granted and therefore prime facie all of this requires investigation.” The chord hence refused to quash the fir against Rahul Gandhi and the order politicians.
Written by – Drishti Pandey College – University of Allahabad Semester – 4 th an intern under legal vidhiya
0 Comments