T-Series Issues Notice To Guruji.com Amongst Others
Sure enough, the days without incident were indeed numbered. T-series has issued a notice to Guruji.com amongst other websites including MSN, MySpace and Bharatstudent. It has accused them of allowing users to upload content on their platforms. The report features quotes from T-Series, VP (digital content), Neeraj Kalyan, stating in essence that T-series will battle it out till the end until they reach either an out-of-court settlement or manage an injunction against the websites. It also states that T-series believes Youtube, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and MySpace can’t take harbour under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if the copyright holder is Indian. Although it states that in this case the Indian Copyright Act 1957 would apply, I doubt the good folks in 1957 ever forsaw how we would consume media in the 21st Century.
T-Series states that Guruji.com is offering meta-data (listing and song tags) instead of merely displaying links related to the search term. Guruji, as expected, is stating it’s doing nothing outside the purview of what a search engine is supposed to do and, specifically, isn’t hosting the copyrighted content.
The Indian movie industry reportedly posted a loss for the first six months of 2008, with only four films managing to pull their weight at the box office amongst a total of 116 films. T-series, which supposedly controls 60% market share, relies on these movies for their music library. It seems it’s offline business is feeling the strain from the shift in consumption patterns, hence the attempt to monetize through content deals with UGC platforms like iShare. The fact remains that even if T-Series were to win an injuction against all the platform providers, users, some of whom may not know the Indian Copyright Act of 1957, will still pirate content.
Related StoriesPosted In: Entertainment, Music, Search, Technologies / Formats, Companies, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, MSN, News Corp., MySpace
Newsletter
Comments (13)
Jul 18, 2008 12:53 AM
whats the point? Why kill the messenger when th culprits are the websites hosting the content. If you can legalise a pirate like raaga, why fight guruji? Better take a lesson from their metadata management and thank them for making online music search more pleasurable. Checkout indiafm’s database. It is a great indian version of imdb. Smell the coffee and work with good guys to expand the market.
Jul 18, 2008 1:35 AM
T-series is just creating issues, its better they shut down their business and visit all the music companies to give the notice.Anyways, these sites, probably, being the search engines,directing to sites is genuine and legal,they have not their own music servers,then whats the issues. Let Indian music grow MR.T-Series…..
Jul 18, 2008 3:53 AM
I guess, T-Series is in big frustration. If they have money to spent for legal, why don’t they invest it, in online music streaming / downloading?
Better they stop giving break to idiot people for awful albums & should invest money to find good talents to produce best music.
Jul 18, 2008 6:38 AM
This usually happens when people run the business with backward thinking and not forward thinking. I ask this question to Neeraj Kalyan - VP (digital content) that dose he know any thing about digital that he is sending notice to Guruji who are providing music search (Not hostingthe music at their server) just to help users for better result. This is typical small thown thinking by Mr Kalyan that when you cannot do any thing to online music hosting sites like Smashits, Raaga, mp3hungama, musicindiaonline then you start attacking search engine providers like Guruji. I think all the online channels must ban T-series. Music cos are as such into heavy losses and online music is atleast keeping their brand alive rather giving them an option in getting into a new business. Let me say that this guy is going to make Bhushan Kumar cry watch it
Jul 18, 2008 6:56 AM
Guruji must hire a good lawyer and teach these T-series a lesson for life time. They should not take online cos for granted
Jul 18, 2008 3:01 PM
What T-series and othe content players do not realise is that they cannot depend on other people(digital content distribution companies like Hungama/Mauj) to monetise content. In the current scenario, they are making themselves weaker. Read Cellebrum’s DHRP clearly. It states the dangers of content license not getting renewed. Imagine a company (you may read hungama) who sells some one elses content (read T-series/Eros/Big) and can claim to be worth 10Billion Rupees. Why can’t saregama, Big music and T-series build that infrastructure for themselves. Hire a professional team, invest in the right infra and ensure a safe future.
Oct 13, 2008 1:45 AM
Guruji.com has the strength of local search in Indian Languages. And full marks for them. but google is also striving for same.
They need to be innovative to keep their score up.
Sourav
htttp://www.roadsideromeo.net
Oct 21, 2008 1:04 AM
Book cheapest bus tickets for travel in India
Nov 5, 2008 6:37 AM
After the failure of Heroes & Hello in the Box Office, Sallu has all his hopes fixed in his forthcoming movie Yuvvraaj.
The main attraction of Yuvvraaj being Katrina Kaif who has tried more than 200 gowns to get the looks right for the movie. A R Rehman’s music sizzles in the movie with the lyrics being written by great Gulzar.
Needless to say that this the most awaited movies for the year 2008 in Bollywood Cinema…
So best of luck to Sallu and all fans of sallu.
For Music, Mp3 songs, Wallpapers, Videos, News and exclusive pictures related to the movie, kindly visit
http://www.yuvvraj.info
Nov 25, 2008 6:40 AM
Akshay Kumar new movie Chandanichowk to china is realaing soon. I think that movie would be super duper hit.
Deepika looks gorgious in this movie.
So Best of luck to Akki and all fans of Deepika.
For Music , MP3, songs, wallpapers, Videos, News and exclusive pictures related to the movie, Kindly visit
http://www.chandnichowktochina.net
Mar 12, 2009 6:26 AM
about katrina kaif
Apr 13, 2009 3:01 AM
hello team,
while i see guruji’s effort is great is search of songs, please note guruji is also fostering such sites by giving them advertisements from advertisers like DELL , INTEL etc is clearly ILLEGAL. I am sure DELL/INTEL would be clearly unhapppy to see their brand being visible on illegal websites.
Guruji’s model is great (Although copied from google), however it sad that IIM graduates do not take any cognizance OR moral responsibility of fostering such sites. These sites cannot survive by music stream and download if they do not earn revenue, they survive because they get paid thru sites like guruji, komli, tribal fusion , admagnet to name a few so its a larger concern to be addressed.
I am surprised that no due deligence is done by agencies or even advertisers on choosing a platform.
While guruji can clearly indemnify on search aspect but putting ads on such sites is clearly a NO NO. its a pity that most of the above audiences are naive to the larger damage done.
Its a pardonable crime to allow users to point to “terrorist camps addresses” when searched for , but its unpardonable to feed the terrorist camps with revenues. When users type “how to make a bomb” u can direct them to “howtomakeabomb.com” but u cannot put an ad of DELL on “howtomakeabomb.com” - hope understood.
Jun 1, 2009 6:40 PM
What nonsense it T-series is doing, guruji is providing good music search engine and no more they are storing the mp3s, they are just crawling the other websites and showing the results, thats it. If you(T-series) want to send a notice then send to other websites who are storing the mp3s in their server. I dont know why such a big music company doing this kind of nonsense. Be clear before sending notice.