Written by: Himanshu Gaur
Indian Copyright laws are mainly ruled by the Copyright Act – 1957. In the year 2012 amendment was made in Indian Copyright laws which made the law compliant with WCT (WIPO Copyright Treaty) and WPPT (WIPO Performances and Programmes Treaty), earlier which used to be according to Berne Convention and Universal Copyright Convention. Even after being a member of many International Treaties and Conventions, the Indian Copyright act has not been able to reduce the problem of Plagiarism or Copyright Infringement in the Bollywood/ Music Industry.
The Indian film industry has been hiding behind the word “inspired by” to completely serve plagiarised content to the audience in many instances. The lack of strict copyright law enforcement has been enhancing the cases of plagiarism and depriving the audience to taste new, original, and creative experience in the form of film stories, music, and other creative content. There have been numerous cases where the topic of copied content came into the light once the music/ film got released. The extent of the copying ranges from lifting a few scenes from Hollywood movies to rewording entire plots into Hindi.
It has been seen that the makers of Bollywood film ‘Darr (1993)’ adapted the dramatic fight scene similar to ‘Cape Fear (1991)’, similarly many scenes in ‘Barfi’ were adapted from many Hollywood films such as Charlie Chaplin, Cops and The Notebook, etc. Although these films must have copied only a few scenes from prior Hollywood films, the substantial impact of these scenes cannot be denied and can be put under significant copyright infringement.
There have also been scenarios where Bollywood makers were held questionable for adapting whole Hollywood creation into unauthorized Hindi remakes, such as Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif starred ‘Bang’ supposedly took inspiration from Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz starred ‘Knight and Day’. Similarly ‘Partner’ took inspiration from ‘Hitch’ and ‘Knockout’ from ‘Phone Booth’. While in some instances the makers properly paid a royalty to original creators and produced authorized remakes such as ‘Brothers’, starring Akshay Kumar and Siddharth Malhotra which was the official Hindi remake of the Hollywood film ‘Warrior’, which starred Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton.
The Bollywood movies have been not only adapted from Hollywood or Western films, but also from other parts of Asian or Indian cinema, which can be seen in movies like ‘Zinda’ which was an unauthorized remake of the South Korean film ‘Oldboy’, Akshay Kumar starred ‘Rowdy Rathore’ was a remake of Telugu film ‘Vikramarkudu’ similarly many other Bollywood remakes of Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam movies are made every year. The plagiarism is not only limited to Screenplay or Stories of the movies but also spread in other creative aspects.
There have been many occasions where the Indian music industry was found to be adapting music creations from other artists without addressing them with proper credit. Like of popular number named ‘Bulleya’ from the film ‘Ae Dil hai Mushkil’ was lifted from Papa Roach’s ‘Last Resort’, famous Iranian Band ‘Barobax’ alleged that a famous track called ‘Pyar ki Pungi’ was derived from their song ‘Soosan Khanoom’, not only the music but also the choreography of the track was somewhat similar to the original track. Not only recently but Bollywood has been adapting songs from quite a while now, as we can see the famous song “Mehbooba” from the most impactful Hindi movie ‘Sholay’ was a copy of Demi Roussos’s song ‘Say you love me’.
In many instances Bollywood creators blatantly copied some movies/ albums posters, such as one of the biggest Bollywood films ‘PK’ had a poster similar to Quim Barreiros’s album cover. Flóra Borsi, a freelance artist, based out of Hungary, accused the makers of ‘Judgemental Hai Kya’ of plagiarising her artwork and using it as a reference for the poster of their movie. There can be seen many such cases where Bollywood makers have been accused of plagiarizing the work of other creators without providing appropriate courtesy.
If we try to analyse the reasons for such plagiarism in Bollywood, it can be implied that Copyright Laws only protect the expression of the idea but not for the idea itself. As can be in the case of stories of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Laila and Majnu’ and ‘Heer and Ranjha’. Due to which most of the makers in the ambition of making a high earning venture decide to remake the films which have already been considered blockbuster among American or other audiences, and serve the already hit plots with additional Indian flavours to garner money. Also, the production parties in Bollywood tend to be afraid of commercial failure hence most of the time original creative content doesn’t find any production banner. Similarly in other aspects of Creativity creators often misinterpret the availability of prior produced content in the public domain and derive a new product such as Music beats, Posters, or Videos after making certain expressional changes into original content.
There are various repercussions of such plagiarism which can be in terms of Finance, as due to unauthorized remakes original creators don’t get any money in terms of Royalties, and in other aspects, the repercussions can be in terms of lack of creative content production, no investment in the hard work of people creating original content. Ultimately, which leads to reputational and financial consequences for Bollywood. To mitigate these problems the Indian system has to bring in new Copyright laws to enforce strict laws in such instances and to promote creative talent in the Industry.