freebird

Kudos to Mr. Ram Sampath. He took the Roshans to court. Didn’t buckle down and accept a 2 lakh, then 25 lakh compensation and won 2 crore as damages, after the courts threatened them with a non-release of their film Krazzy 4.

Plagiarism and Bollywood have almost become synonymous. Everybody is blasé about it. Be it scripts, screenplays, shots everything is inspired by something else. Mahesh Bhatt, the high – priest of articulate, intelligent obfuscation sings paeans to the human instinct to copy and not give credit. ‘What is original?’ is the extremely rhetorical question that he asks at the drop of hat or an accusation, as the case might be.

Didn’t Ramesh Sippy lift some scenes from Once Upon a Time in the West, the Sergio Leone classic? As if that justifies anything. Well, didn’t Mody support rioters in Gujrat? Is that an argument?

So from the very intellectual to the completely commercial, everybody subscribes to the neighbourhood DVD newsletter for updates and inspiration. So did the Roshan’s. And who is this Sampath champak, they would have chuckled? The songs work. The sales are good and Copyright? What is Copyright?

It is the right to copy, many have concluded.

Will Krazzy 4 set any examples? Is the judgment a red letter day in the annals of copyright vis a vis Bollywood? Will producers, directors and composers will be more circumspect when lifting a tune, story or an entire film? That’s still an open question but a lesson it is definitely.

It should inspire more people to approach the courts when their hard creative work is appropriated without any consent or regard. In this battle between the big and the small, this time round David has won over Goliath.

Will this lead to more original ideas in content and form? Not yet. Don’t be silly. We will copy the tried and the tested and the beaten. Nothing original ever.