SSRN has a plethora of new academic papers that look yummy.  l will try to get to a couple of them over the next few weeks.  In particular a white paper by Nikhil Krishnamurthy on performance rights piqued my interest.  Mr. Krishnamurthy is a Senior Partner at the Bangalore firm of Krishnamurthy & Co.

Performance rights is an issue that is personally close to my heart.  Mr. Krishnamurhy’s paper reads like a legal article with an investigatory journalism slant.  His main points:

• American recordings are not granted performance rights under Indian copyright law because the United States doesn’t grant these rights domestically.  Section 40 Clause 42 of the Indian Copyright Bill of 1955 states that India grants rights to works published outside of the country on a “reciprocal” basis.
• Nonetheless, the Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL), an Indian licensor for public performance rights, is still collecting royalties from radio stations, hotels and bars.  Says Mr. Krishnamurthy: “This state of affairs is certainly due to the ignorance of the law on the part of the  music user and must be remedied at the earliest.”
• Mr. Krishnamurthy then argues that the high licensing rates being applied by the PPL are “in gross abuse of its monopoly position” and “have no relation to worldwide practices of corresponding societies.”  Furthermore, PPL is collecting licensing fees for music videos even though the organization is statutorily prohibited from “carrying on business in other works” such as working with videograms (music videos).
• The paper takes a fun shot at the Clinton Administration for, in the author’s view, not adequately protecting the rights of Indian record labels under American copyright law, while simultaneously putting India on a watch list for not providing effective copyright enforcement for American works.
• Lastly, the author suggests that Indian businesses should adopt a policy of exclusively performing American works as a bargaining chip to deprive the PPL of royalties and force more equitable licensing terms for Indian works.

Links:

Nikhil Krishnamurthy, Sound Advice [Or What You Always Wanted to Know About Phonographic Performance But Were Afraid to Ask] (June 1, 2007). Manupatra Intellectual Property Reports (MIPR), Vol. 2, p. A12, 2007.