Rapper KRSNA alleges his track being plagiarised in the IPL anthem

KRSNA

Yesterday, reports of Indian rapper KRSNA's track being plagiarised by the makers of the recently released IPL anthem, gathered steam. Two days after he pursued the matter legally, the rapper tells mid-day he initially weighed his options before taking the war to the web, but realised that the matter had gathered way too much steam to be brushed under the carpet. "The hip hop [community] is getting bigger, and people feel [this development] is an attack on the genre. They were asking me why I wasn't doing anything about it," he says.

The Dekh kaun aaya waapas maker first chanced upon the track, Aayenge hum wapas, after several Twitter users tagged him on the posts. "A lot of my listeners saw the resemblance between the two songs and tagged me. I was taken aback, because it wasn't expected from [companies] like IPL and Hotstar," says KRSNA, who was particularly perturbed, given that he collaborated with Disney+Hotstar for a track, only four months ago. "We have sent a legal notice [to Disney+Hotstar] two days ago; they haven't directly addressed it yet. We are taking this forward, because, if we don't, it will set a dangerous precedent. Anyone who hears the two tracks can see that they are similar."

A clearance certificate issued by the Music Composers Association of India (MCAI's) draws parallels between the track, and appears to take away from his argument. In an e-mail interaction, MCAI general secretary Aashish Rego says, "The MCAI was approached by the producer of the film to provide a comparative analysis report, which we did by sending the tracks to a panel of four reputed composers. They cited that, melodically, harmonically and rhythmically, [there] were no substantial similarities between the two. At no point did the MCAI state that "all hip-hop tracks are the same". That has been misquoted. KRSNA has failed to provide proof of "substantial similarity", as defined by the Copyright Act, and has jumped the gun in claiming plagiarism, where none exists."

KRSNA states the association has "no legal standing". mid-day reached out to a BCCI representative, who shared the MCAI certificate. Disney+Hotstar did not respond till press time.

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