Okay, I'll be honest. When the mail room kid brought me this scandalous story, I was a little disheartened. Oh, Bollywood! I always thought that you were the place where magic lived and dreams were made! Who knew that, beneath your multi-colored, escapist veil of deliciously illogical song and dance routines, you could be such a corrupted place? Come on, readers! Am I the only one who is outraged??
Alas, one of the last vestiges of our noble humanity has crumbled. In what is apparently being called a "landmark judgment," a Bollywood filmmaker has been ordered to pay 20 million rupees (that's $5 million U.S. dollars) to renowned(?) jingle composer Ram Sampath in a music-copyright infringement case.
Following an April 10 hearing, the Bombay High Court ruled that Mumbai-based Bollywood filmmaker/swindler Rakesh Roshan's film production company Filmkraft must pay Sampath, who claimed that two tracks and two remixes (don't ask) from Rochan's latest and presumably greatest film, uh... titled Krazzy 4... were lifted from a jingle that he had composed last year for the Sony Ericsson company. That's krazzy!
Justice did prevail, however, as Judge D. G. Karnik ruled that Rakesh and his sneaky composer/brother, Rajesh Roshan (who composed the Krazzy 4 soundtrack), were "guilty of copyright violations and plagiarism." The judge also added, classily, that "to my untrained ear, the music (in the two works) appeared to be similar." Soooo krazzy!!
Anyway, the court initially passed a thing called a "stay order" to block the film's release until the disputed songs were removed, but, well, Bollywood simply could not wait for Krazzy 4, so that order was quickly overturned after Filmkraft agreed to pay the cuckolded composer damages and give "due credit" to Sampath, as per the initial legal notice that he filed on March 24, just after the Krazzy 4 soundtrack was released. Hella krazzy!!! Bollywood, I mourn for thee...
Now, who's in for going to see this thing with me? The fourth movie is always the best, you know.
