There is no way they could claim copyright for the song itself,” he points out. “Their right is restricted to the specific performance an artist has made for that one recording. Lalitha Ram, one of the co-founders of Parivadini, says that it was bizarre that anyone could claim copyright for compositions of Tyagaraja.

Such notices usually appear when the owners of the original content flag an infringement when they are notified by a mechanism on YouTube called ‘Content ID.’ When a video is uploaded, this mechanism scans it for violations and notifies the content owner, who is provided with several options to deal with the infringement. The issue escalated after ‘Parivadini,’ a popular video channel in the Carnatic music circles, uploaded on YouTube a recording of a concert in Chennai marking the World Music Day.Īlmost immediately, the owners of the channel received violation notices claiming that certain compositions of Tyagaraja, which were part of the concert performance, were in fact copyrighted material of few famous recording houses. A spate of copyright-violation notices issued to video channels on YouTube for uploading Carnatic music rendition of compositions of saint Tyagaraja, has raised the hackles of musicians and fans of the art form.Īn online petition has now been launched asking YouTube to initiate a discussion on the matter, which musicians feel strike at the heart of the art form.

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