Certainly, the Independence Day celebrations this year were not all fun and games. Yes, the soul-stirring patriotism could be seen on every face but not with that thrill and excitement. People were somewhat dull and so were the number of kites soaring in the sky. Not the usual cheerful day we enthusiastically wait for. Not to deny, the places where social distancing could be observed were decorated all over in saffron, white and green. Our News channels did their best to keep that flag-waving spirit alive by showing us clips from the Independence era to stories of the acclaimed leaders followed by the present-day low-key celebrations. And the entertainment ones aired our favorite movies. Thanks to the virtual media, at least our homes were filled with the sounds of “Vande Mataram” even if our surroundings weren’t. But not everyone likes the way virtual media works, at least not SaReGaMa, well, this is what we thought. Just after the prosperous 74th celebrations, SaReGaMa raised a copyright claim against the vintage channel, Doordarshan National (DD National).

Every channel thought of unique ways to keep the audience engaged. DD National did their bit by airing a video of defense officials, both men, and women, singing to the tunes of “Sare Jahan Se Acha”. The video was uploaded on various social media handles belonging to DD National including Twitter and YouTube, unaware of the fact that objections could be raised against something so righteous. A copyright strike was raised by SaReGaMa for uploading a video wherein Tri-Band played patriotic songs.

All this seems to be a little confusing to us and also to the CEO of DD National, Mr. Shashi S. Vempati who took his disappointment to Twitter. “Disappointed to see that live musical band performances by the Armed Forces produced by Doordarshan have been copyright claimed by commercial musical entities on the @/ddnational YouTube channel,” he wrote, “It is not just ethically and morally wrong but it raises serious questions on the basis for these copyright claims - as an example what is the basis for SaReGaMa to claim copyright on "Saare Jahan Se Accha" performance by the Tri-services band?.” The Tweet received numerous responses criticizing SaReGaMa for the claim. Mr. Vempati further requested the music entity as well as Google India to look into the matter.

Turns out, this was all a glitch. 1946 established Music Company apologized to the concerned. They wrote, “As a part of the system driven automatic copyright claims activity, this unintentional incident happened. We removed the claim immediately. Kindly accept our sincere apologies.”

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