says, is an important departure from the rest of Chapter VI. The rationale to this introduction, Dr Saraf submits, is not far to seek. By its very nature, copyright law is monopolistic. But what happened over time was that corporates took assignments of musical works, amassing to themselves copyright in a huge repertoire of sound recordings and music. Without licenses from these corporates, others could not play or perform or broadcast those works. These large organizations, such as the one represented by Mr Kadam, began to exercise a stranglehold over licenses for their copyrightprotected repertoire. Everybody wanted access to those songs. The public wanted to listen to those songs. But these large organizations began to demand ever-increasing license fees. Apart from the financial implications to companies and services such as Wynk, the immediate result was the deprivation of the music if not to the public generally, then at least to the entire Wynk user-base, whether paid or unpaid. To put at its most brutal: unless Wynk paid what Tips demanded, none of Wynk’s users could listen to a single song from Tips’s repertoire. That, Dr Saraf submits, was never the intent of copyright law. It amounts to illicit copyright-protected work hoarding and is as much a social menace as any other form of hoarding. Section 31D recognizes this and forces the copyright owner/hoarder to part with a license to that work immediately upon being given a notice.
