The copyright to Subramania Bharati
👉How A.V. Meiyappa Chettiar acquired the broadcast and recording rights of the poet’s works👈 Subramania Bharati, the modern Tamil poet who attained posthumous fame and whose books remain bestsellers, may not have recognised “the © symbol that figures in the imprint pages of every published book today”. As mentioned in the prologue of historian A.R. Venkatachalapathy’s book Who Owns that Song? The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright, the word copyright occurs only once in Bharati’s writings, and he would have perhaps been amazed to learn that his poems could later earn money by being used in song recordings and in films. Bharati died poor, with half his works uncollected or unpublished in his lifetime. Legal battles broke out after his death — filmmakers and publishers vied to acquire copyright to his works and many people demanded that his writings be made public property. Finally, the Tamil Nadu government acquired rights to his poems and then made them available to the pu...