The 3 Idiots spat is not really about violation of authors' rights by filmmakers - moral or otherwise.
How many of the millions of moviegoers who saw the Oscar-grabbing Slumdog Millionaire knew — or cared — that it was based on Vikas Swarup’s book? Just a few, and many of those would not have known that it was titled Q & A, a book nominated for several prestigious literary awards but not a bestseller by a long chalk. Now, the repackaged book is selling like hotcake as Slumdog Millionaire, while Simon Beaufoy, meanwhile, has picked up several awards for the Best Adapted Screenplay (please note, the “adapted” for his work in the film). Swarup is not complaining.
Many an author has found more fame and fortune after a film was made of his works. Quite a few established writers, on the other hand, have tried to distance themselves from the cinematic versions of their books despite the money and glitz it brought them. That’s because they felt the film besmirched their artistic reputation and integrity. Authors’ names do not sell movies. The exception, perhaps, was Margaret Mitchell who got top billing — David Selznick (the producer) presented it as Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, her name appearing above those of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh! That was understandable: Gone with the Wind had sold in millions and had won the Pulitzer Prize as a classic of the American Civil War. The film made quite a few changes to the original story and took liberties with some of the pivotal characters. Mitchell did not have a problem with that after she sold the film rights to the book.
Matters are a little different in our patch of the world. It’s only now that Bollywood is seeing merit in turning popular or well-crafted novels into commercial cinema, although the sums paid to authors is a pittance compared to what Hollywood or European cinema pays for film rights. Chetan Bhagat appears to be the one who has talent Bollywood has put a premium on. But in the mostly mindless verbiage — and bathos — over Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, which producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra turned into 3 Idiots, the debate over copyright has turned rather fuzzy.
The crux of the debate, inexplicably, is about percentages. Did the film use only 3-5 per cent of the book, as the producers claimed, or was it closer to 60-70 per cent as the upset author makes it out to be? That is the riveting point for everyone who has a view on the issue — and everybody, it turns out, does have. Thanks to its runaway success at the box office, almost every newspaper and blog has been churning out frenzied accounts of the dispute between the author and the filmmakers, specially its marquee star Amir Khan, looking for similarities and differences between the book and the film, much in the style of the “compare and contrast” tasks assigned to schoolchildren. Naturally, there is no consensus on how much the blockbuster film owes to the book, which, by Indian standards, has been extremely popular and will in all likelihood sell even more after the huge success of the film. Snap media polls have also been conducted to gauge the public view and naturally these have given a split verdict, reflecting individual loyalties or gut reactions to the churlish behaviour of superstars or the victimisation of tearful mothers.
A small section of intellectual property lawyers appears to think that although Vinod Chopra Films has paid Bhagat in full (Rs 11,00,000) for the grant of rights “to interpret, adapt, title, create and produce the novel in any way or manner” and has given credit to the author in the rolling credits as stipulated in the contract, the author’s moral rights have been violated because of their media campaign. Moral rights, however, is a contentious issue.
Section 57 of the Indian Copyright Act, now in the process of being overhauled, gives authors the right to insist on attribution. The section states that “independently of the author’s copyright and even after the assignment either wholly or partially of the said copyright, the author of a work shall have the right to claim the authorship of the work ... ” In other words, it is a right independent of the economic rights an author may grant for exploitation of his work. But has there been lack of attribution in this instance? Bhagat himself has not mentioned moral rights; his main problem is with the media campaign launched by the production house to minimise his contribution and even more, the positioning of the rolling credits.
Moral rights are a creation of Europe, intended primarily to protect the author/artist from unfair treatment of their work, primarily on two counts, the right of integrity (no mutilation or distortion that would prejudice the author’s reputation) and the right of attribution, termed the right of paternity in French law. In the US, however, moral rights have been accepted very grudgingly and are applicable only to the visual arts (not cinema) under a 1990 law. It would be interesting to see if Bhagat, or any other author, is willing to test the moral rights law in India.
