Ola founders face music for playing pirated songs on cabs

Bengaluru police book case against Ola, accuse founders as absconding

Alnoor Peermohamed & Raghu Krishnan  |  Bengaluru 

Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO
Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal Photo: Saggere Radhakrishna

Bengaluru Police has registered a complaint of copyright infringement against ride hailing service Ola and its founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati for streaming pirated film music through its Ola Play platform.

The complaint, which was filed by Bengaluru-based Lahari Recording Company, on May 20 accuses ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of ride hailing service, of downloading and streaming songs from popular Telugu and Kannada movies for which it owns the rights.

Police raided the Ola office, seized equipment that downloaded and stored songs locally and streamed it on its Ola play platform, it said in a statement on Friday.
 

Ola’s Legal counsel Luthra and Luthra said in a statement that Ola conducted its business legally and ethically and its management “has been dragged into this issue with a mala fide intention”

"Our client, Ola, has at all times conducted its business with the highest legal and ethical standards and will continue to do so in the future as well,” it said in a statement. “We are confident that our client will stand vindicated of these allegations. Our client is sensitive to their rights as well as that of others. We have taken appropriate legal steps to protect our client's interests and the matter is now before the courts."

Both founders have secured anticipatory bail from the courts, said a source,  while the police accuses them of absconding.

Ola launched Play, its connected car platform, in November last year amidst much fanfare of working with Apple to integrate its music service into the in-car platform. Under the partnership, Ola riders would get free access to Apple Music while on a trip.

Apart from Apple, Ola has partnered with Sony Liv, AIB, Audio Compass and Fynd to provide audio and video content within Ola Play. The company had said it would initially launch Play within its high-end Prime sedans before making it available in every cab on its platform.

Tulasiram Naidu, director at Lahari Recording Co, discovered last month that Ola was playing audio music of popular Telugu movies such as Bahubali, Chiranjeevi's Khaidi No. 150 and Kannada movie Sundaranga Jana, when he took Ola Prime from airport to his home in Bengaluru.

Naidu, who is known as Lahari Velu in film circles, checked with his legal team whether Ola had secured license to play the music on their platform.

"They are IIT boys and educated who are running Ola. They know what they are doing is illegal. I am surprised," said Naidu, whose legal team lodged a complaint with the Bengaluru police for copyright violations. "Till date, nobody reached out to us for licensing the songs."

The Bengaluru police in a statement have accused both Aggarwal and Bhati as absconding.

An Ola spokesperson did not comment immediately.

The case against Ola comes at a time when its global rival Uber and its founder Travis Kalanick are facing troubles of their own. Kalanick, Uber and two senior executives of the company are facing a lawsuit by a rape victim in India, over breaching her privacy by illegally obtaining her medical records. The executives had suspected that the rape victim had colluded with Ola to hurt its business in the country.

India is the second largest market for Uber, which has pumped in close to $ 4.5 billion to capture the last open market in the world. Ola, funded by Japanese investment firm Softbank has been a tough competitor for Uber.

The revelations of a lawsuit comes at a time when Uber saw a detailed investigation of its workplace practices and rampant sexual harassment of female employees that led to dismissal of 20 executives.

The US ride hailing major is also under US federal investigations for Greyball - misleading transport authorities on the whereabouts of cars on its platform; stealing intellectual property from Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous car company. 

Ola founders face music for playing pirated songs on cabs

Bengaluru police book case against Ola, accuse founders as absconding

> The Bengaluru Police has registered a complaint of copyright infringement against ride hailing service Ola and its founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati for streaming pirated film music through its Ola Play platform. The complaint which was filed by Bengaluru-based Lahari Recording Company on May 20 accuses ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of ride hailing service, of downloading and streaming songs from popular Telugu and Kannada movies for which it owns the rights. Police raided the Ola office, seized equipment that downloaded and stored songs locally and streamed it on its Ola play platform, it said in a statement on Friday. Tulasiram Naidu, director at Lahari Recording Co, discovered last month that Ola was playing audio music of popular Telugu movies such as Bahubali, Chiranjeevi's Khaidi 150 and Kannada movie Sundaranga Jana, when he took Ola Prime from airport to his home in Bengaluru. Naidu, who is known as Lahari Velu in film circles, checked with .. Bengaluru Police has registered a complaint of copyright infringement against ride hailing service Ola and its founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati for streaming pirated film music through its Ola Play platform.

The complaint, which was filed by Bengaluru-based Lahari Recording Company, on May 20 accuses ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of ride hailing service, of downloading and streaming songs from popular Telugu and Kannada movies for which it owns the rights.

Police raided the Ola office, seized equipment that downloaded and stored songs locally and streamed it on its Ola play platform, it said in a statement on Friday.
 

Ola’s Legal counsel Luthra and Luthra said in a statement that Ola conducted its business legally and ethically and its management “has been dragged into this issue with a mala fide intention”

"Our client, Ola, has at all times conducted its business with the highest legal and ethical standards and will continue to do so in the future as well,” it said in a statement. “We are confident that our client will stand vindicated of these allegations. Our client is sensitive to their rights as well as that of others. We have taken appropriate legal steps to protect our client's interests and the matter is now before the courts."

Both founders have secured anticipatory bail from the courts, said a source,  while the police accuses them of absconding.

Ola launched Play, its connected car platform, in November last year amidst much fanfare of working with Apple to integrate its music service into the in-car platform. Under the partnership, Ola riders would get free access to Apple Music while on a trip.

Apart from Apple, Ola has partnered with Sony Liv, AIB, Audio Compass and Fynd to provide audio and video content within Ola Play. The company had said it would initially launch Play within its high-end Prime sedans before making it available in every cab on its platform.

Tulasiram Naidu, director at Lahari Recording Co, discovered last month that Ola was playing audio music of popular Telugu movies such as Bahubali, Chiranjeevi's Khaidi No. 150 and Kannada movie Sundaranga Jana, when he took Ola Prime from airport to his home in Bengaluru.

Naidu, who is known as Lahari Velu in film circles, checked with his legal team whether Ola had secured license to play the music on their platform.

"They are IIT boys and educated who are running Ola. They know what they are doing is illegal. I am surprised," said Naidu, whose legal team lodged a complaint with the Bengaluru police for copyright violations. "Till date, nobody reached out to us for licensing the songs."

The Bengaluru police in a statement have accused both Aggarwal and Bhati as absconding.

An Ola spokesperson did not comment immediately.

The case against Ola comes at a time when its global rival Uber and its founder Travis Kalanick are facing troubles of their own. Kalanick, Uber and two senior executives of the company are facing a lawsuit by a rape victim in India, over breaching her privacy by illegally obtaining her medical records. The executives had suspected that the rape victim had colluded with Ola to hurt its business in the country.

India is the second largest market for Uber, which has pumped in close to $ 4.5 billion to capture the last open market in the world. Ola, funded by Japanese investment firm Softbank has been a tough competitor for Uber.

The revelations of a lawsuit comes at a time when Uber saw a detailed investigation of its workplace practices and rampant sexual harassment of female employees that led to dismissal of 20 executives.

The US ride hailing major is also under US federal investigations for Greyball - misleading transport authorities on the whereabouts of cars on its platform; stealing intellectual property from Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous car company. 

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