Ola Cabs hits legal hurdle for playing 'pirated' music

Bengaluru police book case against Ola, accuse founders as absconding

The Bengaluru police has registered a complaint of copyright infringement against taxi aggregator Ola Cabs and founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati for streaming pirated music through its Ola Play platform.

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

Police raided Ola’s office and seized the equipment used to download and store songs locally and stream it on Ola Play, 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”. “We are confident that our client will stand vindicated of these allegations. 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 have accused them of absconding.

Ola launched Play, its connected car platform, in November last year. 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. 

Last month, Tulasiram Naidu, director of Lahari Recording Co, found that Ola was playing audios of popular Telugu movies such as Baahubali, Khaidi No.150 and Kannada movie Sundaranga Jaana, when he took an Ola ride from the airport to his home in Bengaluru.

Naidu, known as Lahari Velu in film circles, was told by his legal team that Ola had not secured a license to play the music on their platform. 

“They (people running Ola) are IIT boys and educated. They know what they are doing is illegal. I am surprised,” Naidu said. His legal team has lodged a complaint with the Bengaluru police for copyright violations. “Till date, nobody came to us for licensing the songs.”

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

India is the second-largest market for Uber, which has pumped in around $4.5 billion to capture the last open market in the world.

The revelations of the lawsuit come at a time Uber saw a detailed investigation of its workplace and fired 20 employees over the last few months for harassment, discrimination and inappropriate behaviour.

The cab aggregator is also under the 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.