Google removes Bolo Indya from Playstore on copyright complaint from T-Series

Google has removed indigenous social media app Bolo Indya from Playstore on a copyright complaint made by music company T-Series.

Super Cassettes Industries Pvt Ltd, which operates under the brand name T-Series, has served an infringement notice to social media and video sharing platforms about a year ago to pay around Rs 3.5 crore in damages from using its copyrighted contents.

While most of the companies have settled the row with T-Series, Bolo Indya is yet to come to terms with the music company.

"Bolo Indya is a habitual offender and we had sent them various legal notices but they continued to infringe our copyrights and, thus, we wrote to Google under applicable laws to take down this infringing app from their app store.

"We take infringement very seriously and will not shy away from taking more stringent legal action against Bolo Indya and any other such infringing platforms to protect our copyrights," T-Series President Neeraj Kalyan told PTI.

When contacted by Bolo Indya, its spokesperson said the company is temporarily unavailable from Google Playstore due to some conflicts with T-Series.

"T-Series acted in bad faith by ignoring our communication to them to discuss content licensing, and by this move, they are only discouraging the early stage start-ups.

"But, we as perseverant founders shall always work in coordination with the ecosystem and complying with all laws.

"However, we are in talks with T-Series and Google to resolve the issue at the earliest and the platform will be back on playstore shortl," the spokesperson said.

Bolo Indya has around 70 lakh users.

"We assure our users that all their created content and transaction details for in-app currency purchases are safe, and Bolo Indya will be back soon on Playstore," the spokesperson said.

No immediate comments were shared by Google on the same.

Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters