Russian World War II veterans may be ordered to pay royalties to publicly perform war-era songs, as the country's copyright watchdog claims has not been done in the past, the Russian Vesti channel said on Thursday.
Veterans have freely performed war-related songs for decades, with many of them being accepted as "folk" across the country due to their huge popularity. The Russian Authors' Society (RAO), however, has reminded veterans that the songs have authors who should be paid for their work, Vesti said.
The claim against the organizers of a concert in the Russian Volga city of Samara came less than two months ahead of Victory Day celebrations on May 9. The concert was dedicated to the upcoming 65th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
"Claims were made against the administration [of the organizers of the concert] regarding the performance of songs in Russian," the deputy head of the Volga region's branch of the Russian Authors' Society, Tatyana Fedoseyenko, told Vesti.
Veterans argue the songs help to hand down memories of the war to their grandchildren. They have wondered if it is not a crime if they will be forced to pay for that.
Representatives of RAO's Moscow branch have supported the claim by their colleagues in the Volga region.
"The local administration should have received permission by signing a license agreement with the Russian Authors' Society so the performance of these songs was made legal. This was not done," RAO deputy head Oleg Patrin told the TV channel.
"We perform for free, and I should ask permission to sing a song?" Pyotr Gorshkov, who heads the Homefront Workers and Labor Veterans organization, told Vesti, adding: "I guess for me, who was a boy growing up during the war, it is somehow... incorrect."
Copyright backers say the claim is not against veterans, but against the concert organizers.
Oskar Feltsman, the author of some popular war-related songs, condemned the claim, saying: "We should bow before the veterans and say 'Thank you for your life.'"
The committee on culture in the lower house of Russia's parliament, the State Duma, is expected to hold an emergency meeting in order to settle the dispute, Vesti said.
MOSCOW, March 25 (RIA Novosti)
