Kozhikode: While tribal folk forms and art gain prominence on social media, the people from the community are not getting any benefits due to a lack of adequate laws or interventions to protect this knowledge.

Content related to traditional medicine, arts, language, food, customs, and others has become popular on social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook. As a result, these content creators receive a large revenue. 

For instance, the song ‘Ellulleri Maninangere' trending on YouTube, is actually a popular song among the Kasaragod Mavilar and Malavetuwa tribes. This tribal song so far received more than two crore views on YouTube alone. The feature film that used this song was also a major hit.

O.K Prabhakaran, an artist and writer of the Mavilar community, said that they had complained to the tribal welfare minister and others about using their song without permission but received a reply that there was no law to take action. 

A report prepared by Dr C.J Anson of the CUSAT Inner University Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) studies stated that there exist 773 videos related to tribal indigenous knowledge on YouTube.

Videos related to tribal medicine get an average of 3 million views, 50,000 likes and 15,000 shares. Tribal stories get 20 lakh views, a quarter lakh likes and five thousand shares. 

Producers receive between 1 to 5 dollars per 1000 views for these contents. However, the tribals, who are the real owners, do not even get a small share of this. 

Tribal knowledge mostly has an oral tradition. Therefore, intellectual property law or copyright law does not apply to them. Patent law does not take into consideration traditional knowledge and intellectual rights. A special law is needed to protect the interest of tribal groups in this matter, Anson said.