Music, noise and law

Last month a musician won a historic judgment against the Royal Opera House London for getting permanent loss of hearing due to extremely high levels of sound during rehearsals. The court decided on the ground that the musicians should have been provided with protective equipment and should have been forced to use the equipment. The court made a distinction between the voluntary use of equipment and mandatory use of equipment according to the interpretation of the law.

Though it may sound to the quite ironical that music itself can be noise and at times so loud that it can cause loss of hearing to the musicians. These problems have often been discussed and litigated for factory workers and other people working in areas with very high levels of noise like places near aircraft at airports, at construction sites, shipbreaking units, car racing tracks, etc. The problem is genuine and or the musicians who rehearse repeatedly positioned near high decibel musical instruments have to seriously face the problem of continuous very high levels of noise.

The Royal Opera house argued that noise was not a by-product of its activities, but it was the product. It also relied on the basic idea advanced in law that one who voluntarily accepts a known risk cannot ask for compensation in case of any damage. This is best known by the Latin maxim, volenti non fit injuria - to a willing person, injury is not done – and this is the basic principle applied in a number of situations where a participant in a bout of wrestling, boxing, fencing, bullfighting, etc. on his own waives the right to be compensated in the case of injury. It goes without saying that the event should be conducted in a fair manner. The same applies when spectators gather to watch an event, for instance, cricket matches. In case the ball hit by the batsman for a six injures a spectator, there cannot be a case against the batsman as the spectator has chosen on his own to sit in the stadium and watch the match.

The expansion and development of law have slowly but surely shifted the burden more and more on the employer to take all the measures for the protection of the employees, which must be updated with the developments of technology, and force the employees to use all the measures of protection. It is quite common and understandable that in most of the construction sites anyone is not allowed to enter without the protective hat. In the same way, no one is allowed to enter even hospitals, particularly intensive-care units, without protective masks which serve the dual purpose of protecting the patients from being infected by the visitors, and vice versa.

The government has a role to play in the evolution of administrative law to force the citizens to do a lot many things which hitherto were left to them as a matter of choice. For instance, wearing a helmet while driving a two-wheeler and the seat belt while driving a four-wheeler is not a matter of choice for the driver, but are mandated by law.

Similarly, tough enforcement and realistic interpretation of the laws related to noise levels is the need of the hour to make the society a better place to live in. The noise levels during music concerts is often so high that it is quite damaging for the audience close to the speakers, which in most of the cases are like a small wall of multiple speakers arranged together. Not only the level of noise but the vibrations along with the noise of are of very high levels. Not only the human beings, the nearby buildings and get damage due to these vibrations.

Very often good music can be appreciated at low decibel levels and there is no need to always amplify fine music to such loud levels that it doesn’t remain music but becomes noise. There is, however, a major difference between this type of amplification of sound and certain musical instruments which have been designed to create music at a high decibel level. Historically, in the absence of any amplification system, musical instruments were designed to produce high levels of sound so as to reach the farthest person sitting in the audience. This is no more needed. With fantastic amplification systems available easily, loud sound producing musical instruments may be technologically modified to produce acceptable levels of sound. Till then it is for the law to mandatorily enforce the use of protective equipment.

The author is a professor at IIM-A,
akagarwal@iima.ac.in