Analyzing the Upcoming Trends of Digital Copyright Law in India
The copyright basically means to protect the rights of the creator of the artistic work. It protects the right of the inventor. The new era of digitalization and through internet the infringement of copyright laws have become more and more common. People find it easier to copy and paste just to fulfill their task without realizing that they are cheating on. The copying one’s own research is not looked up as a crime until it is brought into the eyes of law. The reason behind copyright infringement has become an easy task is ‘Google it’ culture. Everyone believes that what is being shown by the websites is meant for the free work to copy paste without realizing that it might be the result of someone’s hard work. This paper aims to provide the critical analysis of the copy right laws and highlight the grey areas where more development or stringent laws are required as per the analysis of the research outcome.
Introduction:
Copyright are one of the forms of the Intellectual Property Rights that are concerned with authors exclusive rights relating to art or music or anything to protect their own work. The copyright is mainly meant to uplift the creators to give more of their inputs and their efforts should not go waste. This can be held through stricter laws. The copyright was initially related to copying the contents of books or physically printed matters of printing press. But it was very difficult task as copying from one existing physical material to another is not an easy process. The new emerging digital era has made this issue an easier one. The copyright now covers all the computer programs, databases, and other digital content. There are many websites who have restricted themselves to only share a certain information and that cannot be copied. On the other hand, there are some software’s that are pirated by the people and used worldwide. All these areas relate to the criminalization of such acts.
Copyright: A major concerned in Digital Era:
The earlier concept of typewriters did not require much stricter laws for copyright as it was not easy to copy. The current digital era provides ease in all the forms and even to copy and paste. This situation is alarming one to make stricter laws with reference to specifically computer databases or other related things. For a database to be considered an "intellectual production," it must have originality of expression, meaning it cannot be duplicated from another database and must be the result of the author's intellectual endeavor.
Databases are protected as literary works under India's Copyright Act of 1957. Computer programmes, tables, and compilations, including computer databases, are included in the definition of "literary works." Under the Act, databases and computer programmes have similar protections against infringement. It's worth noting that copyright in databases is recognized by Indian courts.
Violations of copyrights can be prosecuted in court and subjected to the penalties outlined in the Copyright Act. Making or distributing illegal copies, as well as using without permission, are examples of these offences. Because of the distinction between computer programmes and other literary works, the law has rendered the intentional use of unauthorized copies of computer programmes illegal. So it is very necessary to know more about copyright with regard to computer programs/software, computer databases and various work in cyber space. Copyright is key issue in intellectual property rights in digital era. 1
1. http://www.rmlnlu.ac.in/webj/alok_kumar_yadav.pdf
Multimedia and Copyright:
Multimedia work involves several forms of communication. These are combinations of different elements such as text, sound, still images, etc. The work in multimedia can be divided into interactive and non-interactive categories. Interactive multimedia involves video games and other things that need to be done by humans.
Multimedia work is not defined in the Indian Copyright Act, 1957. These works are divided into separate categories of their own elements, as the multimedia work defies the existing categories. Many of these works are produced by changing the existing ones.
With the new technology now, it has become very easy to copy the multimedia and associated things as it is exactly and identically like the actual work of the creator. There is no law or a specific provision in the current laws to protect the originality of multimedia work in the current digital era. Therefore, these works can be protected as a film or computer program subject to major legal implementation. However, there may be problems leading to issues regarding individual copyrights of works used in multimedia. When more and more multimedia works are created as new complex works, this problem will become more prominent for example piracy, recording films in phones or in any other form. The software named as torrent was one of the most famous examples for downloading movies for free, sometimes in good quality and otherwise too. The classification of multimedia works is a problem that requires in-depth investigation and legal protection.
Problems relating to the Copyright w.r.t Digital Perspective:
The main agenda that is raised here is that Digitalization is a path to comfort yet in all the senses be it education, multimedia or any other. The tracks of internet have made it easy to reproduce the data by just copying it from one platform to an another one. Digitalization has made it considerably easy to make identical copies and transmit it to a population of millions dispersed over distances in a fraction of time. 2
All these crimes are usually done unintentionally as people are not aware of the copyright concept and claims, they do not know that it is a crime, and they are infringing any individual’s rights. The need of the work makes people believe it to copy it with ease. They usually google everything and find it free to use. This is a basic threat to the Intellectual property Rights and people go through this on the daily basis. The information available on the internet is assumed to be for free to use whereas it isn’t, and it has associated copyright laws with it. The decentralized characteristic of the Internet makes believe every user to disseminate an online work in any form and endlessly through several outlets that makes it harder to determine whether the work is a reproduction or copy of a protected work and therefore a global piracy.
The Internet in some way presents the copyright holders with a troubling situation, as users become mass propagators of other copyright materials and create imbalance between authors and users.
Conclusion:
The laws pertaining to copy right need much strictness and there shall be specific laws for internet service providers. There are some websites that have restricted and disable the copy paste rules, but people do it by taking a screenshot, such malpractices shall also be discouraged. But this evil practice will only come to an end when there will be easy mechanism to point out copyright infringement and there will be laws to penalize, fine or give any sort of greater punishment with respect to copyright issues. The people should be aware of such laws, the education is needed and there shall be fear of breaking the law that will land them in any sort of trouble as then only they will be respecting and obey such rules or laws.