Centre for Internet and Society

Does India need its own Bayh-Dole?

sachia — 2011-04-02T15:58:46Z

Article by Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager at Centre for Internet and Society in the Indian Express, 24 April 2009

Across the world battlelines are being drawn in the normally quiet areas of academia and research. The opposing sides: those in favour of open and collaborative research and development as a means to promote innovation, and those in favour of perpetuating the profits of big pharma companies and academic publishers. Currently before a Select Parliamentary Committee is a controversial law that will deny basic healthcare to millions by making medicines much more expensive, lock up academic knowledge, and help privatise publicly-funded research. The law titled the Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008 (“PUPFIP Bill”, http://bit.ly/pupfip-bill) was tabled last December in the Rajya Sabha by the Minister for Science and Technology. It was created in utmost secrecy by the Department of Science and Technology, without so much as a draft version having been shared with the public for comments.

The PUPFIP Bill is an Indian version of a 1980 US legislation, the Bayh-Dole Act, and as per its statement of objects and reasons, it seeks to promote creativity and innovation to enable India “to compete globally and for the public good”. It aims to do so by ensuring the protection of all intellectual property (meaning copyright, patent, trade mark, design, plant variety, etc.) that is the outcome of government-funded research. The IP rights will be held by the grant recipient, or by the government if the recipient does not choose to protect the IP. This might seem like a good way to enable technology transfer from research institutes to the industry, but that would be a very myopic view, disregarding all evidence related to the failure of the Bayh-Dole Act. Last year Prof. Anthony So of Duke University co-authored an extensive analysis of the Bayh-Dole Act, and warned of the consequences of such legislation in developing countries.

First, such a law will shift the focus of research. Researchers will be inclined to to concentrate their efforts on issues of interest to industry, and which can have immediate benefit. This would force vital fundamental research into neglect since it cannot be commercialised with ease. Research by Saul Lach and Mark Schankerman shows that scientists are influenced by royalty rates, and will thus tend to work on industrial research rather than fundamental research. This creates, or at least exacerbates, what is popularly known as the “90/10 gap”: the fact that ninety per cent of medical research money goes into problems affecting ten per cent of the world’s population, since that ten per cent is richer.

Secondly, this law will have chilling effects on scholarly communications and promote secrecy. The Bill has requirements of non-disclosure by the grantee and the researcher to enable the commercialisation of the research, and requires researchers and institutions to inform the government before all publication of research. Such bureaucratisation of research publications will stultify intellectual pursuits. Such secrecy and permission-raj culture is anathema to intellectual and academic pursuits, where knowledge is sought to be freely disseminated, to be criticised and further revised by others. In South Africa, academics affected by the recent passage of a PUPFIP-type legislation there are questioning its constitutionality as it restrains freedom of speech.

Thirdly, this will lead to our pillars of learning and research becoming like businesses. US universities like Columbia and Duke have found themselves at the receiving end of criticism for their brazen commercialism, encouraged by the Bayh-Dole Act. Instead of promoting greater access to health for the poor, and spending money on research, the universities were spending money on patent litigation in court. The outcome of one of these cases was the rejection of Duke University’s research exemption defence (universities are generally not bound to observe patents when they wished to conduct research). The court held that the university had “business interests” which the research unmistakably furthered. This points at a fundamental divide between universities as places of learning and as places of profiteering. The Open Source Drug Discovery (OSSD) project that the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is currently pursuing is a good attempt at promoting a culture of openness and transparency and collaboration, and thus ensuring cheaper and more efficient drug discovery. Even the US government is currently seeking to clear the way for generic versions of biotech drugs. In such an environment, it is counter-intuitive to bring in a regressive law, and goes against innovative efforts such as the OSSD, and will harm the generics industry.

Fourthly, the Bill assumes — erroneously, as an ever-growing amount of research demonstrates (Boldrin & Levine, Bessen & Meurer, etc.) — that intellectual property is the best and only way to promote creativity and innovation. All forms of intellectual property are state-granted monopolistic rights. At a basic level, competition promotes innovations while monopoly retards it. Much of modern science developed without the privilege of patents. Surely, Darwin and Newton were not encouraged by patents. And even whole industries — like the software industry — flourish without patent protection in most of the world.

The commendable aim of ensuring knowledge transfer can be accomplished much better if we refrain from giving away to private corporations (whether pharmaceutical manufacturers or publishers) exclusive rights to the product of publicly-funded research. Scientists and researchers can be encouraged to be consultants to various industrial projects, thereby ensuring that their expertise is tapped. Importantly, open access publishing which helps to ensure wide distribution and dissemination of knowledge is surely more desirable. That is the trend being followed the world over currently. The US president recently signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Bill which makes permanent the National Institutes of Health’s open access policy. By doing so, he symbolically rejected calls (such as the much-criticised Conyers Bill) to privatise publicly funded research outputs. Thus, there are many ways by which the government can encourage innovation and creativity, and further public interest. The PUPFIP Bill, which will have deleterious unintended consequences if it is passed, is not one of them.

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To read the article at the Indian Express website, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/does-india-need-its-own-bayh-dole

Call to increase awareness of intellectual property rights

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:47:26Z

We need more knowledge on IPR itself, says IT Secretary

There is an imperative need to focus on intellectual property rights issues, provide more information to the public on what constitutes IPR and how to deal with violations, Information Technology secretary PWC Davidar said.

“We need more knowledge on IPR itself. Very few people are aware of what IPR is and therefore unaware that they are violating someone's IPR, for instance, even when they copy for an essay,” Mr. Davidar said at the inaugural of the seminar on Access to Knowledge. It was organised by the Consumers Association of India and Consumers International, Kuala Lumpur in association with the Madras Library Association.

Assignments

Even when it came to assignments in schools, colleges and universities, sometimes Ph.D. theses as well, one hears of people borrowing from others' work, Mr. Davidar said.

This kind of thing was very tightly controlled in the West, where software was used to pick up plagiarism. However, that was not so strictly enforced in India, he added.

Debate

Mr. Davidar also highlighted the debate on IPR in areas such as environment or health where lives could be at stake.

“When it comes to academics, you know clearly that you should not borrow without acknowledgement. It is not as simple in situations where a solution can save several lives or prevent destruction of property. Such technologies should be shared, without being safeguarded in the corporate domain by IPR,” he added.

R. Desikan, founder, CAI, provided a brief report on the activities of the organisation and stressed the need to increase awareness of consumer rights, and IPR. Pranesh Prakash, from Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, stressing the need to provide access to knowledge in the context of IPR, also hinted at the negative aspects that patents might have on consumers.

Knowledge economy

Former Chief Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal said consumers were living in a knowledge economy.

Pointing to the example of Japan that worked backwards on creating their own process with an end product (already invented in the U.S.) in mind, he advised that India too should examine whether it could benefit from such reverse engineering.

“Knowledge only grows with distribution,” he added, alluding to the teaching of the Upanishads.

Read the original article in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/increase-awareness-of-ipr

Intellectual Property Rights as seen in a graphic novel

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T06:32:01Z

While most engagements with the issue of Intellectual Property Rights take the form of academic papers and scholarly articles, the Centre for Internet and Society is approaching the subject through another medium – an online graphic novel. Commissioned by the organisation, and conceived, written and drawn by Mumbai-based Anand Ramachandran (a man who keeps himself busy in a number of ways, from writing satire columns to developing videogame designs), the novel, titled Learning to Floo, is being serialised on the CIS website.

“People are aware of the implications of IPR issues when it comes to movies and music,” said Ramachandran, over the phone from Mumbai. “Less so when it comes to patents and medicines. We’re trying to throw light on some of these issues through the comic.” One attraction of dealing with the subject through a story is that it becomes possible to avoid proselytising. “We’re telling a story, not taking a moral stand,” said Ramachandran.

The premise – an India many centuries in the future. IPR laws have slowly become so restrictive that people can’t even hum a popular tune without first paying a license fee. As a result creativity and originality have been strangled, and people’s brains have turned to mush. A band of rebels holds out, including an individual named Teech who, as the story opens, is in prison awaiting execution. Unknown to him and his cohorts, the government actually needs them because, as pirates, they have access to knowledge that has been lost to the rest of mankind. A prison break sets the story off at a cracking pace.

Ramachandran uses Celtx to write his scripts, and Xara Xtreme and the GIMP pencil and airbrush tool for the illustrations – all free software, he pointed out. The art is minimalist, with one or two facial features defining each character (Teech himself has no facial features), and the story is sped along by snappy dialogue and smooth storyboarding. CIS also has plans to produce a print version of the comic once it is complete. Ajay Krishnan

Learning to Floo can be read here
Read the original article in TimeOut Bengaluru

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ipr-in-graphic-novel

Civil Society groups urge State Judicial Academy to restructure agenda for Judges' Roundtable meet

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:47:36Z

Some of the Civil Society groups in the country have urged the Maharashtra State Judicial Academy to restructure the agenda for the 'Judges Roundtable on Intellectual Property Rights Adjudication' being held in Mumbai on July 24 and 25 to promote public interest and a deeper understanding of intellectual property amongst judicial officers. FICCI is the joint organiser of the event.

In a letter to justice Dr D Y Chandrachud, director (Officiating), Maharashtra State Judicial Academy, the Civil Society groups said that the industry associations like FICCI and CII are primarily known for their lobbying activities towards greater IP protection. Therefore it is not proper for Judicial Academies to collaborate with such organisations without ensuring that the agenda that is set does not promote a biased view. While industry input is necessary, such one-sided collaborations will result in marginalisation of public interest in the IP enforcement
adjudication.

The agenda clearly shows that one side view of IPR and ignores the core concerns emerging out of IPR protection and enforcement related to access to knowledge and access to medicines. Except three academics, all other resource persons outside of the judicial fraternity are from corporate IP law firms and industry associations. The agenda failed to provide a balanced view on IP protection and enforcement, they said.

The letter further said that it is very clear from the agenda and the list of speakers of the roundtable that it is highly skewed, and that there is no balancing of viewpoints that the judicial officers are being presented with. Many of the speakers, who are from corporate law firms, have openly, in public, advocated against public interest provisions of the Indian Patent Act, such as s.3(d) which seeks to prevent evergreening of pharmaceutical patents or s.3(k) which seeks to prevent basic building blocks of technology and business like mathematics,
business methods, and software, from being patented.

Moreover, many of the lawyers have made attempts to import the jurisprudence of developed countries in the matters relating to the enforcement of IPRs, too often with success. Anton Piller orders, which are no longer prevalent in the UK, have been imported into India and modified to even allowing for lock-breaking. This very idea of adhering to foreign jurisprudence on the matters of IPR is highly opposed to the development of indigenous jurisprudence. We feel that jurisprudence of a country should be based on the developmental issues and contexts at the domestic level.

Further, at least four resource persons represent the industry associations like Indian music Industry (IMI), Business Software Alliances (BSA) and The Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd. These associations have been actively advocating for IP enforcement law and policies at the national and international level, which undermine the public interest. Hence, these resource people are not in a position to provide a holistic perspective on IP protection and its enforcement, the Civil Society groups contended.

“In the interest of equity and justice, we urge you to take appropriate actions, including requiring the sensitization programme to be balanced both from an industry perspective as well as from a developmental perspective. The Maharashtra State Judicial Academy's collaboration with FICCI does not seem to do either, and instead specific narrow interests seem to be promoted in the form of a sensitization programme. We urge you restructure the agenda to avoid this capture of interest and to actually promote public interest and a deeper understanding of
intellectual property amongst judicial officers,” they said.

This article by Ramesh Shankar appeared in Pharmabiz.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/judges-roundtable-meet

Letter from Civil Society Organizations to CII

pranesh — 2011-04-02T15:15:44Z

A total of 29 groups and individuals expressed their concern about the drive by CII to introduce TRIPS-plus enforcement standards in India.

Original report in Business Standard

Govt accepts panel report against narrowing of Indian patent law

BS Reporter / New Delhi August 18, 2009, 1:14 IST

The central government has accepted the recommendations of an expert committee headed by former Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) chief R A Mashelkar on patent laws. The committee had concluded that limiting the grant of patents for pharmaceutical substances to new chemical entities will be a violation of the TRIPS agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In effect, the committee endorsed the current position taken by India, in allowing patenting of known medicines if they have substantial new therapeutic uses.

The Mashelkar committee was formed after the government got passed the Patent Bill in 2005. It was assigned to see if the demand for narrowing the patent laws would breach India’s obligations under the WTO agreement. Mashelkar had presented the committee report in 2007, only for it to be withdrawn due to complaints of “technical errors”. The revised copy, submitted to the government few months ago, was accepted recently.

The move has come as a setback to many civic groups who were hoping to see a a constriction of Indian patent laws. The domestic lobby groups were heartened after a committee of Parliamentarians recently recommended changes in the existing rules to limit patenting of medicines to just “new chemical entities”.

In a letter to commerce minister Anand Sharma, the National Working Group on Patent Laws asked for the “recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee to take precedence over those of the Mashelkar committee.” It wanted the Mashelkar committee recommendations to be disregarded and appropriate amendments introduced in the Patents Act, 1970.

The civil society groups are stepping up protest against the “alleged” move to link “counterfeit” issues with intellectual property protection. In an open letter to Confederation of Indian Industry today, 21 groups have protested against the intellectual property enforcement initiatives of the CII.

“It is disheartening to note that the CII, being an Indian industry organization, is hosting the Third International Conference on Counterfeiting and Piracy from 19-20th August 2009 in partnership with American Embassy and the Quality Brand Protection Committee (QBPC), China, a body that comprises over 80 multinational corporations”, Linu Mathew Phillip, acting director of the Delhi-based Centre for Trade and Development said. “It is of immense concern to all of us, since higher norms of intellectual property enforcement necessarily undermine various other rights of the people at large, including the right to access to medicines and access to knowledge,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/letter-from-civil-society-organizations-to-cii

The madness of software patents

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:17:11Z

India’s patent law excludes software per se, yet over a thousand patents have been granted, writes Lata Jishnu in an article published in Down to Earth.

Per se is a straightforward term meaning by or in itself. Those who use it are pretty clear what the Latin-origin term signifies. And that’s what our lawmakers must have also believed when they used it in the 2005 amendment to India’s Patent Act.

But unaccountably this particular term has turned out to be prone to misuse more than anything else in the country’s patent law, leading to a host of software patents that should never have been granted in the first place. So me have been challenged and many more are set to be opposed in the courts but what is clear is that patent examiners in India have learned nothing from the anarchy in the US where the liberal grant of patents to software programmes and business methods has resulted in the biggest logjam in the courts. Patents cripple innovation and creativity by blocking access to data format specifications—and they hurt everyone.

A scan of the current patents disputes reveals how expensive and destructive these suits are.

InNova is suing 36 of the world’s top flight computer, telecom and banking companies for violating its patent, which “covers technology used to differentiate between spam email messages and those that users actually want to receive”. The company claims its spam filter is one of the “building blocks for all email communications” but some experts say that actual spam filtering is far more sophisticated than the methods in the firm’s patent.
Oracle is suing Google because it says Google’s Android operating system infringes seven patents it owns on Java. Analysts allege that Oracle wants to assert its dominant position in the Java ecosystem.
Microsoft and Salesforce, a small competitor, were suing each other, with the Redmond behemoth claiming Salesforce used its software-as-a-service products, while Salesforce accuses Microsoft of violating its patents.
VirnetX Holding Corp, an Internet security software firm, which successfully sued Microsoft for US $200 million, is now charging several other corporations with violating patents for technology used in mobile phones, remote communication and virtual private networking.

This list is merely illustrative of the madness out there. It is precisely to avoid such anarchy that India’s law was so formulated as to exclude software and business method patents. Here is what Section 3 (k) of the Patent Act says cannot be considered inventions: a mathematical or business method or computer programme per se or algorithms. In other words, computer programmes are a kind of algorithm just as algorithms are a kind of mathematical method. One reason for this exclusion is that computer programmes are protected by copyright in India and it was not thought necessary to provide additional protection through patents.

But lawyers being what they are, have set their sharp legal brains to assay what “computer programme per se” could be made to mean—encouraged, of course, by firms keen on pat - ent protection for software applications and business methods. The result is pretty dismaying: hundreds of patents granted in recent years, setting at naught the intention of the law. The Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) offers some estimates of the number of software patents granted in India. It says around 200 software patents have been granted till date (applications have been filed since 1999), another 1,000 patents were given for inventions which use the term ‘computer’ in the abstract describing the invention.

Krithika Narayana of CIS explains that actual numbers are hard to come by because there is no category for software patents. Thus, applications may be described as either ‘computer-based’ or ‘computerised’ or ‘computer implemented’ systems. However, most software patents are concentrated in the group of patents with G06F as their classification. The figures have been culled from this category. There is more bad news. Hund reds of software patent applications are in various stages of examination, opposition and grant which have not been included in the CIS tally. How has all this come about?

Most applicants manipulate the term ‘computer programmes per se’ to obtain patents for computer programmes run in combination with hardware (even though the hardware only executes the programme and has no ingenuity of its own) or software embedded in a machine (embedded systems). Clearly, the patent office has been wrong in granting such patents.

To end this, CIS, working in tandem with Knowledge Com - mons and Software Freedom Law Centre, is set to challenge a software patent. Hopefully, it might stop the tide. Otherwise, the consequences are scary. As Richard Stallman, the guru of free software, said, “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.”

Read the original in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/madness-software-patents

A New Age in News

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T11:26:14Z

Citizen journalism and online piracy were key topics during the opening day of the Mekong Information and Communication Technology conference. The 2010 Mekong ICT conference in Chang Mai, Thailand, has brought together an experienced crowd of experts from all over the globe. They have gathered to discuss the status, trends and the current situation of the ICT world.

Participants with expertise from various fields will be sharing ideas and exchanging information until June 12 in Thailand. The intensive session includes participants from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, Argentina, the United States, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Germany.

The way that technology is changing the scope of media and the new wave of citizen journalists are playing a powerful role in the way that the information age is emerging. Citizens are now a powerful force of information and the Internet is their tool. Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter have changed the way information is shared and examples of how to utilize these sources posed both debate and discussion from the panel of experts and participants.

Veteran journalist Tharum Bun shared that, "The flow of information, the quality, the speed, it is all changing. Youtube, blogs, twitter and social networking have greatly changed the game for journalism and are essential to the new age of reporting."

Also addressed was the idea that journalists have as much responsibility as any other public figure and perhaps more because of the audience they can reach. Media was described as a "war of ethics" that citizen journalists are raising the bar in. One major challenge is the abundance of information leaving those who read to question or scrutinize more carefully what is factual because there is, at times, an overflow of information.

The way that average citizens are getting the word out and becoming a new source of information was a topic of great interest to attendees. Citizen journalism is fast-becoming a way for the general population to become reporters. There was also talk of how video is becoming a weapon of choice for citizen journalists and is an essential supplement to the written word as images are important because they are so powerful.

In closing, keynote speaker Sunil Abraham spoke on the topic of piracy and the availability of everything from books to movies online. He pointed out that the war against piracy has become an invasion of privacy. Examples of authors, such as the worldwide sensation Paulo Cohelo, and how they have used online sharing to their advantage were highlighted. The sharing of information is now a fact and people can either find ways to utilize (and still profit) from this new age, or they are fighting something similar to a war on drugs that has no end in sight. Abraham pointed out that bibles are available for free worldwide, yet it is still the most sold book in history. So despite its ready availability, it hasn't stopped it from being sold.

Music has also always been, "Shared, it's remixed, it's borrowed, it's changed..." illustrating that information should be available. The topics, discussions, and meetings at the 2010 Mekong ICT will continue for the next week.

Read the original in dtinews

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-age-news

Piracy Boils Down to Convenience

radha — 2011-04-02T15:15:27Z

Commercial Piracy is on the rise. But how big a role does money have to play in the piracy game was the question we asked those seated on either side of the proverbial fence.

“What started out as cassette piracy, several decades ago, has now become a flourishing business, thanks to the invention of CDs and DVDs,” says Mohan Chabria, proprietor, Anand Audio who goes on to add that piracy has drastically increased over the past few years.

“In the earlier days, conducting a raid was easy. There were some professional pirates who could be easily tracked down. Now, the numbers are vast, and it seems like a no-win situation for us. This results in a tremendous loss for the companies,” adds Mohan.

Advertising professional and author Milan Vohra believes that piracy boils down to convenience. “Piracy is about making life easier, especially when it comes to downloading stuff off the net. Personally, I don’t think I have done anything wrong when I download songs from a public site on the Internet and then transfer it onto another portable device.”

Piracy has more to do with economics than convenience for Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society. “We must remember that the problem came about mainly because the originals were far too expensive for the average person. The common practice today is to download everything and it is tough to eradicate that mindset. Most are not even aware of the laws surrounding piracy,” says Sunil. “It’s not the law,” disagrees Mohan, adding, “My problem is only with commercial piracy. What people do on the net does not affect us too much. It’s those living in rural areas and small towns, who aren’t even aware that they are buying pirated copies that matter. Most of our revenue comes from them,” he elaborates.

Milan and Sunil both agree that original copies must be made affordable and only then can commercial piracy decrease. Though, Mohan feels that audio companies are doing their best in terms of making copies affordable for the public. “We compiled a CD comprising 50 songs of a famous actor which we priced at Rs.35 per copy. Despite this, people went ahead and bought pirated copies for Rs.50. It was only later that we found out that these copies had 150 songs of the same actor, which is why they got preference over ours,” recollects Mohan and adds that there is no support from law enforcers as well. Sunil responds to this by saying that law enforcers are under constant pressure by other companies, whether legal or illegal, and hence they do not support copyright laws, mainly because they get caught in the constant tug-of-war.

So, is there any solution to eradicate or, at the very least, to control commercial piracy in India? Milan opines that the government needs to adopt a vigilante approach. Like, for instance, by providing a toll free number where people can call when they come across an instance of commercial piracy. “The only way to deal with the matter is to convince a consumer of piracy that there is no end-value to what he’s getting. The aim of copyright owners must be to ensure that copies are available to a larger mass and across different forms of technology,” she says. Mohan echoes the sentiment saying, “We request the government to provide us with a separate court and law enforcement officers who have specialised knowledge. Else, we need to start a thought-provoking campaign among both rural and urban consumers to convince them.”

“I would aim for a more sustainable product. Instead of a thought-provoking campaign, there should be some sort of collaboration. For a consumer, a pirate is a friend and both the copyright owner as well as the consumer needs to be kept happy. In order for that to happen, business holders must stop looking at ancient methods to curb the menace and instead try to get revenues from the new technology,” concludes Sunil.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/piracy-boils-down-to-convenience

‘Piracy is now a mainstream political phenomenon'

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T07:44:40Z

“Piracy has become a mainstream political phenomenon,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in the city. The piracy that he was referring to was not the piracy of the high seas but the piracy of intellectual property.

Mr. Abraham was speaking at the ‘Resource mela and meet of documentary centres' at the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED). The three-day mela ended on Sunday.

He argued that the process of documentation was a political matter. The theme of his talk was on the tussle between knowledge in the public domain versus its restriction by copyright. Mr. Abraham explained that documentation centres can have four positions vis-à-vis intellectual property restrictions.

The first position could be to agree with the existing law on intellectual property and defend the interests of those who own those rights.

A second position could be to acknowledge the usefulness of copyright laws while balancing it with the interests of the creator, entrepreneur, consumer and the general public. This balancing act is being further pushed by three important global campaigns — the right of persons with disabilities to read, the right of student communities to bypass certain copyright restrictions, and the necessities of archivists and librarians.

Moving to the other side of the spectrum, a third position that documentation centres can have is a ‘position of openness' by supporting only freely licensed intellectual property material. The extreme position that can be taken is to dismiss all the laws that exist around intellectual property and freely “pirate” knowledge.

‘No longer shameful'

Arguing from this position, Mr. Abraham said that it was no longer shameful to be known as a “pirate” today. “There are elected members of parties advocating piracy in certain European countries such as Sweden and even in the European Union.”

Mr. Abraham openly advised documentation centres not to greatly concern themselves with copyright issues in their work, as in India no two lawyers would agree on copyright laws while very few cases of copyright infringement actually came up in Indian courts.

He concluded his talk by indicating that there was no global model that could be applied to intellectual property rights “as there is no model that works for everyone everywhere”.

The resource mela was intended to be a multi-dimensional sharing centred around a national network of documentation centres called DCM. The programme was organised by Akshara, Aalochana and CED.

Read the original article in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/piracy-political-phenomenon

Why piracy is tough to rein in

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:16:50Z

“Video market is being treated as a poor cousin of the film industry”

Armed with a shoulder-strung carry bag, Meeran (name changed) walks into an apartment block that he frequents. By the time he comes out, he has sold nearly 10 pirated DVDs. His brother runs a shop which makes a business of Rs.1,000 to Rs.1,500 a day. But regular customers can avail themselves the privilege of his visit to their homes.

Film buffs like Madhankumar Subbiah, who buys DVDs, say the proliferation of multiplexes means a significant number of people cannot afford to go to the cinema regularly. “On the other hand, a whole family can watch the movie spending just Rs.30 on a pirated DVD. I feel that this trend would continue unless ticket prices are reduced,” he adds.

Depending on which side of the copyright debate you are on, Meeran is either a pirate who is a making a dent on the film industry's profits or a trader who is trying to take advantage of a backlash against monopolistic tendencies in the entertainment industry.

According to sources in the Video Piracy Wing of the Central Crime Branch, Puducherry is the headquarters of the illegal piracy business. Multiple copies are made using the master prints from the overseas rights agreement and distributed to various parts of Tamil Nadu.

CCB's Video Piracy Wing, in the last one year, has booked 234 cases and arrested 279 persons, of which 23 have been booked under the Goondas Act.

To understand piracy, it has to be placed in context. G. Dhananjayan, Chief Operating Officer, Moser Baer Entertainment, says the opportunity is not there for the consumer to buy the original. “Tamil cinema is not encouraging other modes of revenue generation. Unlike anywhere else in the country, producers get into agreements with satellite networks to release it on television before a DVD release.”

The DVD release window is usually six months after the release in theatres. According to him, the video market is being treated as a poor cousin of the industry. Kerala, for example, he says has a thriving video market because the release window is 90 to 100 days after the release in theatres.

Though movies are meant to be viewed in theatres, digital technologies have enabled a segment of movie watchers who prefer to enjoy the experience through on-demand or even streaming content.

Nishant Shah, Director, Centre for Internet and Society, says that attempts at controlling piracy are futile. The digital technologies that we are working with are intuitively designed for copying, dissemination and sharing.

According to him, copyright is not a pre-given frame of reference. It arose, historically and culturally, with the industrialisation of information and came into being so strongly because of the possibilities and limitations of analogue technologies.

He says media conglomerates that “try to imagine the consumer as monolithic and unchanging, and accuse them of piracy and theft, will only alienate the audience.” It is a move that fails to recognise the changing dynamics of cultural economies, he adds.

Read the original in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/piracy-tough-rein

Procuring books in Indian libraries

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T16:27:28Z

Campaign to legalise parallel imports gathers steam.

In a move to advocate the cause of libraries and book readers throughout India, campaigners are telling Kapil Sibal, the Minister of Human Resources Development (HRD), why it is important to legalise parallel imports in India. This move is supported by the International Federation of Library Associations in developing countries.

Among the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act is a proposal to legalise parallel importation of books into India. This provision is now under threat because a publishers’ association convinced the HRD Minister (who is in charge of copyright law) that no one is calling for parallel importation. If parallel importing is not legalised in developing countries, it becomes impossible for libraries in India to even procure books from Amazon (for instance), especially the ones which have not yet released in India.

Parallel importation allows books that are (legally) bought overseas to be imported into India without asking the copyright owners permission. Without parallel importation being allowed, purchases made by libraries from foreign sellers (for instance on the Internet) are rendered illegal. International organisations like the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL), and Consumers International all support parallel importation, especially in developing countries.

For more on the need for parallel importation, see this write up by Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

For the campaign letter sent to Kapil Sibal by February 1st 2011, see below:

To
Minister for Human Resource Development
Room No 301
Shastri Bhawan
Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road
New Delhi – 110 001

Date: Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Dear Shri Sibal,

Subject: Parallel Importation of Books

We write to you as an organisation interested in the availability of books for libraries. Recently, a publishers’ association has made public statements that there are no groups that are demanding parallel importation, and that they themselves will be harmed by allowing for parallel importation.

We wish to inform you that this is not true. We believe that being able to legally purchase a book outside of India and import in into India is crucial for libraries. Many books that we wish to provide for our users—faculties, students, and others—are not available in India and have to be imported from abroad.

Currently the exception contained in s.51(b) proviso is applicable only to individuals for “private and domestic use” and does not cover libraries. Thus, if parallel importation is prohibited, then we will be unable to buy foreign books directly from foreign sellers. We often have to make purchases on online bookstores such as Amazon and Alibris, and these will be construed to be illegal without parallel importation being legal. We will be left at the mercy of what books are offered by sellers in India, instead of being able to buy what is required by our readers.

Parallel importation is allowed by the TRIPS agreement (Article 6, “Exhaustion”) as well as by the WIPO Copyright treaty (Article 6, “Right of Distribution”). We hope you will keep our concerns in mind.

Yours sincerely,
Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/procuring-books

WEBINAR: Closed for Business

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:18:07Z

A Global Panel Discusses International Copyright Laws and Their Impact on the Open Internet

The digital revolution has forged new ways to create knowledge, educate people and disseminate information. It has also restructured the way the world perceives and conducts economic practices, runs governments and engages politically. Recognizing this new dynamic requires global discussion and a common desire & commitment to build a people-centred and development-oriented Information Society. Coming off the heels of the latest Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) discussions in Washington, D.C. and on the eve of the upcoming Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Vilinius, we invite you to join in a discussion about the future of Internet.

This online-only event features an array of panelists from regions around the world. We invite you to watch the New America LiveStream channel and to participate in an online chat room during the event. If you plan to participate, please register using the form at right.

In addition, if you have specific questions you'd like the panel to address, we encourage you to post them prior to the event here.

Participants

Featured Speakers

Joe McNamee
Advocacy Coordinator, European Digital Rights

Sherwin Siy
Deputy Legal Director, Kahle/Austin Promise Fellow, Public Knowledge

Renata Avila
Creative Commons Guatemala and Global Voices Guatemala

Sunil Abraham

Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

Clare Curren

New Zealand Labour Party Spokesperson for Communications and IT

Moderator

Rebecca MacKinnon
Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation

Event Time and Location
Thursday, September 9, 2010 - 10.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m.

For details of the event on the New America Foundation website, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/webinar-closed-for-business

Year Ahead Copyright 2010: Between An Enforcement “Gold Standard” And Stronger Limitations

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:43:24Z

Whereas copyright is increasingly being exchanged for contractual relationships why all the debate and new efforts in national and international copyright legislation. Monika Ernet's article in the Intellectual Property Watch examines this in the wake of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and the international treaty on access to online books for the visually impaired. The article also carries Pranesh Prakash's views on introduction of technical protection measures and the protection of them by law.

The secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is now in centre stage in the global debates around copyright, as is a prospective new international treaty on access to online books for the visually impaired which comes as part of a broader push to clarify limitations and exceptions to copyright. But some are asking, why all the debate and new efforts in national and international copyright legislation when copyright is increasing being exchanged for contractual relationships?

ACTA may bring with it the punishment of internet denial for infringement that has been fiercely discussed in several European countries and adopted in France, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan. ACTA is seen by critics as another push by governments backing their rights holders in the eternal wars over copyright.

But on the other side, there is much hope that a new treaty for the visually impaired will be negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Open-ended consultations on outstanding issues were promised to be finalised over the early months of 2010 by the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.

ACTA and Enforcement

The seventh round of negotiations for ACTA ended after four days of talks in Guadalajara on 29 January. Round eight is expected for April in Wellington, New Zealand. If you ask the negotiators, they will tell you that they expect to get this done in 2010.

There seems to be a sense of urgency to complete ACTA just at the moment when a growing list of members of national parliaments from the United States (Congress), the United Kingdom and Germany are asking for access to the ACTA documents and while the first small street protest was organised outside the meeting place in Guadalajara, Mexico. “Are the commitments of negotiators to transparency real or a strategic move?” asked New Zealand’s Labour Party politician Clare Curran before the meeting in Guadalajara.

“We will have a hearing on ACTA presumably in March,” said EU Member of Parliament Alexander Alvaro, who has questioned the European Commission on the transparency, timeline and scope of the agreement. The Commissioner Designate for International Trade, Karel de Gucht, said clearly: “If there is confidentiality, I will respect it and I have to respect it.” It is impossible, he said, to change the terms during the negotiations.

While he promised that he would make sure Parliament - which has now to agree to ACTA under the newly in effect Lisbon Treaty - would be “duly informed,” the Parliament which just engaged in its first fights over its new competencies with the European Council and Commission might not take that bite, said Alvaro.

The Commission, meanwhile, is for 2010 preparing to put forward a follow-up to the IP enforcement directive (IPRED), as a draft text on IPRED II for criminal sanctions is expected to be put forward in May or June, immediately after the evaluation report on IPRED due in April.

Rethinking Limitations and Exceptions

While there is a big push for ACTA - which International Trademark Association President Richard Heath from Unilever said should be set as “gold standard” - there are growing concerns in academic circles. Annette Kur, IP law expert at the Max Planck Institute of Intellectual Property and Tax Law, said there is a feeling in the expert community that “we cannot go on and on tightening the screw.”

Talks at WIPO about a treaty to grant exemptions for blind and visually impaired people have shown promise, but might also slow down other initiatives for a re-balancing of copyright that academics were hoping for. The implementation of other elements of the WIPO Development Agenda would be a good counterpoint against the current wave of maximal demands in rights protection, according to Kur.

But proponents say there is gathering momentum for the visually impaired exception now - including a draft treaty text, which does not exist for any other issue in the committee - and to wait risks losing the chance and gambling on an uncertain and potentially very lengthy process.

National Copyright Reforms and FTAs

Some ongoing national copyright legislative reforms echo the demand for the re-balancing, with Brazil’s copyright reform the most far-reaching of these, as copyright law expert Volker Grassmuck recently wrote. The Brazilian law could be the first copyright law “balancing copyright with access and usage rights and consumer protection its declared goal,” Grassmuck wrote, but also said that the reform work might be stopped by the Brazilian election campaign in 2010. For several months, a final draft has been announced, Grassmuck told Intellectual Property Watch, yet every time publication has been postponed. “There certainly are concerns that the delay results from industry lobbying against the reform at the highest levels,” Grassmuck said.

Indian copyright reform (that like the Brazilian effort started in 2005) also has made a reference to amendments to secure limitations and exceptions for the visually impaired, but is more conservative when it comes to other issues. It more closely follows the line of harmonising its regulation to the international treaties, namely the WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

The reform effort just got a new push when the Indian Copyright office published a final draft on 24 December. Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Center for Internet and Society in Delhi, said that the introduction of technical protection measures and the protection of these by law would bring a big change in India.

Prakash said he is afraid that intermediary liability is on the political agenda of the Indian Copyright Office. This would make sense if one considers the negotiations for a free trade agreement between India and the EU that can be expected to include a lengthy section covering intellectual property, copyright and online service provider liability similar to the one in the EU-Korea FTA. The EU-Korea FTA was to be voted on by EU Parliament this week; the EU-India FTA is expected to be finalised in 2010.

Copyright reforms are also under way in Canada, Hong Kong, Serbia, and in the United Kingdom the digital economy bill is under heavy discussion because of far-reaching regulatory power planned for UK communications regulator OFCOM. In Germany, a third round of copyright law reform is on the agenda with private broadcasting companies, publishers and the music industry asking for better copyright protection.

Contracts Instead of Copyright?

But while these reforms and treaty and FTA negotiations are ongoing, there is also another trend seen by experts and users of copyright, said Jeanette Hofmann, an internet governance expert. “Copyright, this moral beacon, more and more ceases to play a role in practical terms. As an author I have to live with a complete buy-out and as a copyright customer, let’s say in the library, I am often dependent on the contracts that the library has with private companies, too.”

Benjamin White, head of the intellectual property at the British Library, has asked the question of whether copyright is still relevant in the digital age. “What I deal with is contracts,” he said, warning that “in most EU member states contracts effectively trump copyright laws. Limitations and exemptions are irrelevant, if there is a contract that says otherwise.” Libraries are contracting with private companies that could help them to fund digitisation projects, but would then regulate access to these objects.

White said while he credits Google for getting the discussion started on how digitisation could be funded, he also wants to see a debate on whether people are comfortable with one private company having access to million of books. The Google book settlement and contracts with libraries in the US and other countries in effect could be seen as a monopoly being created around orphan works and a way to control access to millions of works for years. The EU Commissioner Designate for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes, when asked what she thought of Google’s book project, said she liked competition. Regulation for orphan works is on the EU Commission’s work agenda.

Competition and more business offers were also said by Swiss IP lawyer Rolf Auf der Maur to be the focus of the music industry instead of enforcement. Auf der Maur, regular panellist at Midem (the largest annual conference of the music industry), said acknowledgement was trickling down in the music industry that collective licence models, for example licensing music to internet service providers, or even thoughts about flat-rates might be better than only focussing on enforcement.

The major labels are interested in ventures like streaming service Spotify. Paul Brindley, co-Founder of digital music expert consultant Music Alley, said government funding for digital music service models could be expected from the British Technology Strategy Board.

Yet this message could sound overly optimistic given that the music industry is the party heavily promoting a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach against copyright infringers.

Or might there be rights owners that think what Joe McNamee, political expert for European Digital Rights (EDRI), predicts: “you can forget about enforcement of copyright, if you focus on copyright and do not get the right content in the right formats available to consumers then you will not solve the problem.“ Innovation would be blocked, he warned, and ever stronger enforcement regulation would finally lead to a lot of collateral damages in civil rights.

For librarian White there also is an urgent need for a change. He said regulators need to create clear rules on access in the digital world like are set out in the Brazilian copyright reform proposal. White said he was hoping that WIPO, whose secretary general, Francis Gurry, had acknowledged the challenge of solving the relationship between private contracts and copyright, would act on the issue of access. Will that happen in 2010?

Monika Ermert may be reached at info@ip-watch.ch

For original article on IP Watch, click here.

CC Salon

radha — 2011-04-05T04:21:24Z

Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net - The Centre For Internet and Society and JAAGA are organising a CC Salon on 02nd December, 2009 at 7.30pm.

Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

CIS and JAAGA are organising a CC Salon (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon) by Jon Phillps on Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

Venue: JAAGA

Time: 7.30pm

The aim of this get together is to share knowledge and experiences of alternative copyright licensing. Artists, lawyers dealing with copyright licensing and others are encouraged to highlight their own work, experiences and queries about Creative Commons and other alternative licenses.

An abstract of the presentation and the bio of Jon is given below.

ABSTRACT:

Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net

Creative Commons is a well-known nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration. Its key tools are six licenses that fit between public domain and complete control, copyright, to give you control over how your work is shared with the world. This presentation explores high level case studies that use Creative Commons licenses to make a successful project. The key featured case study is Status.Net, a new status updating hosted service and open source software that uses Creative Commons licensing for content.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon

BIO:

Jon Phillips is a community and business developer contributing to society and building meaningful relationships. In 2002 he helped launch the open source drawing tool, Inkscape and founded the Open Clip Art Library. From 2005 until 2008 he built Creative Commons’ community and business development projects and is currently a Creative Commons Fellow. Currently, he is growing the media company Fabricatorz with Cantocore Art Exhibitions, Laoban Open Soundsystems, and is recently assisting with an upcoming re-launch of Status.Net (Identi.ca). He is known for growing successful open communities globally, leading international business development in Asia (particularly China), and developing Open Marketing.

http://rejon.org/bio/#images

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/cc-salon

CI Global Meeting on A2K

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:08:06Z

CIS is a co-sponsor of the Consumers International Meeting on A2K

The Consumers International Global Meeting on A2K 2010 is to be held at the Holiday Villa hotel in Subang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 21 and 22 April 2010.

The meeting will bring together CI members and other NGOs from around the world to discuss and collaborate on issues of access to knowledge (A2K) and communications rights. Highlights will include the launch of the Consumers International IP Watch List for 2010, the launch of CI's new film on A2K, and a preview of the results of our access barrier survey.

Don't miss the most important day on the A2K calendar for the global consumer movement!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/ci-global-meeting-a2k