Centre for Internet and Society

Statement of CIS on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 23rd SCCR

pranesh — 2011-11-30T06:55:43Z

The twenty-third session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is being held in Geneva from November 22, 2011 to December 2, 2011. Pranesh Prakash delivered this statement on a new proposal made by South Africa and Mexico (SCCR/23/6) on a treaty for broadcasters.

The Centre for Internet and Society would like to thank the South African and Mexican delegations for their hard work on this text before us.

We wish to reiterate the statement on principles provided last SCCR by many civil society non-governmental organizations, cable casters and technology companies opposing a rights-based Broadcasting Treaty, and would like to associate ourselves with the statements made today by Public Knowledge, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Knowledge Ecology International, International Federation of Library Associations, and the Canadian Library Association.

Broadcasters Already Protected Online

Broadcasters make two kinds of investments for which they are protected. They invest in infrastructure and they invest in licensing copyrighted works. The first investment is protected by 'broadcast rights', and the latter investment is protected by copyright law.

Broadcasters, being licensees of copyrighted works, generally already have rights of enforcement insofar as their licence is concerned. Therefore there is no need to provide for additional protections with regard to broadcasters in order to enable them to proceed against acts that violate existing copyright laws: they already have those rights by way of licence. This is often forgotten when talking about rights of broadcasters.

The investments to be made in infrastructure in traditional broadcast and in IP-based transmission are very different, even if it is the same 'traditional broadcasters' who are indulging in both. Given that this investment is the basis of additional protection for broadcaster over and above the rights provided to underlying copyright, IP-based transmissions should not be covered in any way even if it is traditional broadcast organizations that are engaged in them.

Providing new and separate rights to large broadcasters for their online transmission, as is currently being done via the provision on 'retransmission' while excluding small webcasters will create a hierarchy and a class distinction without any basis in either principle or existing laws.

Support Countries' Concerns

We also wish to support the amendments suggested by the Indian delegation. As we were reminded by the Indian delegation, the General Assembly mandate of 2007 only extends to traditional broadcasting and to a signal-based approach. In this regard, we also wish to support the question posed by the United States delegation between signal-based and rights-based approaches, as also the strong statement by the Brazilian delegation on the need to ensure that cultural diversity and competition are protected and promoted by any international instrument on broadcasting, and we would like to add 'preservation of a vibrant public domain' as provided by Paragraph 16 of the WIPO Development Agenda.

Thank you, Chair.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sccr-23-broadcast-cis-statement

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship

nishant — 2012-12-14T10:24:05Z

The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant Shah in this peer reviewed essay published in the Journal of Moving Images, Number 8, December 2009.

The idea of the single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube. The recent state of controversies around YouTube, has foregrounded the question of authorship in collaborative conditions. Questions of who owns the particular videos and what is the role that the large communities of authorship play have not been resolved as the debaters have concentrated only on single videos and singular notions of authorship, dismissing the (this paper proposes) collaborators as jesters, clowns and pranksters, without recognizing their contribution to the videos.

Introduction

I shall begin by misquoting and possibly violating copyright regimes by invoking Dostoyevsky, to say that all dissimilar technologies are the same in their own way, but all similar technologies are uniquely different. Every technological innovation, but particularly innovations affecting authorship and the role of the author, brings with it a new set of anxieties and concerns. David Stewart, in his engrossing book on the history of technology and communication, for example, talks about how in the early years of postal service there were debates around who was the author of the mail that was being delivered. Through a particularly fascinating case that looked at a Lord in London holding the post office responsible for some objectionable mail delivered to his daughter, Stewart traces the origins of techno-neutrality and regulation to look upon technology as merely a bearer of knowledge – in this case, the mail – and the original author, this primordial figure that sits and writes or shoots or sings, as the only person upon whom the responsibility and hence also the credit can be placed.

Mark Joffe, in his movie The Man Who Sued God, introduces us to the case of Steve Myers, an ex-lawyer in Australia, who sues God because his boat is struck by lightning and his insurance company refuses to pay, claiming it to be an act of God. By claiming to be God’s representatives on Earth, the Christian churches and the Jewish synagogues are held to be the liable party, putting them in the difficult position of either having to pay out large sums of money, or prove that God does not exist. But more than anything else, it is the attribution of responsibility to one particular, identifiable entity that lies at the centre of the movie. Even in the pre-Internet world, one of the biggest sources of anxieties has been determining authorship and putting into place a knowledge apparatus that reinforces the need for such a condition. The question of authorship, while it surfaces in a number of contexts – copyright infringements, intellectual property right regimes, plagiarism, crediting and referencing industries, etc – is perhaps most interestingly manifest on video sharing social networking sites like YouTube and Myspace.

Rather than addressing what constitutes digital cinema or the future of celluloid, I would instead like to locate the emergence of the idea of authorship, through a historical examination of an ‘old media’. I will be looking at the early history of the book and the print revolution to argue that the condition of authorship that one presumes for the book, and subsequently, through a different trajectory, for cinema, is not something that was inherent to it; and in fact the early history of the book is filled with conflicts around the question of how you could attribute the book as an artefact to one individual author. By examining the conditions that enabled the establishment of the book as a stable object that can be linked to the author, I hope to return us to a different way of thinking about Youtube videos and the debates on authorship that surround it.

YouTube and the question of authorship

The world of YouTube stakeholders can roughly be divided into two camps: People who swear by it and people who swear at it. The camp has arisen mainly because of differences of opinions on who owns a YouTube video and the content therein. The critics of YouTube – largely recording companies and movie studios and distributors – argue that platforms like YouTube are killing their businesses, emptying their coffers, and are a direct threat to the sacred cow of all cultural productions – the livelihood and the integrity of the creative artist. They make claims that a site like YouTube infringes the copyright regimes because videos get published by somebody who has ripped it from another source, and often does no crediting. Also, that the sales of the music or the movies or television serials go down because of such activities.

One of the most recent infamous example that can be cited is the case of the Let’s Go Crazy Dancing video case, were the world literally went crazy. In early February 2007, Stephanie Lenz’s 13-month-old son started dancing. Pushing a walker across her kitchen floor, Holden Lenz started moving to the distinctive beat of a song by Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy.” [1] Lenz wanted her mother to see the film so she did what any citizen of the 21st century would do: She uploaded the file to YouTube and sent her relatives and friends the link. They watched the video scores of times. It was a perfect YouTube moment: a community of laughs around a homemade video, readily shared with anyone who wanted to watch.

Sometime over the next four months, however, someone from Universal Music Group also watched Holden dance. Universal manages the copyrights of Prince. It fired off a letter to YouTube demanding that it remove the unauthorized “performance” of Prince’s music. YouTube, to avoid liability itself, complied. YouTube sent Lenz a notice that it was removing her video. She wondered, “Why?” What had she done wrong? Her questions reached the Electronic Frontier Foundation and then started the battle, where on Lenz’s behalf, the EFF lawyers sent a ‘counter-notice’ to YouTube, that no rights of Universal were violated by Holden’s dancing video. Lenz as the author of the video was concentrating on her son’s dancing and that the presence of Prince’s song was negligible and definitely fair use. Yet Universal’s lawyers insist to this day that sharing this home movie is wilful copyright infringement under the laws of the United States. On their view of the law, she is liable to a fine of up to $150,000 for sharing 29 seconds of Holden dancing. They specifically state that Lenz is not the ‘original’ artist who made the music and thus she is appropriating authorship and violating the rights of the artist – Prince, to be identified as the creator of the song. The notice also informed her that they were unhappy with the ‘clowning’ around of Prince’s music which might offend his fan-base.

The questions which come to the fore are very obvious and not new to the history of legal debates on cinema: What is the content of the video? Who is the author of the video? Who watches the video? What are the intentions of the video? The supporters of the ‘Free as in Beer’ access movements and also of YouTube clearly point out the farcical condition of this battle. As Lawrence Lessig very eloquently points out in his essay on the ‘Defence of Piracy’.

How is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there’s some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music? “Let’s Go Crazy” indeed![2]

In another instance, which is a competition on YouTube between two videos to reach the coveted “first video to be seen 1 million times” status, brings again these question of the author and the pranksters. Avril Lavigne fans, on the release of her recent Single ‘Girlfriend’, started campaigning to make that video the first to be viewed 1 million times on YouTube. They put it in direct competition with the then most viewed video – ‘History of Dance’ – and started activities that violated the Terms of Service for YouTube. They embedded the videos in many sites and started websites which played the videos automatically. They even created a website which auto reloaded the video every fifteen minutes and encouraged fans to keep the website opened, abusing the power of broad band, while they are browsing, surfing, or even sleeping. The efforts paid off and Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend’, in July 2008, became the first video to be watched 1 million times in the history of YouTube. One would have thought that such publicity is what a distributor’s wet dreams are made of. However, just after the video reached the 1 million mark and entered the heights of popularity, YouTube received a notice from Times Warner, to remove the video because it was a copyright violation. They also demanded that all the other compilations and samplings which included the song be removed from YouTube. The supporters of the move, condemned the Lavigne fans as ‘pranksters’ or ‘jesters’ who were in for the cheap publicity, because they were not really creators of the video or the authors. In a startling Op-Ed titled ‘How Avril Lavigne Killed YouTube’ in the New York Times, a spokesperson for Times Warner suggested.

This is not respectable fan behaviour. A fan is somebody who loves and worships the author and not somebody who pretends to be the author. The avrilelavignebandaid group just turned out to be a group of pirates who passed off Lavigne’s video as their own and went on to promote it, forgetting the fact that they were using a democratic platform like YouTube for activities which can only be called theft!

Predictably, the debate on the question of authorship takes place in a rather somber tone, whether it is the zealous claims of monopoly of production and authorship that the established industries claim for themselves, or the passionate defenses of the YouTubeians. What remains constant through the entire process is the fact that the idea of a singular, identifiable author remains stable and unchallenged. I would like to take a slightly different track here, and try and see how we can think the question of the “production of the author” by revisiting the history of the book and of early print culture, and look at the manner in which the idea of the author emerges.

There is often an unstated assumption about the book as authored by a single person and authorship is spoken of in a value-neutral and ahistorical manner. It would be useful to situate the condition of authorship within a historical moment, where authorship is not seen to be an apriori condition but a constructed one, and one whose history is located in specific technological changes. The technology of print and paper brought about a set of questions around the question of authorship, and in the same way, the domain of Internet video sharing and collaborative authorship raises a set of questions and concerns.

The construction of author/ity

In many ways, the debate on authorship and knowledge is similar to the older debate in philosophy between body and self. Critics of self, such as Foucault, demonstrate that the notion of the self has often stemmed from very particular experiences in the Christian West, which were then posited as universal experiences. However, doing away with the notion of the self does not do away with the question of the body. In fact, Foucault goes on to explore the technologies of the self and how it informs our understanding of the body. In a similar vein, while the proponents of the Web 2.0 revolution (sometimes unknown to themselves, echoing debates that happened in print about a 100 years ago) announce either the death of the author or the availability of open licensing, fail to recognize that the question of authorship (and hence authority) are rooted both in particular practices as well as in technological forms. Hence the debates take familiar shapes: author versus pirate, digital versus celluloid, collaborative versus single author, etc.

It is especially when posing the question of authorship in absolute terms that the cultural producers/consumers on YouTube get reduced to pranksters, jesters or clowns. The debate also excludes the temporal framework of the debate and forget that the Internet is still a work in progress. Even though an Internet year is akin to seven pre-digital years, and time is now experienced in accelerated modes, it is necessary to realize that the domain of collaborative online sharing and production of videos is a relatively new one.

It may be more useful to think of the post-celluloid world as an extremely ambiguous and fluid period, undoubtedly marked by immense possibilities, but we have not reached any settled phase yet. So if we are to make comparisons, then it is more useful to compare the contemporary period with another moment in history, and the emergence of a cultural form other than cinema, which was marked by an equal fluidity. It is here that I go to the early history of print culture or ‘print in the making’[3] and the conflicts over the question of authorship, to demonstrate that the condition of authorship question is an important one, but it is not a question that is unique to YouTube or the Internet. And an examination of the conditions under which authorship came to be established may help us get over our anxieties about authorship, and better understand it with certain lightness – through pranks, jests and clowning around.

What’s in a name? – The author and the book

For us to understand the idea of print in the making, we need to understand some of the practices that preceded the idea of print. They also enable us to understand the specific nature of the disputes around the question of authorship, and more importantly rethink disputes over authorship as productive disputes. Lawrence Liang in his ‘A brief history of the Internet in 13th and 14th Century’ takes up the example of Chaucer, the father of English poetry. He demonstrates, through different readings, “how the structure and the form of the Canterbury Tales reflects, interestingly, the question of approaches to the idea of authorship as well as the conditions of the production of the Canterbury Tales itself.” Liang looks at the manuscript cultures and the ways in which authorship and rights were understood.

Borrowing from Mark Rose, Liang shows how, in the Middle Ages, the owner of a manuscript was understood to possess the right to grant permission to copy it, and this was a right that could be exploited, as it was, for example, by those monasteries that regularly charged a fee for permission to copy one of their books. This was somewhat similar to copyright royalty with the crucial difference that the book-owner’s property was not a right in the text as such but in the manuscript as a physical object made of ink and parchment. The value provided by the monastery and the reason for their charging for their copy fee did not emerge just from the existence of the copy alone, but also from the fact that each monastery also had their unique elements in the form of the annotations, the commentary, corrections, which only the particular monastery’s copy might contain. The very act of copying and possession made you the author of that text and also the owner of the book.[4] The author was not only the reclusive solitary figure that coins the first word but the various scribes, writers, annotators and litterateurs who offered changes, as well as helped in distribution and copying.[5]

So, while the popular account of preprint cultures is of slavish copying by scribes, the story turns out to be slightly more complicated. Acting as annotators, compilers, and correctors, medieval book owners and scribes actively shaped the texts they read. For example, they might choose to leave out some of the Canterbury Tales, or contribute one of their own. They might correct Chaucer’s versification every now and then. They might produce whole new drafts of Chaucer by combining one or more of his published versions with others. And these were all legitimate, acceptable and engaged forms of authorship. While this activity of average or amateur readers differs in scale and quality from Chaucer’s work, it opens us to new questions of the relationship between author, text, and reader in the Middle Ages, and also what it may mean to understand contemporary practices of knowledge and cultural creation.

Scribes and readers responded to Chaucer, Langland, and others, not by slavishly copying, canonizing, or passively receiving their texts, but by reworking them as creative readers. In doing so, they continue and contribute to the great layers of intertextual conversation that made the work of these now canonical authors relevant, interesting, and, fundamentally, possible. Similar debates surround the attribution of authorship to William Shakespeare for his work. Literary historians have periodically made claims that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the then court poet Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Christopher Marlowe, who is considered to be his arch enemy, that Shakespeare’s plays were written by another man named Shakespeare, and not the Shakespeare we think we know. At the basis of these arguments was the idea that the plays were designed not to be written but be performed and that in the lively rendering of the play, between different actors and producers, the original text changed. Interestingly, the Shakespearean technique of ‘asides’ and ‘taking the audience into confidence’ was actually a way of inviting the audience to not only receive the story but to read it differently, and edit it with their response to it.

This invitation was accepted by late Elizabethans who took great pleasure in seeing the same play multiple times to see how it has changed in the performance. Moreover, as multiple copies of the same manuscript started appearing in the living public, along with the actors and the producers, the readers also took great pleasure in creating copies of the takes that drastically cut, expand, edit and otherwise Shakespeare’s plays.[6]

This activity goes beyond the mechanics of audience reception and looks at the plays as a collaborative effort which gets glossed over in the making of the authoritative folios which looked upon all such interventions as anomalies to the text. Before the fixity of text, there was a possibility to think of the text not as a finished product but a work in progress that elicits new responses, meanings and forms through its engagement with the audience. Moreover, the audience, in their rights of consumption, also seemed to possess the right to edit, change and circulate the text. They were the original jesters, pranksters and clowns, who, in their playful response to the text, constructed it to respond to their contexts and traditions. This sounds a lot like the debates we are experiencing on YouTube videos where the readers respond in kind to the poetics of reading and composing within which the YouTube videos operate.

Conclusion

Thus rather than speaking about authorship as something that is intrinsic to either a particular mode of authorship or intrinsic to any technological form, it might be more useful instead to consider the variety of knowledge apparatuses which come into play to establish its authority. In the case for the history of the book, it was clear that the establishment of authorship depended on the arrangements, classifications and kinds of assemblage that make it possible, maintain it as well as critique it. The conventions, for instance, by which the title and author of a work are identified play very specific functions in preparing for knowledge, as do the several kinds of documentation, attribution, citation and copyright.

The preconditions for authorship cannot easily be made into the object that we identify as author. It is a matter of making evident (making known) the structures of authorship which emerge in ways that provide definitive proof of the imperfectability and ambiguity of the authorial position. To speak of the productive nature of conflicts over authorship is then to recognize that any author – either exalted or dismissed - is constructed in a condition of potential collaboration and revision. The question thus centres on how we use the notion of authorship, how we bring it to light and mobilize it today to understand cultural forms differently. The way the authorship debates take place, there is almost a theological devotion to an exalted idea of author, without a consideration of the apparatus that was established to construct that condition.

The point is not to do away with the question of the author or construct another catch-all retainer that accepts all forms of engagement as authorship, but to recognize it not as something that is intrinsic or a given but something that is always transient, and to locate it, in the case of digital cinema, within specific practices and technologies. To return to the question of YouTube videos and the future of celluloid image; we are now faced with new questions about authorship and the very form that the digital cinema embodies: If the image itself is no longer made to bear the burden of meaning and intention, can we locate new forms of authorship – sometimes in incidental intertextuality, sometimes in creating conditions (as is in the case of DVDs or digital video sharing sites) narratives, meanings, interpretations and paraphernalia that simultaneously re-emphasize the sacredness of the image while deconstructing the apparatus that establishes a fixity of authorship over that image? Can we look at not only novel forms of interaction and consumption of the celluloid image but at a playful engagement with the image to create a galaxy of responses – sometimes as reciprocal videos, often through comments, embedding mechanisms, using the video not as an object unto itself but as a form of complex referencing and citation to a larger community of artists and authors?

The future of celluloid, especially if we are locating it in the realm of the Digital Moving Objects of Web 2.0 technologies, is going to have debates which were relevant also to the making of the book. However, this is not to say that the challenges faced and the problematic that emerge are redundant. Indeed, the celluloid frame and its overpowering capacity to incorporate technology, content, response and remixes, to produce the spectacle of watching, posit certain challenges to the Web 2.0 celebrations while simultaneously expanding its own scope of production. YouTube debates around infantile abuse of video/cinema technologies to make dancing babies and furry animals popular need to be read as symptomatic of a much larger question of authorship, authority and the conditions of cultural production rather than signalling the death of celluloid. An escape from the authority question also allows for an escape from the celluloid-digital binary and posits a more fruitful engagement in looking at how celluloid technologies (and the constellation of factors therewith) inform our understanding and analysis of the DMIs that are slowly gaining popularity.

This research was originally published in the Journal of Moving Images.

See the research paper in Academia.edu.

References

[1].Holden Lenz’s YouTube debut, that probably made him the most popular baby on the Internet is still available for viewing at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ> retrieved 12:14 a.m. 22nd January 2010.

[2].The essay is available for open access at <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367645363324303.html>

[3].I am grateful to Lawrence Liang for this methodological framework where he looks at the emergence of Wikipedia and the pre-print cultures, to look at the similarities and differences between the two. “A Brief History of the Internet in the 13th and 14th Century”. Forthcoming 2010.

[4].See Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading. 1990. New York: Penguin Books.

[5].Daniel Wolf, in Reading History in Early Modern England. 2005. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, explains in great detail how the reader as well as the author were imagined, constructed and recognized in the early days of print.

[6].See Molly Abel Travis’s comprehensive account of the debates in Construction of Readers in the Twentieth Century. 1998. Illinois, Chicago: Southern Illinois University Press.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/jesters-clowns-pranksters

CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics

pranesh — 2011-11-01T00:05:32Z

These were the comments submitted by CIS to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.

The Department of Information Technology must be commended for taking the initiative to create this policy which aims to reduce India’s dependence on other countries for crucial electronic hardware requirements, and to increase Indian production to such a capacity as to not only serve India’s increasing demand for electronics, but to fulfil foreign demand as well.

We have mainly focused our comments on the implications of the patent regime on this laudable goal.

Technology Transfer

An area that the policy is silent on is technology transfer. In relation to technology, the main bargain embedded in the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO was the increase in the level of protection offered under patent laws of developing countries in exchange for increased transfer of technological know-how from the developed countries. While India has increased patent protection in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement, there has been no commensurate transfer of technology from countries which are currently hubs of electronics know-how.

One important example is China’s policy on transfer of technology along the whole value chain to enable domestic firms to gain technological expertise.

The Association of American Manufacturing notes, “One of the most potent weapons China has used to move up the value chain is forced technology transfer … It is only through the acquisition (rather than internal development) of sophisticated technologies that Chinese companies have been able to rapidly enter and expand in sophisticated industries ….”

This insistence on technology transfer as a national policy has served China well, and their experience should be incorporated into India’s National Policy on Electronics. This is not to say that India should not internally develop our own technological capabilities, but that the Indian government must use the policy space available to it to ensure that acquisition of technological capabilities happens alongside.

Outflow of Foreign Exchange as Royalties Creating Adverse Balance of Payments

The latest data from the World Bank shows that our balance of payments is increasing adversely at an alarming rate, and has now reached over USD 2.38 billion.

Our royalty and licence fee payments have kept on increasing at an astounding rate.

Table: India’s royalty and licence fees payments (current USD)

1991	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
49,565,208	845,949,436	1,159,824,391	1,528,826,913	1,860,283,808	2,437,500,663

Meanwhile India’s income is gaining slowly and erratically, and in 20100 reached USD 59.6 million.

Table: India’s royalty and licence fees, receipts (current USD)

1991	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
615,525	13,445,053	30,690,000	27,211,957	38,128,141	59,560,687

This bleeds the Indian economy through a very inefficient outflow of capital. Insisting on transfer of technology is an important component in slowing down this trend.

Linking of Value Chain and Preferential Treatment

One important clarification that is needed in the policy (specifically clause IV.1.3) is that “domestically manufactured electronic products” is intended to mean not those products for which the last part of value has been added in India. This way essentially non-Indian products with Indian branding can be seen to be “domestically manufactured electronic products”. The longer the Indian part of the value chain, the more preference it should be given, and holding by Indian companies of essential patent rights (or the availability of greater number of components of the product under royalty-free, FRAND and RAND licences) could be an important criteria. This will also encourage the transfer of technological know-how to Indian firms.

Preferential Treatment

Some may argue that the provision of preferential treatment to domestic manufacturers contravenes the GATT Agreement, however the GATT Agreement itself provides a usable exception in Article 3(8):

Article III: National Treatment on Internal Taxation and Regulation

8 (a) The provisions of this Article shall not apply to laws, regulations or requirements governing the procurement by governmental agencies of products purchased for governmental purposes and not with a view to commercial resale or with a view to use in the production of goods for commercial sale.

(b) The provisions of this Article shall not prevent the payment of subsidies exclusively to domestic producers, including payments to domestic producers derived from the proceeds of internal taxes or charges applied consistently with the provisions of this Article and subsidies effected through governmental purchases of domestic products.

Thus, by crafting any further regulation under this policy to fit within this exception, India would not fall afoul of its obligations under GATT.

Cybersecurity and Source Code

An important aspect of the cybersecurity that is discussed in clause IV.5 is the ability to validate the lack of malicious code in the electronics used in strategically important infrastructure. For this, manufacturers must be required to provide the source code as part of government tenders in strategically important infrastructure.

Distinction between Innovation and Intellectual Property

The Electronic Development Fund must seek to promote innovation, research and development, and commercialization of products, and must be used to strategically acquire patents. Promotion of patents is not an end in itself, unlike promotion of innovation and ensuring that research and development reaches markets through commercialization. Patents are only a means to an end, and may sometimes be strategically useful, and often stand in way of gaining optimal use of technology by markets due to their monopolistic nature. Thus, it is recommended that “promotion of IP” be dropped from this clause, and instead “promotion of strategic acquirement and use of patents” be substituted in its place.

National Electronics Mission

The National Electronics Mission should not only have industry participation but also participation from academia and civil society.

Funding

The issue of funding for the initiatives outlined in this policy must be addressed as well.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-draft-national-policy-on-electronics

CIS-TWN Analysis of WIPO Treaty for the Print Disabled (SCCR/22/15)

pranesh — 2011-10-12T08:29:01Z

CIS and the Third World Network (TWN) conducted a quick analysis of the "Consensus document on an international instrument on limitations and exceptions for persons with print disabilities presented by Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and the United States of America" presented as WIPO document numbered SCCR/22/15.

SCCR/22/15

ORIGINAL: English

DATE: June 20, 2011

Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights

Twenty-Second Session Geneva, June 15 to 24, 2011

Consensus document on an international instrument on limitations and exceptions for persons with print disabilities presented by Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and the United States of America

PREAMBLE

Recalling the principles of non-discrimination, equal opportunity and access, proclaimed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,

Mindful of the obstacles that are prejudicial to human development and the fulfillment of disabled persons with regard to education, research, access to information and communication,

Emphasizing the importance of copyright protection as an incentive for literary and artistic creation and enhancing opportunities for everyone to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits,

Recognizing the importance of both accessibility to the achievement of equal opportunities in all spheres of society and of the protection of the rights of authors in their literary and artistic works in a manner as effective and uniform as possible,

Aware of the many barriers to access to information and communication experienced by persons who are blind or have limited vision, or have other disabilities regarding access to published works,

Aware that the majority of visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability live in countries of low or moderate incomes,

Desiring to provide full and equal access to information, culture and communication for the visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability and, towards that end, considering the need both to expand the number of works in accessible formats and to improve access to those works,

Recognizing the opportunities and challenges for the visually impaired/persons with a print disability presented by the development of new information and communication technologies, including technological publishing and communication platforms that are transnational in nature,

Recognizing the need to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,

Aware that national copyright legislation is territorial in nature, and where activity is undertaken across jurisdictions, uncertainty regarding the legality of activity undermines the development and use of new technologies and services that can potentially improve the lives of the visually impaired/persons with print disabilities,

Recognizing the large number of Members who, to that end, have established exceptions and limitations in their national copyright laws for visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability, yet the continuing shortage of works in ~~special~~accessible formats for such persons,

Recognizing that the preference is for works to be made accessible by rightholders to people with disabilities at publication and that, to the extent that the market is unable to provide appropriate access to works for visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability, it is recognized that alternative measures are needed to improve such access,

Recognizing the need to maintain a balance between the rights of authors and the larger public interest, particularly education, research and access to information, and that such a balance must facilitate effective and timely access to works for the benefit of visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability,

Emphasizing the importance and flexibility of the three-step test for limitations and exceptions established in Article 9(2) of the Berne Convention and other international instruments,

Considering the discussions within the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights on the issue of exceptions and limitations for the benefit of visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability and the various proposals tabled by Member States,

Prompted by a desire to contribute to the implementation of the relevant recommendations of the Development Agenda of the World Intellectual Property Organization,

Taking into account the importance of an international legal instrument/joint recommendation/treaty both to increase the number and range of accessible format works available to visually impaired persons/persons with a print disability in the world and to provide the necessary minimum flexibilities in copyright laws that are needed to ensure full and equal access to information and communication for persons who are visually impaired/have a print disability in order to support their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others and to ensure the opportunity to develop and utilize their creative, artistic and intellectual potential, for their own benefit and for the enrichment of society,

Have agreed as follows:

ARTICLE A

DEFINITIONS

For purposes of these provisions

"work" means a work in which copyright subsists, whether published or otherwise made publicly available in any media.

"accessible format copy" means a copy of a work in an alternative manner or form which gives a beneficiary person access to the work, including to permit the person to have access as feasibly and comfortably as a person without a print disability. The accessible format copy must respect the integrity of the original work and be used exclusively by beneficiary persons~~persons with print disabilities~~.¹

[Possible enumeration of different formats.]²

"authorized entity" means a governmental agency, a non-profit entity or an~~non-profit~~ organization³ that has as one of its ~~primary missions~~activities to assist persons with print disabilities by providing them with services relating to education, training, adaptive reading, or information access.

An authorized entity maintains policies and procedures to establish the bona fide nature of persons with print disabilities that they serve.

An authorized entity has the trust of both persons with print disabilities and copyright rights holders. It is understood that to obtain the trust of rightholders and beneficiary persons, it is not necessary to require the prior permission of said rightholders or beneficiary persons.⁴

~~If an authorized entity is a nation-wide network of organizations, then all organizations, institutions, and entities that participate in the network must adhere to these characteristics.~~

"reasonable price for developed countries" means that the accessible format copy of the work is available at a similar or lower price than the price of the work available to persons without print disabilities in that market.

"reasonable price for developing countries" means that the accessible format copy of the work is available at prices that are affordable in that market, taking into account the humanitarian needs of persons with print disabilities.

References to 'copyright' include copyright and any relevant rights related to copyright that are provided by a Contracting Party in compliance with ~~the Rome Convention, the TRIPS Agreement, the WPPT or otherwise~~any applicable international treaties or otherwise.⁵

ARTICLE B

BENEFICIARY PERSONS

A beneficiary person is a person who

is blind;
has a visual impairment or a perceptual or reading disability, such as dyslexia, which cannot be improved by the use of corrective lenses to give visual function substantially equivalent to that of a person who has no such impairment or disability and so is unable to read printed works to substantially the same degree as a person without an impairment or disability; or
is unable, through physical disability, to hold or manipulate a book or to focus or move the eyes to the extent that would be normally acceptable for reading.

ARTICLE C

NATIONAL LAW EXCEPTIONS ON ACCESSIBLE FORMAT COPIES

Member State/Contracting Party should/shall provide in their national copyright law for an exception or limitation to the right of reproduction, the right of distribution and the right of making available to the public, as defined in article 8 of the WCT, for beneficiary persons as defined herein.
A Member State/Contracting Party may fulfill Article C (1) by providing an exception or limitation in its national copyright law such that
1. Authorized entities shall be permitted without the authorization of the owner of copyright to make an accessible format copy of a work, supply that accessible format copy or an accessible format copy obtained from another authorized entity to a beneficiary person by any means, including by non-commercial lending or by electronic communication by wire or wireless means, and undertake any intermediate steps to achieve these objectives, when all of the following conditions are met:
  1. the authorized entity wishing to undertake said activity has lawful access to that work or a copy of that work;
  2. the work is converted to an accessible format copy, which may include any means needed to navigate information in the accessible format, but does not introduce changes other than those needed to make the work accessible to the beneficiary person;
  3. copies of the work in the accessible format are supplied exclusively to be used by beneficiary persons; and
  4. ~~4. the activity is undertaken on a non-profit basis.~~ ⁶
  5. A beneficiary person or someone acting on his or her behalf may make an accessible format copy of a work for the personal use of the beneficiary person where the beneficiary person has lawful access to that work or a copy of that work.
2. A Member State/Contracting Party may fulfill Article C (1) by providing any other exception or limitation in its national copyright law that is limited to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder.
3. The Member State/Contracting Party may limit said exceptions or limitations to published works which, in the applicable ~~special~~accessible format, cannot be otherwise obtained within a reasonable time and at a reasonable price.
4. It shall be a matter for national law to determine whether exceptions or limitations referred to in this Article are subject to remuneration.
ARTICLE D

CROSS-BORDER EXCHANGE OF ACCESSIBLE FORMAT COPIES
1. Member States/Contracting Parties should/shall provide that if an accessible format copy of a work is made under an exception or limitation or export license in their national law, that accessible format copy may be distributed or made available to a beneficiary person in another Member State/Contracting Party by an authorized entity ~~where that other Member State/Contracting Party would permit that beneficiary person to make or import that accessible copy~~.⁷
2. A Member State/Contracting Party may fulfill Article D(1) by providing an exception or limitation in its national copyright law such that:
  1. Authorized entities shall be permitted without the authorization of the owner of copyright to distribute or make available accessible format copies to authorized entities in other Member States/Contracting Parties for the exclusive use of persons with print disabilities, where such activity is undertaken on a non-profit basis.⁸
  2. Authorized entities shall be permitted without the authorization of the owner of copyright to distribute or make available accessible format copies to persons with print disabilities in other Member States/Contracting Parties where the authorized entity has verified the individual is properly entitled to receive such accessible format copies under that other Member State/Contracting Party's national law.⁹
The Member State/Contracting Party may limit said distribution or making available to published works which, in the applicable ~~special~~accessible format, cannot be otherwise obtained within a reasonable time and at a reasonable price, in the country of importation.
1. Without prejudice to other exceptions to the exclusive rights of authors that are otherwise permitted by the Berne Convention or the TRIPS Agreement, a Member State/Contracting Party may fulfill Article D(1) by providing any other exception or limitation in its national copyright law that is limited to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder.
ARTICLE E

IMPORTATION OF ACCESSIBLE FORMAT COPIES

To the extent that national law would permit a beneficiary person or an authorized entity acting on the beneficiary person’s behalf to make an accessible format copy of a work, the national law should/shall permit a beneficiary person or an authorized entity acting on that person's behalf to import an accessible format copy.¹⁰

ARTICLE F

CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES

Member States/Contracting Parties should/shall ensure that beneficiaries of the exception provided by Article C have the means to enjoy the exception where technological protection measures have been applied to a work.

In the absence of voluntary measures by rightholders and to the extent that copies of the work in the accessible format are not available commercially at a reasonable price or via authorized entities, Member States/Contracting Parties should/shall take appropriate measures to ensure that beneficiaries of the exception provided by Article C have the means of benefiting from that exception when technical protection measures have been applied to a work, to the extent necessary to benefit from that exception.¹¹

~~ARTICLE G~~

~~RELATIONSHIP WITH CONTRACTS~~

~~Nothing herein shall prevent Member States/Contracting Parties from addressing the relationship of contract law and statutory exceptions and limitations for beneficiary persons.~~

ARTICLE H

RESPECT FOR PRIVACY

In the implementation of these exceptions and limitations, Member States/Contracting Parties should/shall endeavour to protect the privacy of beneficiary persons on an equal basis with others.

[End of document]
1. This change must be replicated everywhere where appropriate. ↩
2. Formats should not be enumerated, since even the disabilities are not enumerated. ↩
3. Non-profit organizations alone cannot cope with the needs of visually impaired people in the developing world. Thus, while it may sound like the ideal, it is impractical given the realities of the situation in the developing world. ↩
4. A "trust" system would make it impossible for developing countries to actualize these provisions. If despite this, copyright infringement happens, then national remedies exist for such infringement. ↩
5. To clarify: what is the purpose of these and not mentioning WCT, Berne, etc.? ↩
6. To be deleted for the same reasons as above. Non-profit basis, if insisted upon, can be retained in Article D(2)(A), but not here. ↩
7. Import law provisions are already there in Article E, and should remain there. In Art. E, it states, “shall permit” import, and here, “would permit”. ↩
8. This instance of "non-profit basis" may be retained if necessary. ↩
9. To clarify: what would such verification require? Would self-certification suffice? ↩
10. It should be clarified, possibly through an agreed statement, that nothing in this article shall derogate from the flexibility provided in Art. 6 of the TRIPS Agreement, which allows for countries to provide international exhaustion.
  
  Thus, if the principle of international exhaustion is in place (i.e., parallel importation is allowed), then importation can be carried out by anyone, and not just by a beneficiary person or an authorized entity. ↩
11. This second paragraph weakens the principle established in the first by adding more conditions. They are almost phrased as alternatives, and the first alternative (paragraph) is the better one. ↩

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-analysis-july2011-treaty-print-disabilities

Exhaustion PDF

praskrishna — 2011-10-03T05:16:58Z

file

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/exhaustion.pdf

Copyrights Amendment Bill to Be Tabled in Indian Parliament – Parallel Import provisions have Been Removed

praskrishna — 2011-09-14T11:47:37Z

This week, the Indian government’s Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Parliament) will debate the Copyright Amendments Act.

The Centre for Internet and Society has raised a number of concerns – including the removal of parallel import provisions that would allowed universities and libraries to access foreign works more cheaply, the extension of copyright terms beyond those required by the TRIPS Agreement, and the introduction of technological protection measures (with stiff penalties for circumventing them).

CIS describes other provisions in the bill: Fair dealing exceptions have been extended “to all works except computer programs;” the “scope of compulsory licensing under sec 31 has been expanded from ‘any Indian work’ to ‘any work’;” and two provisions have been introduced to allow for the conversion, reproduction, and distribution of works for people with disabilities.

According to Prashant Reddy from the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on that reviewed the original legislation had strongly supported parallel imports of books. In a blog post on Spicy IP, he noted that “publishers routinely introduce old versions of books in India,” and that parallel imports would allow students to obtain newer copies at reasonable prices.

However, a news story in Live Mint reports that the publishing industry “had strongly opposed the amendments.”

This article by Mike Palmedo was published in infojustice.org on September 5, 2011. Read the original story here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/copyright-amendment-bill-in-indian-parliament

Calling Out the BSA on Its BS

pranesh — 2011-09-14T18:16:51Z

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is trying to pull wool over government officials' eyes by equating software piracy with tax losses. Pranesh Prakash points out how that argument lacks cogency, and that tax losses would be better averted if BSA's constituent companies just decided to pay full taxes in India.

In the past we have covered the Business Software Alliance's lack of rigour in their piracy statistics, and disconnect from their constituent members when it comes to opposing free and open source software. In reaction to the criticism they have received over the years, BSA has finally stopped equating lack of sales with losses. But now, they have started equating software piracy with tax losses.

How IDC thinks tax works

In a report prepared by International Data Corporation (IDC) for the Business Software Alliance (BSA), they note:

Substantial value in form of potential industry and tax revenues is lost to software piracy: The situation in India is not healthy with a software piracy rate of 65% in 2009 (more than six out of ten PC software programs installed in 2009 were not paid for). Only one-third of the overall PC software revenues are captured by the industry incumbents and the rest are lost to software piracy. Most of the unlicensed software use occurs in otherwise legal businesses installing the programs on more PCs than allowed by the licenses they have paid for. Consequently, in 2009, the state exchequer tax receipts loss was roughly US$866 million at the current piracy and employment levels, as the industry lost its otherwise legitimate share of revenues to piracy.

For this to be true, there must be two assumptions that are satisfied. First, those who are pirating software must not spend the money that they save by doing so on any other taxable activity. Second, the companies that would get the money if the software weren't pirated must pay the Indian government taxes. As we'll see, neither of these two assumptions are warranted.

The BSA-IDC report reasons as follows: Pirates don't pay taxes on the illegal software that they sell, so that is tax evasion and consequently a tax loss. It states:

Higher demand for legal software will result in higher flow of license volume through the supply chain, resulting in increase in volume of business transactions. Each transaction adds a certain percentage of the deal or value added to the state exchequer's coffers in the form of indirect tax revenue[...] Increase in demand will also result in increased employment. Consequently, revenues from direct taxes will be increased for the government, as employees join newly created high-paying jobs.

How tax actually works

That reasoning is flawed. The majority of software piracy in India happens through two methods: violation of software licence terms by using the software on more computers than it is licensed for; and pre-loading of illegal software by computer sellers. Those 'computer seller' pirates do not sell the software separately, but bundle it with the computer as an additional service. In other words, they don't charge for it in the first place. So, quite clearly, there is no tax evasion.

Despite there being no tax evasion, there is the possibility of tax loss for the state. That would happen when instead of doing taxable activity A with with their money, they do non-taxable activity B. Putting money in special government bonds instead of spending it on software, for instance, is one such instance. However, that is a strange, unwarranted assumption. People don't always put the money that they don't spend on software into government bonds. It is a much more reasonable assumption that people would spend that money on other consumables, like food or other such tangible commodities.

Lastly, there is the unwarranted assumption that increase in demand for legal software increases employment. In fact, it is a much more reasonable assumption that increase in piracy increases employment in case of developing countries. Printing ("DTP") shops use pirated versions of Photoshop, CorelDraw and InDesign, computer education centres use pirated versions of Microsoft Windows, offices use pirated versions of Microsoft Word and Excel. If these didn't teach their employees the use of pirated software, millions of people would lose their jobs. All of these employees pay direct taxes. There is no analysis in the BSA-IDC report that accounts for this, treating all these millions of people as non-existent for purposes of their analysis.

Increasing tax: Make MNC software companies pay full taxes

Thus, there is no real tax loss to the government if the money that would have been spent on commercial software was instead spent on some other commodity. Indeed, there might even be an increase in tax collection because software companies, including leading ones such as Microsoft, are much more likely to avoid taxes than companies that deal in tangible commodities. There are well-known routes of decreasing tax liability for intangible goods such as software. Software companies normally state that they license software instead of selling it (as this suits them on issues such as customs duties), but when it comes to income tax, they try to paint the transaction as a sale of a product. (Microsoft, for instance claims that its earnings in India are 'business income' and not 'royalties' and hence is exempt under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement between India and the USA.) A company that deals with tangible commodities has no such 'licensing vs. sale' loop-hole that they can try to exploit. Further, many software companies are located in special economic zones that are "software exporting zones", and hence get large tax deductions.

In India, for instance, Microsoft is resisting payment of income tax for by routing all licensing to distributors in India through a shell company in Singapore and holding that Microsoft India had no income tax liabilities. Microsoft has been fined Rs. 2 crore because it tried to separate the importing of software into India from the (more valuable) granting of licences to customers and pay only nominal customs duties on the former and under-declaring the value of the latter as zero. From nine Microsoft dealers a total of Rs 255 crore was collected as tax. Of the roughly Rs. 4000 crores loss that the BSA-IDC report claims, around 6% is realizable from just a single tax (customs duties) from 9 companies dealing in the products of one company. If we multiply this by all taxes (income tax included) amongst all the dealers of all the constituent companies of BSA, then the Indian government might recover more from taxes than is supposedly lost to piracy!

Elsewhere around the globe, the 'Double Irish' arrangement, the 'Dutch Sandwich' route and other such are used by MNC software companies to evade taxes. Just as there are tax havens, there are some IPR havens that cater to companies selling/licensing software and other such intangible commodities.

If only these software companies were to stop evading taxes in the countries in which they sell software, then the government's tax collections would automatically increase.

Final idiocies, and conclusion

In the BSA-IDC report, they write: "Assessing the relationship between software piracy rates and UN Human Development Index (a measure of average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development) suggests that countries with greater rates of software piracy tend to have lower levels of economic development. This further strengthens the hypothesis that IP rights (IPR) enforcement increases economic activity.".

This is as sensible as saying "countries with greater rates of industrial espionage (such as France, Germany, and USA) tend to have higher levels of economic development" strengthens the hypothesis that industrial espionage increases economic development. While it is empirically true that most countries with greater rates of software piracy have lower levels of economic development, it is equally true that countries with lower levels of economic development (being countries with poorer populations) have more software piracy. It is equally true that software piracy decreases if the cost of software decreases, as shown by the more carefully-conducted analysis in the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies report.

To use greater software piracy and lower economic development as evidence of the causal link between IPR enforcement and economic activity is to betray absolute ignorance about both economics and logic.

The startlingly poor level of analysis of the BSA-IDC report leaves no question that the conclusions were arrived at independently of the analysis. Such misleading analysis is worse than trash: it is downright dangerous as an instrument of policy setting.

To increase tax receipts, the government may as well start by making BSA's constituent companies pay all the taxes they owe.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/calling-out-the-bsa-on-bs

Indian Copyright Act, 1957 (as amended by Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010)

admin — 2011-08-24T06:58:10Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/amended-copyright-act.html

Photocopying the past

sunil — 2011-09-25T20:06:50Z

There is no single correct position when it comes to intellectual property or IP. In fact, there are at least five correct positions that you could possibly adopt based on who you are — a pro-creator position, a pro-entrepreneur position, a pro-government position, a pro-consumer position and a public interest position.

Therefore, before you progress any further, dear reader, you have to first decide which of the above you are. If you are an average Indian, then you are almost certainly a consumer or a member of the general public. Next, it would only be fair for me to tell you when I am coming from: I work for a policy research organisation that focuses on protecting consumer and public interest in the digital era. Before I proceed any further, also note that not all creators prefer profits to public adulation and therefore creators’ interests are not necessarily always opposed to consumer and public interest.

At this point, popular imagination is captivated by meta-regulation, issues of corruption and transparency. Few seem interested in the configuration details of property regimes that we are all implicated in: tangible property, capital and, in our increasingly dematerialised world, intangible property such as IP or spectrum. Unfortunately the complications of spectrum, banking and IP make our eyes glaze over and there is almost zero attention being paid to the copyright act amendment to be discussed in Parliament this week.

For the government, achieving a compromise is the primary objective, and then, perhaps a distant second, raising taxes. This is not a static compromise, since each generation of new technologies precipitates a new round of negotiations between the stakeholders. So while it is easy to be Anna Hazare, it is difficult to be Kapil Sibal. An optimal compromise position as in the world of capital and tangible property protects the production, circulation and consumption of IP. A sub-optimal position results in practices that are in conflict with policy — anti-competitive behaviour or infringement.

Unfortunately when it comes to evidence-based policy-making, there is little funding for public interest IP research in India and the pockets of the lobbyists of rights-holders are deep. The funded research that they tout claims that government loses significant taxes because of piracy or non-maximalist IP policies. Yet rights-holders, especially multinationals in the software business, are experts at tax avoidance through techniques with names like the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”.

Like any compromise, the latest amendment is a mixed bag for consumers and the general public. With regard to “digital rights management,” — or what consumers’ advocates refer to as “digital restrictions management” — the government has yielded to the TRIPS-plus agenda even though it is not a signatory to the WIPO Internet treaties. And with regard to the exception for the disabled, the Indian exception is both disability- and works-neutral making it much more robust when compared to the treaty for the visually impaired currently being discussed at the WIPO.

However, one particular compromise — the volte-face on Section 2 (m) on parallel imports of books — is particularly distressing for book-lovers and students. As part of the latest amendment, this new section was introduced in 2009. The standing committee report gave the section a thumbs-up, but strangely it has gone missing in the latest version of the bill circulated to the MPs in preparation for the Rajya Sabha debate this Friday.

Section 2 (m) is a provision that would have saved us from the uncertainty created by what some consider flawed jurisprudence around parallel importation of copyrighted works. As the standing committee report on the copyright amendment puts it, “nobody can deny the fact that the interests of students will be best protected if they have access to the latest editions of the books.” To date, I have never met an IIT or IIM graduate untainted by photocopied books. I would claim that the lack of quality education in our country is still at the level of an epidemic. The indigenous publication industry has benefited from our progressive copyright regime.

Wouldn’t it be appropriate to afford them maximum flexibility in a future rife with technological shifts? Are all the books that you wish to read available in the libraries and book shops you have access to? Have you ever been forced to photocopy a book because of time constraints? Would you like to see greater choice via increased free-market competition, and reduced state-sanctioned monopolies and enforcement? Does your definition of human rights include the “right to education” and the the “right to entertainment”? Shouldn’t the disabled in India benefit from the $500 million spent each year making books accessible in the US? And finally, shouldn’t a nation providing leadership to the development agenda at WIPO, walk the talk at home? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, you should demand that people are placed before the profits of foreign publishers.

This article by Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society was published in the Indian Express on 2 September 2011 in the Indian Express. Please read the original article here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/photocopying-the-past

Copyright Amendment Bill in Parliament

nirmita — 2011-08-30T09:26:44Z

The Copyright Amendment Bill is expected to be presented in the Rajya Sabha by the Minister for Human Resource and Development, Kapil Sibal today afternoon. The much awaited Bill (since it has been in the offing since 2006) has undergone significant changes since its initial appearance.

Given below is a very quick first cut highlight of the Bill from a public interest perspective. A more detailed analysis will follow after the session discussions.

Parallel imports: The parallel imports clause which had been put in as sec 2(m) has now been dropped from the present draft. This is a big setback because educational institutions, libraries and archives, second hand book, etc., were looking to this provision to bring down the prices and hasten the availability of books. This also affects persons with disabilities since they will be unable to import books in accessible formats.
Persons with disabilities: There are two provisions relating to persons with disabilities which have been introduced. Section 52 (1) (zb) relates to the conversion, reproduction, issues of copies or communication to the public of any work in any accessible format, provided that these activities are meant to enable access to persons with disabilities and sufficient safeguards are taken to ensure that these materials do not enter the mainstream market. This section in a sense is broader and more encompassing than some provisions found in other countries, which relate exclusively to the blind or visually impaired. This section would adequately cover persons with other disabilities who cannot read print. A new section 31B also provides for compulsory licensing for profit entities wishing to convert and distribute works in accessible formats, provided that they are primarily working for persons with disabilities and are registered under sec 12A of the Income Tax Act or under chapter X of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995.
Many exceptions under 52 (1) (i) relating to fair dealing have been extended to all works except computer programmes. New sections 52 (1) (b) and (c) protect transient and incidental storage from being classified as infringing copies, which offers protection to entities such as online intermediaries.
The scope of compulsory licensing under sec 31 has been expanded from ‘any Indian work’ to ‘any work’. Three new sections 31 B, 31C and 31 D have been introduced. Section 31 B has already been described in the paragraph on persons with disabilities. Section 31 C lays down strict measures relating to statutory licensing in case of cover version, being a sound recording of a literary, dramatic or musical work. Section 31 D relates to statutory licenses for broadcasting organizations wishing to broadcast a literary or musical work or sound recording.
Non commercial public libraries can now store electronic copies of any non digital works they own (52(n)).
The new Bill introduces Technological protection measures (65A and 65B) and makes circumvention and distribution of works in which rights managements systems have been removed an offence which is punishable with imprisonment upto two years as well as fine. In addition the copyright owner can also avail of civil remedies. As such India is not really required to have these provisions in the copyright legislation since we are not yet a signatory to the WCT or the WPPT and such provisions will hamper consumer interests.
Terms of copyright have been increased significantly without reason, thus preventing works from falling into the public domain. For instance, the term of photographs has been increased from 60 years to life of the photographer plus 60 years. This is far in excess of the minimum term stipulated by international treaties.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-parliament

Govt for Legalising Parallel Import of Copyright Works; Publishers Oppose

Shamnad Basheer — 2011-08-30T10:19:35Z

Section 2(m) legalises the parallel imports of books and other copyrighted material into India and was part of the initial Copyright Amendment Bill introduced in the Parliament of India in 2010.

Section 2(m) reads as below:

"[P]rovided that a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy."

Unfortunately, the government did a sudden volte face owing to pressure from publisher lobbies and deleted it from the latest version of the Bill. The provision would have helped students gain access to the latest affordable versions of text books from around the world.

When the Bill was referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee for review, the said Committee strongly supported the introduction of section 2(m) and stated as below:

"that availability of low priced books under the present regime is invariably confined to old editions. Nobody can deny the fact that the interests of students will be best protected if they have access to latest editions of the books."

"Nobody can deny the fact that the interests of students will be best protected if they have access to latest editions of the books. Thus, apprehensions about the flooding of the primary market with low priced editions, may be mis-founded as such a situation would be tackled by that country's law. The Committee would, however, like to put a note of caution to the government to ensure that the purpose for which the amendment is proposed i.e., to protect the interest of the students is not lost sight of."

Despite the Standing Committees support, it is curious as to why the government dropped this provision, particularly when it would have tremendously helped a number of students gain access to latest low priced editions of text books from around the world. It ought not to have succumbed to the pressures of the publishing lobby.

Empirical studies done on this count clearly demonstrate that publishers only introduce old versions of books in India. The latest versions have to be imported, and they are very expensive, often times costing more than what they cost in the US and EU. See the Economic Times article documenting this empirical study here.

Further, an easy right of import enables any third party to import books which could also then be made available in accessible formats to the visually impaired.

Download the Economic Times article by Shamnad Basheer here. [PDF, 470 Kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/govt-legalising-parallel-import-of-copyright-work

Don't Shoot the Messenger: Speech on Intermediary Liability at 22nd SCCR of WIPO

pranesh — 2012-06-01T15:01:08Z

This is a speech made by Pranesh Prakash at an side-event co-organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Internet Society on intermediary liability, to coincide with the release of Prof. Lillian Edwards's WIPO-commissioned report on 'Role and Responsibility of the Internet Intermediaries in the Field of Copyright'.

Good afternoon. I've been asked to provide a user's perspective to the question of intermediary liability. "In what cases should an Internet intermediary—a messenger—be held liable for the doings of a third party?" is the broad question. I believe that in answering that question we can be guided by two simple principles: As long as intermediaries don't exercise direct editorial control, they should not be held liable; and as long as they don't instigate or encourage the illegal activity, they should not be held liable. In all other cases, attacking Internet intermediaries generally a sign of 'shooting the messenger'. General intermediary liability and intermediary liability for copyright infringement share a common philosophical foundation, and so I will talk about general intermediary liability first.

While going about holding intermediaries liable, we must remember that what is at stake here is the fact that intermediaries are a necessary component of ensuring freedom of speech and self-expression on the World Wide Web. In this regard, we must keep in mind the joint declaration issued by four freedom of expression rapporteurs under the aegis of the Organization of American States on June 1, 2011:

Intermediary Liability

a. No one who simply provides technical Internet services such as providing access, or searching for, or transmission or caching of information, should be liable for content generated by others, which is disseminated using those services, as long as they do not specifically intervene in that content or refuse to obey a court order to remove that content, where they have the capacity to do so (‘mere conduit principle’).

b. Consideration should be given to insulating fully other intermediaries, including those mentioned in the preamble, from liability for content generated by others under the same conditions as in paragraph 2(a). At a minimum, intermediaries should not be required to monitor user-generated content and should not be subject to extra-judicial content takedown rules which fail to provide sufficient protection for freedom of expression (which is the case with many of the ‘notice and takedown’ rules currently being applied).

It is useful to keep in mind what the kind of liability we affix on offline intermediaries: Would we hold a library responsible for unlawful material that a user has placed on its shelves without its encouragement?

Ensuring a balanced system of intermediary liability is also very important in preserving the forms of innovations we have seen online. Ensuring that intermediaries aren't always held liable for what third parties do is an essential component of encouraging new models of participation, such as Wikipedia. While Wikipedia has community-set standards with regard to copyright, obscenity, and other such issues, holding the Wikimedia Foundation (which has only around 30-40 people) itself responsible for what millions of users write on Wikipedia will hamper such new models of peer-production. This point, unfortunately, has not prevented the Wikimedia Foundation being sued a great number of times in India, a large percentage of which take the form of SLAPP ('strategic lawsuit against public participation') cases, since if the real intention had been to remove the offending content, editing Wikipedia is an easy enough way of achieving that.

While searching for these balanced solutions, we need to look beyond Europe, and look at how countries like Chile, Brazil, India and others are looking at these issues. Unfortunately, this being Geneva, most of the people I see represented in this room are from the developed world as are the examples we are discussing (France and Spain).

In India, for instance, the Internet Service Providers Association made it clear in 2006 (when there was an outcry over censorship of blogging platforms) that they do not want to be responsible for deciding whether something about which they have received a complaint is unlawful or not.

With respect to copyright and the Internet, while the Internet allows for copyright infringement to be conducted more easily, it also allows for copyright infringement to be spotted more easily. Earlier, if someone copied, it would be difficult to find out. Now that is not so. So, that balance is already ingrained, and while many in the industry focus on the fact of easier infringement and thus ask for increased legal protection, such increase in legal protection is not required since the same technological factors that enable increased infringement also enable increased ability to know about that infringement.

On the Internet, intermediaries sometimes engage in primary infringement due to the very nature of digital technology. In the digital sphere, everything is a copy. Thus, whenever you're working on a computer, copies of the copyrighted that show up on your screen are automatically copied to your computer's RAM. Whenever you download anything from the Internet, copies of it are created en route to your computer. (That is the main reason that exceptions in the copyright laws of most countries that allow you to re-sell a book you own don't apply to electronic books.) In such a case, intermediaries must be specially protected.

Additionally, online activities that we take for granted, for instance search technologies, violate the copyright law of most countries. For online search technology to be reasonably fast (instead of taking hours for each search), the searching has to be done on a copies (cache) of actual websites instead of the actual websites. For image searching, it would be unreasonable to expect search companies to take licences for all the images they allow you to search through. Yet, not doing so might violate the copyright laws of many countries. No one, or so one would think, would argue that search engines should be made illegal, but in some countries copyright law is being used to attack intermediaries.

As noted above, intermediaries are a necessary part of online free speech. Current methods of regulating copyright infringement by users via intermediaries online may well fall afoul of internationally accepted standards of human rights. Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression in his recent report to the UN Human Rights Council stated:

While blocking and filtering measures deny access to certain content on the Internet, States have also taken measures to cut off access to the Internet entirely.

The Special Rapporteur is deeply concerned by discussions regarding a centralized “on/off” control over Internet traffic. In addition, he is alarmed by proposals to disconnect users from Internet access if they violate intellectual property rights. This also includes legislation based on the concept of “graduated response”, which imposes a series of penalties on copyright infringers that could lead to suspension of Internet service, such as the so-called “three-strikes law” in France and the Digital Economy Act 2010 of the United Kingdom.

Beyond the national level, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been proposed as a multilateral agreement to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. While the provisions to disconnect individuals from Internet access for violating the treaty have been removed from the final text of December 2010, the Special Rapporteur remains watchful about the treaty’s eventual implications for intermediary liability and the right to freedom of expression.

With respect to graduated response, there is very little that one can add to Prof. Edwards's presentation. I would like to add one further suggestion that Prof. Ed Felten originally put forward as a 'modest proposal': Corporations which make or facilitate three wrongful accusations should face the same penalty as the users who are accused thrice. The recent US strategy of seizing websites even before trial has been sufficiently criticised, so I shall not spend my time on it.

I still have not seen any good evidence as to why for other kinds of primary or secondary liability incurred by online intermediaries the procedure for offline copyright infringement should not apply, since they are usually crafted taking into account principles of natural justice.

The only 'international' and slightly troublesome issue that a resolution is needed to is that of problems relating to different jurisdiction’s laws applying on a single global network. However, this question is much larger one that of copyright and a copyright-specific solution cannot be found. Thus WIPO is not the right forum for the redress of that problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/intermediary-liability-wipo-speech

Statement of CIS, India, on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 22nd SCCR

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T04:41:12Z

The twenty-second session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is being held in Geneva from June 15 to June 24, 2011. Nirmita Narasimhan and Pranesh Prakash are attending the conference. CIS delivered its statement, on the Broadcast Treaty, and made it available in print form as well.

The Centre for Internet and Society would like to associate itself with the comprehensive statement made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). We are one of the signatories of the joint statement, which EFF referred to, of the many civil society non-governmental organizations, cable casters and technology companies opposing an intellectual property rights based Broadcasting Treaty.

We believe that the protection that may be afforded to broadcasters under existing international treaties, including Article 14 of the TRIPS Agreement, are sufficient to safeguard the interests of broadcasters, and that the Broadcast Treaty, which has been under discussion for more than a decade without any progress is, as the WIPO Chair observed in the conclusion to the informal summary prepared after the 16th SCCR (SCCR/17/1/inf), an expenditure of "time, energy and resources to no avail". Without prejudice to that position, we would like to make a few points on the content of the treaty as well.

There has been talk of ensuring a technology-neutral approach. While a technology-neutral approach is useful since technology keeps changing, we believe that that necessarily means the differences between different technologies should be recognized. The capital costs and investments of traditional broadcasters, which are—as has been highlighted in the many statements here today—the basis on which broadcasters' rights are demanded, are not in the least comparable with the capital costs and investments of webcasting.

These differences have not come out adequately in the various regional seminars that WIPO helped organize, since those were mostly with traditional broadcasters and did not cover webcasters.

"Communication to the public", while that is a technologically neutral formulation, is an element of copyright, and is not the same of broadcast rights, which is a related right.

Any departure from a signal-based approach would require the assent of the WIPO General Assembly, which has in 2007 specifically requested for signal-based approach for the treaty.

Specifically, we believe that Paragraph 16 of the WIPO Development Agenda, which relates to preservation of a vibrant public domain, will be endangered by a right being given to webcasters which is separate from the underlying content of the transmission.

In this regard, we strongly support the delegations of South Africa and India, in their strong pronunciation of public interests while looking at such a treaty. We further support the delegation of Canada, for strongly emphasizing the need to allow countries the flexibility to opt-out of the provisions of the treaty for certain forms of broadcasting.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sccr-22-broadcast-cis-statement

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce India's IP Costs

Sanjana Govil — 2012-01-26T17:11:29Z

While entrepreneurs, IP rights-holders and everyone else who has a stake continue to voice their opinions on the appropriate shape that the Indian IP regime ought to take, they tend to narrow their discussions to the language of substantive IP laws. However, there are regulations that cannot be found in the Patent Act, Copyright Act or Trademarks Act which nevertheless have an impact on how much one is paying for intellectual property. Paying attention to these external factors might just provide a simple solution to your IP woes.

One such factor is the regulation of foreign technology agreements. A foreign technology agreement is an agreement under which a transfer of technology occurs from a foreign source to an Indian entity. This transfer may include anything from the creation of an Indian wholly-owned subsidiary of a foreign parent company to the transfer of manufacturing or design know-how.

Regulation of these agreements in India is carried out by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry as well as the Reserve Bank of India. In 1991, the Ministry’s Department of Industrial Development (DID) released Press Note No.10 which stated the following:

“39 C. Foreign Technology Agreements

i) Automatic permission will be given for foreign technology agreements in high priority industries (Annex III)* upto a lumpsum payment of Rs. 1 crore, 5% royalty for domestic sales and 8% for exports, subject to total payments of 8% of sales over a 10 year period from date of agreement or 7 years from commencement of production. The prescribed royalty rates are net of taxes and will be calculated according to standard procedures."

As a consequence, automatic approval could only be granted to high priority industries whose royalty payments fell within the prescribed limits. In every other case, the approval of the Secretariat of Industrial Approvals (SIA), DID and the RBI had to be sought. It must be noted that in theory this regulation did not place an absolute ban on royalty outflows above the 5% and 8% ceilings since the possibility of securing government approval for the same did exist. However, considering that a mere 8062 approvals were granted between 1991 and 2009[1], the ceiling was in effect almost absolute.

It appears that the stance of the government of the time was one of strict regulation. From the perspective of Indian entrepreneurs, shareholders and consumers, this was a good thing. To illustrate, imagine a foreign company which manufactures a networked camera cell phone. The company will be paying royalties for several of its features such as the camera, USB port, operating system, etc. This company then sets up a subsidiary in India to manufacture the same phones. Though the total royalties being paid by the parent company are likely to far exceed five per cent of its sales, it cannot charge the subsidiary royalties above this ceiling. Therefore, the costs for the Indian subsidiary reduce significantly. This reduction will be reflected in an increased dividend for shareholders and a reduced cost for consumers.

While the benefits of this royalty ceiling are manifold, it is evident that foreign rights-holders are adversely affected. Therefore, the Government has, unfortunately, gradually “liberalized” its approach towards royalty payments over the years. First the 7 or 10 year duration restrictions were done away with and next the lump sum ceiling was increased from Rs.1 crore to USD 2 million. Ultimately, the ceiling was removed altogether through the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion’s Press Note No.8 of 2009 in the name of liberalization. The adverse impacts on Indian manufacturers were almost immediate as foreign rights-holders began to revise their license agreements.[2]]

Why was this ceiling introduced in the first place? Some say it was due to the acute balance of payments deficit that existed in the country in 1991[3]; when India found itself overspending on imported oil. This urged the government at the time to ensure that foreign collaboration in the private sector was well regulated. Since then, the balance of payments situation in India has comparatively stabilized (though a deficit still does exist[4]) and so there appears to be no immediate need to continue to regulate foreign technology collaboration. However, one can’t help but remember Mark Getty’s prediction that intellectual property will be the "oil of the twenty-first century".[5]

Notes

[1] F. Bureaus, “Tech Transfer, Royalty Payment Norms Eased”, Financial Express (November 6, 2009) available at <http://www.financialexpress.com/news/tech-transfer-royalty-payment-norms-eased/537816/

[2]http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html">http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html>.

[3]K. Sen, “News on Royalty Payment Brings Cheer in New Year”, Business Standard (January 4, 2010) available at <

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/newsroyalty-payment-brings-cheer-in-new-year/381521/>

[4]http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165">http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165>.

[5]http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php">http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows

Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup

praskrishna — 2011-05-06T05:34:47Z

Consumers can be empowered, and consumer organisations can make sure this happens through sharing and networking, speakers at the 19th Consumers International World Congress in Hong Kong said. The programme of the Congress finished on Thursday evening, and on Friday the global consumer body will hold its General Assembly and Council elections. This news was published in the Consumer's International Blog on May 5, 2011.

In his closing remarks, CI President Samuel Ochieng, emphasised "our ability to shape our future," ending the event on a positive note. Acting Director General, Helen McCallum, showed, in her remarks, the real excitement of the last few days.

Earlier, CI Vice President, James Guest, who is also President and CEO, Consumers Union of United States, delivered a keynote address on one of the key themes of the Congress: "The fight for fair financial services - a battle our movement must win".

Guest had this message for delegates and consumers around the world: "If you're wondering whether you, as an individual or through your organisation, can really make a difference in a David versus Goliath battle against the power of special interests, you already know the answer — yes, you can. The banking lobbyists are rich and powerful, and they spend a lot of money trying to buy influence. But there is one important asset that they lack and we have: people power. In the end, although it will be a hard and difficult fight, I believe that people power - mobilised by the over 220 members of CI - will eventually win.

"That’s because our cause and our stories and our passion are real. We fight for change, not because we are well-heeled lobbyists paid to do so, but because we care about our lives and the lives of our children, our neighbours, our countrymen, and citizens of the world - today and tomorrow, for this generation and the next."

Other highlights:

In a video message to the CI World Congress, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, that currently holds the presidency of the G20, said that the "G20 called for action on behalf of consumers, and with OECD I am working to protect consumers of financial services". She expressed the view that "consumers should be participants in the process of ensuring their own security," and admitted that "at the time of the crisis we did not focus enough on consumers in the first instance". Christine Lagarde said she remained "interested in the proposals developed for consumer protection and involvement following a successful CI Congress".

Gerd Leonhard, CEO of The Futures Agency, attracted a lot of interest with his views. Consumer organisations must network to have greater impact, they must share and publish; this is how you engage and enable others, he suggested. The difference between MTV and YouTube is the difference between 'the network' and networked, he said.

"'When five billion people are on the internet within a few years, the power of the consumer will be greater than ever," Gerd predicted.

We use social media/mobile phones to 'review' services, and corporations are paying attention, he added and noted that with broadband culture "everything known to man will be copied".

Former CI President Anwar Fazal delivered a rousing speech, which resulted in a standing ovation from the audience. He said that "in a world of big power, big media... networking is the new democracy".

Fazal added: ''CI is a force for social justice, we can do it, we must and we will!' He warned consumer organisations to "train new people or you will have no future," and noted that we "must not allow modernity to replace fundamental human connections".

On the subject of copyright and access to knowledge, David Hammerstein, TACD IP adviser, said: "We are not against copyright, we are for a more direct relation between artists and consumers".

CI's Dr Jeremy Malcolm added: "We want to support authors but not outdated regulation". He also argued that "unbalanced copyright and IP laws hurt consumers not pirates".

We aim to have A2K included in UN guidelines on consumer protection, Malcolm said.

Go to www.a2knetwork.org to comment on draft UN guidelines for A2K.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society, argued that fake mobile phone innovators in China are not pirates but "enablers of connectivity in the developing world".

Sue Rutledge, Coordinator for Global Program on Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy, World Bank, thanked Consumers International and HKCC for tackling the issue of financial services. She said that "all financial services providers should enable consumer redress," and that she "would like to see consumer ogranisations play an active role in protecting consumer financial protection".

Interviews

A number of speakers at CI World Congress have been interviewed by young TV journalists from Hong Kong City University involved in covering the event. Check the following videos:

You can also watch:

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/consumers-international-world-congress-day-3-roundup

Centre for Internet and Society

Statement of CIS on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 23rd SCCR

Broadcasters Already Protected Online

Support Countries' Concerns

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship

Introduction

YouTube and the question of authorship

The construction of author/ity

What’s in a name? – The author and the book

Conclusion

References

CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics

Technology Transfer

Outflow of Foreign Exchange as Royalties Creating Adverse Balance of Payments

Table: India’s royalty and licence fees payments (current USD)

Table: India’s royalty and licence fees, receipts (current USD)

Linking of Value Chain and Preferential Treatment

Preferential Treatment

Cybersecurity and Source Code

Distinction between Innovation and Intellectual Property

National Electronics Mission

Funding

CIS-TWN Analysis of WIPO Treaty for the Print Disabled (SCCR/22/15)

SCCR/22/15

PREAMBLE

ARTICLE A

DEFINITIONS

ARTICLE B

BENEFICIARY PERSONS

ARTICLE C

NATIONAL LAW EXCEPTIONS ON ACCESSIBLE FORMAT COPIES

ARTICLE D

CROSS-BORDER EXCHANGE OF ACCESSIBLE FORMAT COPIES

ARTICLE E

IMPORTATION OF ACCESSIBLE FORMAT COPIES

ARTICLE F

CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES

ARTICLE G

RELATIONSHIP WITH CONTRACTS

ARTICLE H

RESPECT FOR PRIVACY

Exhaustion PDF

Copyrights Amendment Bill to Be Tabled in Indian Parliament – Parallel Import provisions have Been Removed

Calling Out the BSA on Its BS

How IDC thinks tax works

How tax actually works

Increasing tax: Make MNC software companies pay full taxes

Final idiocies, and conclusion

Indian Copyright Act, 1957 (as amended by Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010)

Photocopying the past

Copyright Amendment Bill in Parliament

Govt for Legalising Parallel Import of Copyright Works; Publishers Oppose

Don't Shoot the Messenger: Speech on Intermediary Liability at 22nd SCCR of WIPO

Statement of CIS, India, on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 22nd SCCR

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce India's IP Costs

Notes

Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup

Other highlights:

Interviews

You can also watch: