IN Content Law

This write-up describes first impressions of the 2022 Indian bill dealing with data protection. It has not been edited, and considering that it's been drafted after close to 36 hours without sleep — some days are especially long — it will almost certainly be rethought and edited at some point. It's difficult to miss the deficiencies of the 2022 Digital Data Protection Bill: the proposed statute appears to be well intentioned, and it does attempt to protect those whose data is collected — data principals as the document refers to them — but it's inability to set meaningful boundaries and to draft with a degree of specificity has resulted in its falling far short of its ostensible aims. The bill does not go so far as to explicitly state that only such personal data as is essential to provide services or goods may be collected and then retained for no longer than necessary or until the data principal withdraws consent for data retention. However, it does, through the Explana

"I was recently confronted with an agreement I drafted some 10 years ago which, much to my embarrassment, was still being used possibly slightly edited but essentially still my draft: an agreement I'd put together with maybe 15 minutes of thought prior to drafting. Legally, it was and still is watertight. It also has all the hallmarks of a petty bully. Utterly lopsided clauses not in favour of the the other party, stringent obligations placed on them... the works. Somewhere between having mellowed with age and having no particular need to demonstrate that I'm aggressively protecting client interests, today, that isn't an agreement I would consider drafting. Of course, I still do whatever it takes to protect client interests though not at the cost of potentially destroying their relationship with the other party if I can avoid it. I'm far more likely to tell a client now than I was 10 years ago that a clause they're proposing is unfair — think of every time you&

This, I think, is what policy work at its most meaningful looks like: when one is able to use one's experiences to view proposals and, hopefully, to be able to contribute towards a desirable outcome. Recently learning that a music teacher I had known many years ago had passed on led me to think of those long-ago lessons, and of the disability-friendly provisions in the Indian Copyright Act…  It was only very recently that I learnt that a music teacher I had known had passed on a decade ago. I'd first met her before I was to take an exam in the 1990s, every bit as nervous as could be.  On another occasion, at another exam, she sat outside the music room while I played — "Don't worry, I'm right here" — only to hear the piano begin emitting sounds which no instrument should. Music clips weren't easily available then, some thirty years ago, and a clothes clip I had used to secure pages flew off right in the middle of a piece, straight into the piano. Every st

Copyright began as the right to copy or reprint a protected work and, in time, it has become the right to control avenues through which a work may be financially exploited. At the micro level, this has meant that copyright has evolved from a right which does not allow author-owners of works a say in whether or by whom or how their works may be translated to a right which enables them to control, at the very least, whether a protected work can be translated at all and, if it is translated, by whom it may be translated. Granting permission for a protected work to be translated, however, may be an act of faith. What happens once an author-owner grants such permission varies dramatically depending on the jurisdiction involved. In the UK, for example, Section 80(2) of the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act prevents authors from claiming that their moral right of integrity in respect of works they've created has been violated by translations having accorded their works derogatory tr

Copyright law is cognizant of the ways in which anonymity can play out in conventional fields as it demonstrates through provisions determining the term of copyright to anonymous works. The law, however, is not especially well equipped to deal with anonymity and blockchain together despite the fact that we have partially segued from the industrial information economy, which copyright law could be considered to have anticipated, to a networked information economy.  Blockchain and traditional copyright law do not fit together neatly allowing open data and 'piracy' to effectively be two sides of the same coin despite offering high hopes for a transition into an economy in which open knowledge prominently features. On the contrary, although blockchain certainly does have its benefits, not least of which are allowing for the fractional ownership of protected works stored on-chain and, potentially, facilitating a thriving marketplace in secondhand digital copies since it enables ea

It appears the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2021, proposes to amend the statute in a way which would effectively result in there being two primary statutes which contain provisions relating to the infringement of intellectual property rights in films: the Copyright Act and the Cinematograph Act.  Reading through the proposal, it isn't at all clear how the relevant provisions in the two statutes, if they were all to simultaneously be in force, would act together and, to make matters even more concerning, the provisions proposed to be inserted into the Cinematograph Act seem incoherent from the point of view of copyright law: the first appears to suggest that knowingly recording or transmitting a film (or trying to do so or helping others to do so) requires the consent of the author of the film and not its owner; it reads:   "6AA. Notwithstanding any law for the time being in force, no person shall, without the written authorization of the author, be permitted to use any audi

Equitable healthcare to address the CoVID-19 crisis requires a multilevel, multipronged approach, and it is important to achieve equitable healthcare not least because, as we've heard over and over again, no-one is safe till everyone is safe. Borders, whether drawn on maps or in minds, will not — cannot — guarantee the safety of those within their bounds. Not when one speaks of being safe from a virus such as this. Intellectual property rights play a role in the process of achieving equitable healthcare although they are, by no means, the only factor: ultimately, it is realpolitik which plays a decisive role in manufacturing, and in supply and demand chains. This write-up, however, focusses on intellectual property rights and strategies from a largely theoretical point of view not least because the information available in the public domain about pre-existing contractual relationships and other factors which affect the situation on the ground are not available in their entirety. Co

A committee constituted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a draft report on non-personal data governance in India in July 2020 which it revised in December 2020 following the receipt of feedback from stakeholders. The December 2020 report envisages parallel regimes for the governance of personal and non-personal data although it does not appear to take into account how fluid the two forms of data are. The report's underlying principles also seem fairly ambiguous; the document suggests that 'regulation in India to establish rights over non-personal data collected and created in India' be 'simple, digital and unambiguous' in § 3.4(v) without specifying what it means by 'digital' or, indeed, why the regulations should be digital.  The comments contained in this write-up seek to engage with the principles which appear to underlie the December 2020 Draft Report by the Committee

ABSTRACT Copyright does not function in isolation. It is supported by contract law, and it is but one of the laws which governs content, its ownership, use, and dissemination. Focusing on broadcasts, whilst recognising that the processes applicable to them also apply to other forms of dissemination in modified form, this text describes, in broad strokes, the field in which negotiated grants of copyright function from a statutory point of view, describes what goes into attempting to ensure that content per se is ready for legal dissemination, and discusses how relationships between the various stakeholders are structured to facilitate such dissemination. A 20-page working paper (that's been on my device for a while) shared as-is :  available here via SSRN . Addendum, 2022 Also see: Content Clearance Form ( GoogleDocs via LinkedIn ) This post is by Nandita Saikia and was first published at IN Content Law . 

NOTE: These comments are based on first impressions of the law, and may be re-thought. Contents I.        Introduction .. 1 II.      Concerns about Criminal Provisions . 1              1.       The Specificity of Offences              2.       Definitional Issues              3.       Enforcement Processes              4.       Sentencing Guidelines              5.       Mens Rea and the Commission of Offences III.     Limitations to the De-Criminalisation Process . 11 (References to the Copyright Act are references to the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.) I.                   Introduction Indian criminal law relating to offences contemplated by its copyright statute does not appropriately address infringement: amongst other issues, it lacks nuance, is not always clear, and does not necessarily require that a person intend to commit a crime to be held guilty of it. Due to the textual ambiguity and doctrinal concerns inherent in the statut