Posts
Copyrights and
Copywrongs
Why
the Government Should Embrace the Public Domain
When
copyright doesn’t serve public welfare, states must intervene, and the law must
change to promote human rights, the freedom of expression and to receive and
impart information, and to protect authors and consumers
Each of you reading this article is a criminal
and should be jailed for up to three years. Yes, you. “Why?,” you may ask.
Have
you ever whistled a tune or sung a film song aloud? Have you ever retold a
joke? Have you replied to an e-mail without deleting the copy of that e-mail
that automatically added to the reply? Or photocopied pages from a book? Have
you ever used an image from the Internet in presentation? Have you ever surfed
the Internet at work, used the ‘share’ button on a website, or re-tweeted
anything on Twitter? And before 2012, did you ever use a search engine?
If
you have done any of the above without the permission of the copyright holder,
you might well have been in violation of the Indian Copyright Act, since in each of those
examples you’re creating a copy or are otherwise infringing the rights of the
copyright holder. Interestingly, it was only through an amendment in 2012 that
search engines (like Google and Yahoo) were legalized.
Traditional
Justifications for Copyright
