Copyrights and Copywrongs

What do you understand by that word?
 

Why do you think copyright exists?

Who benefits from copyright?

How long does it last?

When does copyright arise?

Generally covers:

1. Reproduction
2. Issuing copies
3. Communicating to the public
4. Adaptation
5. Translation
6. Performance
7. (Rental, sometimes)

Who is an author?

Is the author a solitary genius?

… or are creative works socially created?

Epics

Sculptures

Philosophy

Poetry

Drama

"the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture"

"It is language that speaks, not the author"

–Roland Barthes

All creative work is derivative.

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different".

– T.S. Eliot

Required reading:
Jonathan Lethem's
"The Ecstasy of Influence"

Under law, author is sometimes the "creator", sometimes the "financier".

Complex history going back to 1710.

Why aren't directors or singers or actors granted copyright?

Hegelian justification

Lockean justification

Law-and-Economics justification

Public social good justification

Can intangible things be property?

Idea-expression dichotomy

(unlike patent law)

Tragedy of the commons?

or

Tragedy of the anticommons?

Initially, licence lasted 2 years.
Under Statute of Anne, 7 years.

Under Indian law, now:

Throughout author's life + 60 years after death.

Does this make sense if we view copyright as an incentive to create?

Thousands of copies are made in your computer, in RAM, etc.

Impossible not to violate copyright law.

Until 2011, search engines were illegal in India.
 

News companies accuse Google of being a free-rider.

(But aren't journalists free-riders?)

Technological protection measures.

Colonial legacy

Common law

Statutes in 1914 and 1957

Berne + TRIPS

International lock-in

• Section 14: What is covered by 'copyright'.

• Section 17: Default owner of copyright.

• Section 18: Assignment

• Sections 22-29: Term of copyright.

• Section 30: Licensing

• Sections 31-32B: Compulsory/statutory licensing

• Section 51: What counts as 'infringement'

• Section 52: Exceptions

• Section 57: Moral rights

52(1)(p): the reproduction, for the purpose of research or private study, or with a view to publication, of an unpublished literary, dramatic or musical works kept in a library, museum or other institution to which the public has access: Provided that where the identity of the author of any such work or, in the case of a work of joint authorship, of any of the authors is known to the library, museum or other institution, as the case may be, the provisions of this clause shall apply only if such reproduction is made at a time more than sixty years from the date of the death of the author or, in the case of a work of joint authorship, from the death of the author whose identity is known or, if the identity of more authors than one is known from the death of such of those authors who died last;