Digital Wrongs

Imagine you are in the mood for some fun and so you create a spoof video, the sort that you find on YouTube everyday. If the changes proposed under the Indian Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010 come through, you won’t be able to do that.

The bill explicitly recognises the technology protection measures that publishers wrap around their content, commonly known as digital rights management (DRM), but without placing any limitations on it.

So there’s a good chance a parody clip that uses video clips from a news show or of a baby dancing to the tune of ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ could be taken down by over eager copyright owners.

Pranesh Prakash, a program manager with Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit civil society policy advocacy and research body, says such a scenario is perfectly possible under the proposed new law. “Providing legal backing to technological protection measures without imposing appropriate duties means that companies can effectively expand their rights to whatever technology can do. It’s a ridiculous situation,” he says.

“Our basic principle is that generally large corporations have the wherewithal to go to court and get orders, but individuals don’t. That balance must be maintained in the law, that everything isn’t presumptively violative of the law,” says Prakash.