Indian Copyright Bill Declares Private, Personal Copying "Fair Dealing"

asp7yxia writes "India's new copyright bill sounds like a pretty good piece of work: it declares private, personal copying to be 'fair dealing' (like US fair use) and limits the prohibition on breaking DRM so that it's only illegal to do so if you're also violating copyright."

Comments

+1 post of referral mastery

[Anonymous Coward]

A link to boingboing that links to a blog that links to the WSJ blog post that actually talks about the topic. Way to go.

Re:+1 post of referral mastery

[TheRaven64]

Or, in short: If nobody reads TFA, does it truly link to a blog with no information content?

Indian Copyright Bill

[koona]

Am I the only one out here that has noticed that where people really have to work hard, they don't put up with much bullshit? Any indian will tell you that america is a fools paradise, and we put up with so much malarky it's sickening.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[thePig]

Even now, any Indian would wet themselves at the prospect of being able to work in America.

producing little creative output(in before Slumdog)

I take that you do not know too much about India. I think it is short sighted to talk about a country you have not lived in for atleast few years. Whatever you think as true, might not be, you know.

I am an Indian, and I have lots of friends who went to USA, came back and do not want to go back there. Lest you think it is just anecdotal evidence, Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs and Steel has quite a bit of literature specifically set for this scenario. His finding was that, even though living in developed countries provide you better healthcare and even better security, the overall quality of living actually is same or even lesser in developed economies compared to developing economies*.

The overall quality of life is determined by lots of factors - one of the most important being relations. Humans seems to be most happy with very close and extended families and lot of friends, which is usually lost in western cultures. Most of my friends are back here because they want to be home.

Regarding creative output, I would have to say that you are quite wrong in that aspect. Also it is not correct to calculate creativity based on how many hollywood movies that country has come up with.

We have our own genres of music, two of the most popular being Carnatic and hindustani, we have our own genres of dances, the most important eight being Kathakali, Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Manipuri, Sattriya and Kathak.

Please note that these are only the major ones known throughout India. Each state has completely different set of dances and music associated with it which people follow widely. In addition to these we have good literature movement, very good drama movement and each state has their own movie system too. India has more than 20 major languages, so the movies are usually made for one language only - i.e. why it is not appreciated much outside the country.

What I would suggest is do not go just by what best sellers and media portray - the actuality might be very different. Also, please consider that what you consider as happiness might not be the only scale with which others measure theirs.

* Unless they are in poverty.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[Rogerborg]

producing little creative output(in before Slumdog)

You fail an Internets. Bollywood "creates" nearly twice as many films as Hollywood, which are watched by many more people. I guess you wouldn't class them as real movies, since they haven't figured out that the real business is in marketing and moichandising.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[AK Marc]

Even now, any Indian would wet themselves at the prospect of being able to work in America.

That's a false dichotomy. You make it sound like there's only two choices, live there or move to the US and they'd pick the US. What about the UK or Australia? Or (aside from the language barrier) Germany, France, or anywhere else in the EU for that matter? And I know plenty of Americans that drool of working in UAE for the high pay and tax-free status.

The only ones that want to go to the US are the ones that buy the lies that it's easier to start a business of your own in the US and make a fortune from it. But for anyone that wants to "work" somewhere for a paycheck, the US should be somewhere in the top 20, but not the top one, unless you have specific requirements for language and other things (like climate, I'm not a fan of the UK climate). How would you list the top countries to work if you could work anywhere without regard to language and such?

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[man1sh]

Also, please consider that what you consider as happiness might not be the only scale with which others measure theirs.

Correct Raj. Having more shopping malls is not a measure of development and progress. More people eating in McDonalds and KFC doesn't make India a happy nation. For India, happiness is mostly achieved by living together in family. You share your success and failures with family and lots more. It's more of a social issue rather than eating in subway or KFC.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[SpeedyDX]

I'm not going to argue that the GP is right or wrong - I haven't talked to many Indians, I have no clue.

However, I will say that being politically active is not necessarily being politically effective. The U.S. has two major parties. Two major candidates compete for the Presidential election, getting anywhere from 95-99% of the total popular vote. You have two choices: right or left? And most of the rest of the world doesn't consider your left-wing choice to even fall left of centre of their respective political spectra. Where's your choice? Where's your freedom? Where's your free market? Politics in the U.S. is a duopoly. It's certainly better than a monopoly, no doubt about that. But how much better is it? How effective is political activism when you only have two real choices?

(Aside. Granted, the nature of the American republic allows for markedly different governance at the level of states. I'm painting an overly broad stroke, and the degree to which there is separation of powers between federal and state levels is a significant advantage that the American republic has. But at least on the federal level, where copyright law resides to the best of my understanding, there are only two real choices. Actually, come to think of it, you might have less choice than you think: the American constitution is written in such a way as to oblige - in theory with considerable exceptions that would take too long to discuss here - the federal government to follow international treaties that it has ratified.)

I won't pretend to speak for other nations, with the exception that I know that there are at least several, to put it mildly, political parties in India. However, in Canada we have four (foreseeably five in the next election) parties that may prove to have a significant share of seats in Parliament. While the NDP and Bloc (failed at figuring out how to directly link due to /.'s encoding) are generally not in the running to form government, they sometimes find themselves with the balance of power during minority governments when the two dominant parties (Liberals and Conservatives) are in a power struggle. Granted, this doesn't happen very often, but because of the significant minorities that they hold, they generally have at least a bit of political clout.

Tommy Douglas is an important example. He was a social democratic (first leader of the NDP) politician who had, arguably, one of the greatest impacts in Canada's political history. He was the first leader/head of any government in Canada to propose that we constitutionally guarantee certain inviolable rights, which ultimately led to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (since our Charter is part of our constitution, it is - again, in theory and with exceptions - supreme over other laws). He's also now widely recognized as the "father" of universal health care in Canada. He helped to accomplish and realize these two important (and many would consider essentially Canadian) feats without his party ever forming government at the federal level.

This is the power of choice in politics. This is an illustration of effective political activism on the part of social democratic supporters in the mid-90s. In Canada, at least, our expectation is that government will step in place to address the power asymmetry that arises between the industry and the consumer when competition in the markets fails.

(Aside. What happens when competition in government fails and there's a significant power asymmetry between politicians and citizens?)

Finally getting to my on-topic points. Now, again, I have little k

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[Hognoxious]

Bollywood "creates" nearly twice as many films as Hollywood

You were 100% correct to put the scare quotes there.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Why do you think we yanks rose to world power status so quickly, relatively speaking? From the Revolutionary War all the way up through WWII we still had to work hard, and we didn't put up with much bullshit. =P

However, as a society grows and prospers, it becomes easier to survive by doing less. Nowhere else in the world, right now, can someone have so much comfort for so little an effort as in the USA. Thus, more folk are raised with less work ethic. More folk migrate to the prosperous society where they don't have to work hard. The ratio of folk that work hard and contribute to the growth of society vs. those who don't, decreases overall, and great nations crumble. This has happened hundreds of times in history before. One day, maybe, we'll learn how to outgrow such a lame habit.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[Jiro]

I'm fairly sure that, having seen what the Mumbai slums look like, that they're about as awesome as being homeless.

Look at that little footnote indicated by the *. "Unless they are in poverty."

That's the footnote that swallows the rule. Mumbai slums are already being excluded.

Of course developing countries are great if you're not in poverty--the problem with developing countries is that there is a lot more poverty in the first place. And if you're not part of it, you can take advantage of it via cheap prices, cheap labor, etc.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[perryizgr8]

Also, please consider that what you consider as happiness might not be the only scale with which others measure theirs.

Correct Raj. Having more shopping malls is not a measure of development and progress. More people eating in McDonalds and KFC doesn't make India a happy nation. For India, happiness is mostly achieved by living together in family. You share your success and failures with family and lots more. It's more of a social issue rather than eating in subway or KFC.

you can't say that on behalf of the whole of india. i am an indian and those exact things (kfc, mcd, malls) make me happy. i hate the family culture here, it is just too full of hypocrisy. and believe me, most of my peers think like this too. i suspect people like you are in the minority.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[megrims]

But perhaps I'm just being a closed-minded ethnocentric pig.

Nail, on the head.

There's very little purpose to the 'my culture is better than your culture' rant, and this was one of the less reasonable ones that I've seen.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[thePig]

Sorry, if my previous mail looked too nationalistic. I am a person who wants to be a global citizen in my views; even though I dont succeed all the time.

I completely agree that it sucks to live in most places - esp if you are quite poor. What I was just trying to say in my original post was that there are many other things which people do not consider when they ponder about happiness. I myself was not aware of it until I read Jared. So, I was just trying to put it forward.

Again, sorry if my mail looked like I was being too nationalistic. I myself wants to come to US for Ph.D in say 4-5 years, because I consider the educational institutions in US much better than that of India. So, as you can see, my intent was not to disparage US or not to put India in a pedestal. Just that different countries have different positives and negatives.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also worth noting that we've had, what, 3 successive minority governments in Canada over the last several years -- i.e. where the party in power does not have majority control over parliament. We're always told by the main parties (especially the governing ones) that minority governments are bad, but, honestly, it has meant that all the parties have to get along reasonably well because of an interesting balance. On one hand they have to make deals with the parties in opposition to them (bad), and on the other hand if the governing party falls because of a non-confidence vote (basically they can't get along anymore), they would have to face a new election which the Canadian people emphatically DO NOT WANT (worse). It's the one thing that Canadians agree on -- we do not want another election simply because our politicians fail to get along. The politicians are trapped up there in Ottawa, forced to get along, because they know that any party that precipitated an election without really good reasons would take a substantial beating at the polls. If the governing party tries to push something through that is unpopular -- bad idea. If the opposition parties try to oppose something for petty reasons -- also a bad idea. The government business is still happening, but the government in power has to be more responsive to public opinion and opposition views than normal. I love it.

The relevance to the issue here is instructive: there have been 2 tries to revised copyright law to make it compatible with the WIPO treaty. Both tries have included awful or botched versions of DMCA-like legislation (e.g., granting rights on one hand but making them impossible to legally exercise because of anti-circumvention rules). One was with a Liberal minority government, the other with a Conservative minority government. The public outrage has grown stronger each time, and both bills died on the order table (essentially: presented to parliament but not passed). If we had had a majority government either of those times I'm sure the bills would have been rammed through and we would have had DMCA-style copyright law in Canada. Minority government is the main reason we still don't have DMCA-style anti-circumvention laws in Canada.

So, don't dread >2-party systems, just make sure the politicians understand that they have to get along or you'll take it out of them at the polls. These systems work fine when the usual requirement is there: a public that holds them accountable. When all you do is flip between one or the other of 2 options, that's harder, but having a third party that is NOT the governing party still means they can have a major amount of influence. They don't have to "win" to matter a great deal.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

"Having seen what the Mumbai slums look like" -- where? In a movie?

The poor in Mumbai aren't all beggars waiting for a handout. Dharavi in Mumbai is the largest slum in Asia, but it is also one of the most productive places in the city, generating a revenue of a billion dollars a year.

Also 85% of its households have a television.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[brunes69]

I take it you have never lived in Western Europe... where it is standard to have university payed for, 6-8 weeks mandatory vacation, national strong unions, free health care, and a social safety net large enough to hold a blue wale if you do in fact get fired.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[TheRaven64]

Keep in mind that all of these stories are from off-shoring efforts that are awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. If you work at the kind of company that takes these contracts in India, and you are above average, you quickly get head hunted by one of the better ones. If you are above average there, then you realise that you can move out of India for a few years, then return having made enough to retire by your mid 30s. The result is that you end up with companies full of highly motivated people who aren't competent enough to get a better job, taking contracts from foreign companies (who typically don't have any process in place to assess competence before hiring them), and doing a bad job. You can easily find similar levels of incompetence in the USA or EU (just see the daily WTF for countless examples), but these people are much less likely to be hired because they will be interviewed in person.

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[Dr_Barnowl]

Why do you think we yanks rose to world power status so quickly, relatively speaking?

A clean-slate advantage, vast tracts of relatively unpopulated land and natural resources, coupled with a rapidly advancing technology base?

Re:Indian Copyright Bill

[oliverthered]

Are you using a capitalist model to define poverty or some other kind of model.

For instance there are much higher rates of mental health problems in so called developed countries, that's a strong indicator that there is in-fact a much higher level of poverty in areas where it actually makes your life better, such as happiness.

I believe that western countries are actually significantly poorer (maybe not in capitalist terms) and there;s a lot of evidence to back that up. Our gross contribution to global warming is also increasing poverty around the globe as is our resource hungry lifestyle. A lifestyle in which ownership and having the next best thing is the way in which happiness is achieved, but we don't appear to be doing very well on that front.

A surprisingly well thought out law

[Fallen Kell]

Seriously, if the description given here is what it truly does, then this seems like a good law. Now if only the USA government would pass something like this which would put some balance back into copyright. The breaking of DRM only being illegal when you break copyright, and with it legal to make personal copies, it means people are free to break the DRM of things they bought, like making a backup copy of a movie, or ripping a movie for use on a HTPC without the need of the DVD in the HTPC (or blu-ray, or itunes songs, etc., etc.). Because all you are doing is using the item that you purchased for yourself, and you are free to use it in any way that you want, not simply the way that the copyright owner thinks you should be able to use it.

Re:A surprisingly well thought out law

[fm6]

Not surprising if you realize that third-world countries are badly hurt by IP hoarding. It means they have to pay too much for books, technology, drugs, etc., unless they choose to pirate — which, of course, they often do.

I'm particularly grateful to India for their knockoff drugs. I don't understand all the legalities, but because of the difference in the way patents work in India, it's perfectly legal to reverse-engineer a patented drug and invent your own process for making it. In 2005, they changed the law so that patent holders can force makers of such unauthorized generics to pay royalties, but they still can't stop them altogether, the way they can in the U.S. As a result, unauthorized Indian generics are available for many drugs still under patent, at extremely low prices.

This affected me personally a few years back when I was unemployed, close to broke, and needed to be using a fairly expensive drug on a daily basis. It was particularly galling that the original patent on the drug had expired, but the company had managed to create new patents on the manufacturing process that still gave them exclusive rights. Fortunately, the same drug was available from India for a fraction of the cost. The downside was that my phone was obtained by various mercenary Indian call centers, possibly including the one you saw in Slumdog Millionair.

SuddenOutbreakOf...

[heretic108]

Hmm, lemme see... wise and profound old culture, who invented our modern numbering system over 2000 years ago, writes a copyright law in the 21st century addressing contemporary technology issues, and gets it substantially right.

Why am I not surprised?

Re:SuddenOutbreakOf...

[nbharatvarma]

Disclaimer : I am an Indian.

I didn't want to respond, but I thought a bit of a perspective might help.

You know, there is a constant attempt to try and get rid of this problem. The solution to this problem is education and education is only now showing signs of improvement. As the GP mentioned, India has a very old culture and only in the last 50 years or so the country has been trying to get rid of this problem. Looking at the progress we made, we should be able to eradicate most of it in another 50 years.

Can you say the same of other countries ? It is not that long ago that the U.S. managed to mostly solve apartheid. How long did that take since the country gained its independence ? 200 years ? The U.S. by and large was made of immigrants. That means those guys went through hardships and came to the U.S. You would think they would have minimum common sense of how to treat other people. That didn't work out very well for colored people, did it ?

Humans are by and large animals. The only solution is education. Education takes time.

Re:SuddenOutbreakOf...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am really tried of hearing this repeated on Slashdot. Let me make this clear... the caste system was made illegal more than 50 years ago, and it has literally became non-existent about 20-30 years. I myself was born in what would have been considered lower caste a few decades ago. I have never felt any of the oppression or any dam thing you could come up with (though some of the relatives have enjoyed the special reservations available in top schools, claiming to be from backward castes)

The caste system originally denoted the field of work you were in. Which is broadly Kings/Warriors, Priests, Traders/Agriculturalist, Artists/Service_Providers. If you are born to a potter, you will learn the art of pottery right from your childhood from your father. This was all the system was all about.

This was very recently twisted to classify low wage earning people into untouchables. This was nothing more than abuse of power by certain sects of the society, which mostly has returned to normal.

Re:SuddenOutbreakOf...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, a profound culture that still enforces a cast system, which says if you are born to a family that eats rats, that's all your ever allowed to be. one that uses child labour and has an active human slave trade.

It's quite apparent you don't live in India and go by what you read someplace about history, because not much of this is true today.

'Backward castes' of yester-year have outrageous affirmative action rights in India today. There is reservation in every sector for them regardless of their performance. People from these so called historical 'backward classes' are among the richest in India. You have a 'forward caste' student who works hard at his studies, but can't get into a college because a good percent of seats are reserved for 'backward classes' regardless of their performance. Reservation was probably necessary many decades ago, but not in this country today. But still these castes want more, because it suits them.

When you have a leader of backward classes spending state money to build and protect statues of herself, and wearing money garlands worth millions of dollars made of 1000 rupee notes, you know how good it has become.

But I post this anonymously, because it isn't politically correct to speak ill of affirmative action, or party leaders.

Please stop talking badly about the caste system in India. It may exist in some rare cases, but is not the general way of life now.

And I don't think anyone is forced to eat rats in India. I hope not :) I don't think so many rats are available to feed the populace.

Use of child labour is unfortunately true in some places, especially for domestic work. Child labour is illegal in law. If you know of any instances of child labour taking place, call 1098 in India and report it.

I'm surprised that you mention slave trade in India, because I have never heard of it. Still, if it exists, I don't think it would be any different than the numbers in other countries.

Note: I am an Indian citizen and have lived in this country for about 24 years. I love this country to bits for how this hard-earned freedom means something here. I didn't give up my citizenship for that of another commonwealth country, because my fundamental rights as a citizen here are worth more than anywhere else in the world. But I also feel sad for the state of some things in the country today.

Re:SuddenOutbreakOf...

[Crysalim]

Disclaimer : I am an Indian.

I didn't want to respond, but I thought a bit of a perspective might help.

You know, there is a constant attempt to try and get rid of this problem. The solution to this problem is education and education is only now showing signs of improvement. As the GP mentioned, India has a very old culture and only in the last 50 years or so the country has been trying to get rid of this problem. Looking at the progress we made, we should be able to eradicate most of it in another 50 years.

Can you say the same of other countries ? It is not that long ago that the U.S. managed to mostly solve apartheid. How long did that take since the country gained its independence ? 200 years ? The U.S. by and large was made of immigrants. That means those guys went through hardships and came to the U.S. You would think they would have minimum common sense of how to treat other people. That didn't work out very well for colored people, did it ?

Humans are by and large animals. The only solution is education. Education takes time.

Wow, this is when I wish there was a special +6 rating for comments. Very well said.

Re:SuddenOutbreakOf...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an observation that my sister made when she was in the UK for a year which might help you put things into perspective.

We belong to a backward caste, a reality which never really struck us because that sort of culture simply wasn't visible around us. Through our entire life no one asked us what our caste was, but when my sister went to the UK, every Indian would, for some weird reason, ask her what her caste was and revel in the fact that they were a higher caste. The reason for this is that they know India as it was many years ago, when caste system was much more prevalent than it is today. Also, being away from home they have a tendency to cling on to their "roots".

As for the ground reality here in India, yes caste system is still a reality and also leads to murders in some places in the country. But it is about as bad as racism in any western country. So when you call caste system an evil thing in India that makes it an unfit culture to live in, it really becomes a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Re:say again!

[cosm]

So it's not illegle to to brake the copyright unless you break the copyright.

Firstly, there are so many things grammatically wrong with that statequestionment-sentence-rhetorical-grammarfuck. Secondly, what about accelerating it?

If it's true...

[The New Black]

maybe the US should outsource law-making for a day.

What about ACTA ?

[ProdigyPuNk]

How will this effect future relations with ACTA countries ? Depending on the wording of ACTA, this could end up having a rather large effect since ACTA does not take the same stance as far as this goes...

Re:What about ACTA ?

[bbqsrc]

India is not involved with ACTA. Most of Asia is not involved with ACTA. ACTA will only affect the consumer as far as I can see, and it sucks.

Re:What about ACTA ?

[Luckyo]

Also, India isn't even involved in WIPO, ACTA's predecessor. This hasn't stopped RIAA and co from claiming that it infringes WIPO and shoving it on all kinds of black lists for that reason.
ACTA is mostly about western countries. Most of the developing countries are still coming to terms with WIPO, if they signed it.

Wonder why ...

[CalcuttaWala]

this is not such a big deal here in India ! strange that i had to hear it in ./ and not in the national press

Re:Wonder why ...

[AHuxley]

India has nothing to lose internally at this point.
Think back to pharma in India.
India needed cheap, quality drugs without the R and D backend to treat its population.
India did not have an export market for its own R and D, just the tech to produce very cheap drugs.
So India pumped out drugs for its needs and noted other countries wanted them too.
Suddenly what was an internal medical matter was a profit making dream.
With profit came R and D and finally India had its own big pharma.
Then came the fun part. India slipped from a free for all to a drug protecting world player with the international standing to enforce R and D.
The profits from internal use where looking to be less than the projected profits from new drugs to the protected world market.
Until India has their own exporting Adobe, MS, Apple ect, why pay for software on the international market?
All paying for very expensive imported software does is hurt the current account deficit.
Copy it for free, let your children and pros learn.
When India has a software exporting sector, then they will do the math for trade protection.

But...

[laughingcoyote]

There's always something, and this bill's got quite a "something" in it. This is India's very own version of our Mickey Mouse Copyright Perpetuation Act (ostensibly having something to do with Sonny Bono, but we all know who it really was for...), and extends a fixed 60-year term to life plus 60 (see sidebar here.

Why in the world would we want to see copyrights get longer, anywhere? They obviously already provide an incentive at current levels. Even ten years should be an adequate incentive for 99.9% of cases, and you never want to write law based on the edge cases. With digital distribution speeding up how quickly a work can have its initial distribution, copyright terms should be shrinking, not growing.

Tolerance!, and an appreciation for freedom..

[qwerty8ytrewq]

This is such a great, simple resolution. The current copyright greed is out of control, based on a 'because we can' model. I was very inspired by http://www.ripremix.com/ . Changes in this stuff is essential for progress of global culture. Go India. PDF is here http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4974/196/ for those who want to look further.

and it doesnt exist in united states ?

[unity100]

huh ? you think so ? you think that, only because the storefront is different, and, you are allowed vertical social mobility in appearance, you do not live in a caste system ?

in your country, top 5% of the society has 74% of financial wealth. similar applies for income and total wealth. note that, financial wealth is much important because they are major tools for generating more wealth (investments, interest, instruments) and getting even richer.

so you live in this country, where 80% of society does with approx 15% of wealth. and in that country EVERYthing costs money. education costs money. a lot, so that if you dont find a scholarship, you start life deeply in debt. if you do find a scholarship you probably start life as an indentured servant. to start life without being bonded or indebted you have to be in the very, very tiny genious margin of 1/1000 of society. how many people are in there ? are you ?

staying alive costs money. getting a nose patched can cost an arm and a leg. (until the recent healthcare bill of yours), it was possible that you could be denied treatment even if you were able to pay your insurance payments, even if you were a kid.

rents cost arm and a leg. everything is sold from exorbitant prices despite being manufactured in china for dimes.

so. tell me.

are you fool enough to believe that a caste system in a country which 5% has 74% of wealth and 80% of society does with 15%, does not exist ? it was better in medieval code for fuck's sakes - serf was legally and customarily entitled to 33% of the produce from the farm they tilled for their lord ...

Offtopic

[mcgrew]

Is anyone actually going to discuss the subject at hand -- copyright? Regardless of the cultural differences, ALL countries should follow India's lead. Why should noncommercial copying be illegal? If I'm not going to buy it, you won't lose money. People will buy it if it's worth buying. Read Doctorow's site, please (Little Brother is a good start).