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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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).