Response to the Proposed Amendment to the Copyright Act 1957
The Indian Government is planning to amend the Copyright Act 1957. We have drafted a critique and response to the proposed amendment, and forwarded the same to the government of India. In this folder you can find all the relevant links and documents around the proposed amendment.
Draft of Proposed Amendments
The draft amendments can be found here.
Responses to the proposed amendment
Access to knowledge and cultural goods is critical to ensure full participation of the public in political and cultural life and to ensure benefit to them from any scientific and technological advancement. The copyright system seeks to promote the efficient dissemination of knowledge in the public domain by maintaining a balance between enabling rewards to producers of knowledge on the one hand, and access to these copyright goods for the public, on the other. It is therefore critical that laws pertaining to copyright in any country be drafted in a manner that best ensures an ideal balance between public and private interest. This review seeks to examine the implications of the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act 1957, as well as to re-examine some of the existing provisions from a public interest perspective. This review was drafted at the Alternative Law Forum (“ALF”) by Lawrence Liang, Achal Prabhala and Nirmita Narasimhan, and is supported by important consumer-rights organisations, disabled-rights groups, film producers’ associations, NGOs and universities from across India.