Copyright for Online Environment

Information Technology is a boon Science has given us to make ourselves easy with source of knowledge that we have around us. Internet is the source of technology has t led to proliferation of e-businesses due to its cost effectiveness, accessibility, convenience and vast user base. Internet has become great platform for Start up enterprises and Medium size businesses to efficaciously showcase its products and services.

Knowledge and information has ease of duplicating it along with anonymity pose a continuous threat to the protection of Intellectual property rights including copyrights on the internet. Copying of trademarks, service marks protected by (Trademark Act, 1999) or Intellectual property infringements in cyberspace may comprise of any unauthorised use original music , art work, films, , multimedia, software or literary matter ( protected by the Copyright Act, 1957).

Certain issues need to be faced by the unique matrix of the cyberspace has produced different categories of infringements including, Framing, Deep linking, Piracy of Software, Music, Video, other Digital Copyrights infringements. WIPO (World Intellectual property organization) is an international for intellectual property that have made important initiatives to bring harmonization in copyright regimes across various jurisdictions.

Protection of Computer software is done under guidelines of literary work and so are computer databases as per Section 2(o) of Copyright Act, 1957.When looking at the Original database is also protected by copyright.

Copyright issues

• Perform and display publicly the copyright work.
• Store the information in a tangible form.
• Sell, rent, lease, or otherwise distribute copies of the copyright work to the public.
• Reproduce the copyrighted work.
• Prepare derivative works based on the copyright work.

Internet is used for browsing, downloading, uploading, file-swapping, caching, mirroring, etc. Really infringe the exclusive rights of owner. There are many results -

• Violation of the copyright owners exclusive distribution right.
• Transmission of information from one computer system or network to another, involving temporary storage (RAM) of that information.
• An appearance of a copyright image in a web browser infringing the owners public display right.
• An infringement of the owners exclusive right to prepare derivative works.
• An unauthorized storage of such information is a violation of the owners exclusive right to make copies, to reproduce the copyrighted work.

Indian Legal Provision

Some people take things for granted that they can download, reproduce and transmit on the internet. There are certain misconceptions and amounts to unauthorized downloading and infringement of the creator's copyright. Rules and regulations are governed by IT Act, 2000.In that the section imposes a liability of up to Rs 1 crore upon a person who unlawfully downloads data. The compensation is payable to the person affected. Thus there is a radical overhauling of Indian Copyright Act, 1957 as well as the IT Act, 2000, specially the conceptual ambit, contents of rights and liability redressal.

Author: Dushyant Sharma

Hey there, I'm Dushyant Sharma. With the extensive knowledge I've gained in past 8 years, I have been creating content on various subjects such as banking, insurance, telecom, and all the important registration and licensing processes for various companies. I'm here to help everyone with my expertise in these areas through my articles.