Intro⤵️↑
Copy-Rights
- A copyright gives the holder a sole and exclusive right over some work. If the copyright work is protected, no one can replicate, copy, imitate or reproduce the owner’s original work in any other manner.
Who holds copyright?
- “As a general principle, although copyright originally belongs to the author, at the time of publication it is transferred to the publisher, or at least the publisher requests from the author an exclusive license / monopoly on distribution. (I think in the US, copyright always ultimately rests with the author and it’s just that the author is constrained by the terms of their agreement with the publisher, but in India I believe copyright is usually transferred to the publisher entirely.)”
- Status of works of the government. In many (but not all) countries, documents published by the government for official use are in the public domain.
Derivatives
- Copyright emanates from the author, not from scribes.
- The owner of copyright holds rights to all derived works, including translations and expressions in other media. Simply typing some text in, irrespective of the thought that went into devising the tranliteration, would not qualify as adequate for copyrighting.
- Once a text passes into public domain, simply expressing it a new medium cannot make it copyrightable, except for new creative work that goes into it: You can copyright a new tune to a song in public domain, but you cannot copyright the songs in an electronic version of `Mother Goose Rhymes’, simply because you took the trouble to type them in. [You can copyright the compilation qua compilation, but not the individual songs.]
Publishing rights
If reproduction is explicitly barred, there will be a note stating something like “All rights reserved”. If it is explicitly allowed, there will be some reference to a license like cc-by-nc .
Registration
- In India, it is not mandatory to register Copyright as the registration is treated only as a record of the fact. The registration of ownership shall be considered “proof of ownership”. Registration of a copyright can currently take a time of upto 1 to 1 ½ years.
Enforcement
- If the copywrite holder feels his or her rights are violated its he or she who need to take up the issue. Let others not decide what is one rights. Some orgs are founded for something beyond profit and survival for its own sake.
- “So, whatever the authors’ wishes, it is ultimately the publishers’ wishes that need to be taken into account. (And it makes sense, as it’s the publisher who is primarily making money from selling the book – the author may often get nothing from each additional copy of the book sold, if they were paid everything in advance, or they may get only a small fraction, as royalties – and it’s the publisher who can have concerns about their revenue stream being disrupted.)”
- Almost all countries in the world are party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (see here for the text). Following this convention, countries enforce copyrights from other countries, according to certain rules.
Validity
- In most countries, copyright expires no later than 70 years after the death of the author (p.m.a.). There may be special terms for recently published old material.
India
Publisher rights reverting to the author
only recently our publishers have started getting the rights documented. (I mean getting the actual agreements done). Also, as per the Indian copyright law, minimum term for it is 5 years. IF agreed on paper it can go beyond. Digital rights for ebook and audio book etc are extra. If they have exclusive rights then they should compensate accordingly and mention that in agreement.
if it is not otherwise mentioned, publisher’s rights expire in 5 years and lapse back to author. That’s what copyright law says when you try to register the copyright for a work on government portal. (Note: it a paid activity which is avoided to save money) instead they go for bond paper related agreement like property! - omshivaprakash
Rights regarding copyrighted literary work
[Handbook here] says:
In the case of a literary work (except computer programme), copyright means the exclusive right
- To reproduce the work
- To issue copies of the work to the public
- To perform the work in public
- To communicate the work to the public.
- To make cinematograph film or sound recording in respect of the work
- To make any translation of the work
- To make any adaptation of the work.
All the rights of the original work apply to a translation also. A person cannot translate a work enjoying copyright without the permission of the copyright owner.
These rights are mitigated by “compulsary licenses”.
Acquisition
Copyright comes into existence as soon as a work is created and no formality is required to be completed for acquiring copyright. However, certificate of registration of copyright and the entries made therein serve as prima facie evidence in a court of law with reference to dispute relating to ownership of copyright.
Duration
- India has had their own copyright law since the 1840s; it is generally similar to whatever the UK act was (they kept it updated), but it was separate. They have been a member of the Berne Convention (again separate from the UK) since 1928.
- The general rule is that copyright lasts for 60 years. (max(author’s death, publication) + 60 years)
- In the case of original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works the 60-year period is counted from the year following the death of the author.
- In the case of cinematograph films, sound recordings, photographs, posthumous publications, anonymous and pseudonymous publications, works of government and works of international organisations, the 60-year period is counted from the date of publication. [Handbook here.]
Enforcement
A copyright owner can take legal action against any person who infringes the copyright in the work. The copyright owner is entitled to remedies by way of injunctions, damages and accounts.
Any person who knowingly infringes or abets the infringement of the copyright in any work commits criminal offence under Section 63 of the Copyright Act. The minimum punishment for infringement of copyright is imprisonment for six months with the minimum fine of Rs. 50,000/-. In the case of a second and subsequent conviction the minimum punishment is imprisonment for one year and fine of Rs. one lakh. [Handbook here.]
Copyright society
Collective administration of copyright is a concept where management and protection of copyright in works are undertook by a society of owners of such works. Obviously no owner of copyright in any work can keep track of all the uses others make of his work. When he becomes a member of a national copyright society, that society, because of its organisational facilities and strength, is able to keep a better vigil over the uses made of that work throughout the country and collect due royalties from the users of those works. Because of the country’s membership in international conventions, the copyright societies are able to have reciprocal agreements with similar societies in other countries for collecting royalties for the uses of Indian works in those countries. From this it can automatically be inferred that it will be in the interests of copyright owners to join a collective administration organisation to ensure better protection to the copyright in their works and for reaping optimum economic benefits from their creations. Users of different types of works also find it easy to obtain licences for legal exploitation of the works in question, though the collective administrative society. [Handbook here.]
Copyright board
Can grant compulsory licenses.
- grant compulsory licences to publish or republish works (in certain circumstances);
- grant compulsory licence to produce and publish a translation of a literary or dramatic work in any language after a period of seven years from the first publication of the work;
- fix rates of royalties in respect of sound recordings under the cover-version provision
Pre 1957 works
“Parliament passed an amendment in 1992 to Section 22 of the Copyright Act 1957, according to which copyright shall subsist in any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work published within the lifetime of the author until 60 years from…the year in which the author dies. But inadvertently, the amendment has failed to extend copyrights of works published before 1957. Before the Copyright Act, 1957 came into force on January 21, 1958, the copyright of Tagore’s works was governed by the earlier Copyright Act, 1914. … In other words, the term of any copyright under the earlier act shall be as prescribed under the earlier law as if the 1957 act had not come into force. Under Section 3 of the earlier act, the term of the copyright was to be the life of the author and a period of 50 years after his death. … This would have been the position, even without the provisions of Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, which says that the repeal of an act shall not affect the previous operation of the enactment so repealed.” “There is also the decision of the division bench of the Allahabad high court in Newspapers Ltd vs Ratna Shankar (AIR 1977) which says that all copyrights from the time immediately before the commencement of the act of 1957 shall continue to be governed by the provisions of the earlier Copyright Act, 1914.” [TI].
- Wiki-uploads - use {{PD-India}}.
Exemptions
Some of the exemptions are the uses of the work according to [Handbook here.]
- for the purpose of research or private study,
- for criticism or review,
- for reporting current events,
- in connection with judicial proceeding,
- performance by an amateur club or society if the performance is given to a non-paying audience, and
- the making of sound recordings of literary, dramatic or musical works under certain conditions.
USA
- min(95 years from publication, ).
- “The Uruguay Round Agreements Act or URAA is a US law that restored copyrights in the U.S. on foreign works if those works were still copyrighted in the foreign source country on the URAA date.”
- Works published before 1923 are not affected.
Infrigement notification⤴️↑
From Lib Genesis:
If you believe that your copyrighted work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement and is accessible on this site, you may notify our copyright agent, as set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). For your complaint to be valid under the DMCA, you must provide the following information when providing notice of the claimed copyright infringement:
- A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed
- Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity and that is to be removed
- Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address
- A statement that the complaining party “in good faith believes that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or law”
- A statement that the “information in the notification is accurate”, and “under penalty of perjury, the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed”. The above information must be submitted as a written, faxed or emailed notification to the following Designated Agent XYZ