The Indian Copyright Act Essay Example for Free

The Indian Copyright Act Essay Copyright accrues by virtue of authorship, which means that regardless of whether there is a public indication of copyright or the copyright has been registered, the exclusive rights of the author exists. Certain acts are not considered to be infringement of copyright. 1. A fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work not being a computer programme for the purposes of- -private use including research; -criticism or review, whether of that work or any other work 2. The making of copies or adaptation of a computer programme by the lawful possessor of a copy of such computer programme from such copy- -in order to utilize the computer programme for the purpose for which it was supplied; or -to make backup copies purely as a temporary protection against loss, destruction or damage in order only to utilize the computer programme for the purpose for which it was supplied. Fair dealing The doctrine of fair use seeks to balance out societal interests against the exclusive rights of the copyright holder. They allow for fair dealing for research, study, criticism, review and news reporting, wherein copyrighted material can be used without permission. The Act has a widely-worded clause for fair use, yet it is important to note that the rationale behind the clause is that society benefits more from the copyright infringement than from the grant of the exclusive right to the author in that situation; this implies that your use of copyrighted material must be a provable social benefit and it must credit the copyright holder. Further, the degree to which copyrighted content is used is also material to a fair use defence; large swathes of unaltered content being quoted would probably invite scrutiny. The Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2012, widens the scope of fair use by including all material (except computer programmes) as opposed to only â€Å"literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works† which were covered before. This implies that videos and sound recordings too, will now be covered by the fair-use exception.