[LINK] Best copyright policies in the world? Try India

[Kim Holburn]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/best-copyright-policies-in-the-world-try-india.ars

>  When the US entertainment industry looks at India, it sees one  
> gigantic copyright problem. That's why it wants India to remain on  
> the US government's "Priority Watch List" for intellectual property  
> issues in 2010, and that's why it blasted the country's new  
> copyright proposals for (among other things) having too many legal  
> reasons to bypass DRM.
>
> But what happens when you look at India from the perspective of  
> culture and consumers? The country comes out number one.
>
> Finding your balance
> That's the result of the recent Consumers International "IP  
> Watchlist 2010," a document that hopes to balance the perspective of  
> the entertainment industry by looking at the same issues around the  
> world from the point of view of citizens' rights and access to  
> knowledge.
>
> Unfortunately for consumers, the study "is unable to report any  
> overall improvement in the global state of access to knowledge for  
> consumers in 2010. Rather, we see consumers' interests still being  
> sidelined as lawmakers rushed to meet the never-ending demands of  
> lobbyists for the entertainment and media conglomerates, who shaped  
> domestic and international laws with their hyperbolic talk of  
> piracy, theft, and organized crime."
>
...

>   When countries are ranked for consumer-friendly copyright regimes  
> by Consumers International, India, Lebanon, Israel, the United  
> States, and Indonesia topped the list. In the bottom 10 are  
> countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Kenya, and Japan. The  
> rankings don't correlate with national wealth, but the best-ranked  
> countries all have "copyright exceptions that are broad and  
> general" (like US fair use law) rather than limited and specific  
> exemptions.
>
> The drafters of the study aren't naive about piracy, but they  
> clearly don't see its effect through the same lens used by the big  
> copyright holders.
>
> "It is true that copyright infringement, particularly in the form of  
> physical media, is widespread in India," says the India country  
> report. "However this must be taken in the context that India,  
> although fast-growing, remains one of the poorest countries in the  
> world. Although India's knowledge and cultural productivity over the  
> centuries and to the present day has been rich and prodigious, its  
> citizens are economically disadvantaged as consumers of that same  
> knowledge and culture.
>
> "Indeed, most students, even in the so-called elite institutions,  
> need to employ photocopying and other such means to be able to  
> afford the requisite study materials. Physically challenged persons  
> have no option but to disobey the law that does not grant them equal  
> access to copyrighted works. Legitimate operating systems (with the  
> notable exception of most free and open source OSes) add a very high  
> overhead to the purchase of cheap computers, thus driving users to  
> pirated software. Thus, these phenomena need to be addressed not at  
> the level of enforcement, but at the level of supply of affordable  
> works in a suitable format."
>


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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