Infringement of Copyright in Cyberspace: A Critical Study

Abstract

One of the objectives of the copyright law is to promote individual interest. This involves providing incentives to the authors to encourage creation of new works. Recognition of the authorship of the work and ensuring economic returns through the copyright law is intended to achieve this. But technological changes always created challenges to the basic principles of copyright law. An application of copyright law to digital information has become critical. Infringement of copy rights over the Internet is one of them. As per Section 13 and 63 of Indian Copyright Act1957, literary works, pictures, sound recordings and other creative works are protected from being copied without the permission of the copyright holder. It is yet unclear how copyright law governs or will govern these materials as they appear on the internet. Though there are provisions in the I.T. Act 2000. But it is not possible on the internet to have policing at the national boundaries. Controlling and filtering information that flows through the internet has many practical difficulties. The purpose of my paper is to discuss the problem of copy rights infringement over Internet with reference to Indian Scenario.