Online Streaming: A Case of Broadcasting?

Abstract

“Copyright is the Cinderella of the law. Her rich older sisters, franchises and Patents, long crowded her into the chimney-corner. Suddenly the fairy godmother, Invention, endowed her with mathematical and electrical devices as magical as the pumpkin coach and the mice footmen. Now she whirls through the mad mazes of a glamorous ball.” The above illustration beautifully stipulates how copyright has become a valuable asset in the last few decades. Subsets within copyright law including broadcasting rights, rights of producers and performers other than the author can be broadly termed as ‘neighboring rights’. Put together with episodes of webcasting and online streaming, these rights bring with them a plethora of challenges to be addressed. While there are no recent statistics quantifying the losses to the Indian broadcasting industry due to sports broadcast piracy, the overall losses because of broadcast and movie piracy is estimated to touch up to $3.1 billion U.S Dollars by 2022, making India the largest victim of broadcast piracy in the world. But the issues, other than piracy, relate to infringement and compliance too, which in the absence of clear legislations, have largely been subject of much court room spectacle. For far too long, India has assumed itself to be the tortoise that is racing against the rabbit (s) and looks to eventually rely on the rabbit’s shortsightedness or tardiness to win the race. In that, we have almost taken a backseat in providing an effective regulatory framework for protecting the rights related to copyright. This does not mean there are no laws in place. But do these effectively regulate the challenges of the new technological dawn? In this paper, we examine the regulatory framework around digital media content streaming, challenges in regulating broadcasting rights in light of the judicial interpretations and existing legal framework.