Piracy Might Kill The (Copy)cat
After a barrage of complaints from overseas publishers, the Chinese government recently imposed a ban on photocopying foreign textbooks. The question now is: Will the Indian government follow suit?
The laws are already in place. There is the Copyright Act and the Intellectual Property Right of the author. The problem is one of enforcing the law.
For the students this is a familiar sight. Whole books being photocopied, many times cover included. But while photocopying entire books is a violation of these laws, so is photocopying even a single page, if even for reference.
There are arguments to both side of this story. Students argue that the books are too expensive, even by Indian standards, and given the large number of books that need to be referenced, it is not possible to purchase all of them. Subroto Majumdar, Chairman, Anti-piracy, Copyright and International Relations Committee, however, begs to differ. He claims that if the books are indeed so important, students should purchase them. Especially since the price of books in India is the cheapest compared to their price in any other country. Further, he counters, if students wish to refer to just a couple of pages from a book, they should visit the local library and jot down the main points (like there were many of those in India).
The issue gets complicated when any textbook photocopied for personal use cannot be seen as a violation of the Copyright Act, so students cannot be seen defaulters. Only those making an earning of such copyright violations can be punished, so perhaps those actually photocopying these books can be punished. But with laws so difficult to implement here in India, the jury is out on this one.