Copyright contributes as one of the most essential factors in the growth of the country as it enriches our cultural heritage by protecting our masterpieces.

Copyright is a part of intellectual property that protects original works of research as soon as an researcher fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. There are many works that fall under the purview of copyright law, such as drawings, pictures, illustrations, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, novels, poetry, blog entries, movies, architectural creations, plays, and much more.

The need for copyright protection was realised when the invention of printing took place. Printing made literary works duplication possible by use of machines. Printing press was first invented in 1436 in Germany. In the 15th century the spree of printing continued to gain popularity without any restriction in Europe. Even the King of Europe had permitted the foreigners to import the text from other countries and print them there. This is how the maximum book trade comes under Europe.

It took almost 2 centuries to realize the need for protection of copyright. Therefore in 1662, the Licensing Act was passed in England. This act came with restrictions which prohibited printing of the books which had not taken license and registered with the Stationers' Company.

Copyright Laws are enacted by various nations in order to assure the authors, composers, artists and other creative people that the government is there to protect their original work. The efforts and the capital put in by them will be paid or rewarded as the government is there for its protection. This is done by giving them exclusive right for their work for a specified period of time.

In 1957, India enacted the Copyright Act for the protection of certain "work". In this act the work refers to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work; a cinematograph film; and a sound recording. The exclusive right is given to the copyright owner so that they can enjoy the benefits of the created work for a specified period of time i.e. in India, sixty years after the death of the author. During that period others cannot use it for unjust enrichment. These exclusive rights are also known as the economic right of the copyright owner subject to the provisions laid down in the Copyright Act.

If anyone infringe the right of the copyright owner there is a provision in the Copyright Act, 1957 for the punishment for piracy. Section 63 provides that whoever invades the right of copyright owner they shall be punished with not less than six months which may extend to three years along with fine which shall not be less than fifty thousand rupees but it may extend to two lakhs.

Similarly Section 63-A deals with the punishment of subsequent conviction.

There are few artistic works though protected by copyright but need to be in public domain for the interest of the society at large. Therefore there are laws in copyright act which provide with the provision of free use. The exclusive right of the copyright owner can be curtailed to some extent for the interest of the society at large. Copyright serves us with twofold purpose by giving the exclusive right to the owner and then providing incentives for the creation of more work.

Technological advancement like video recording, reprography, satellite broadcasting and the recent internet lead to amendment of the existing law from time to time. The Copyright Act has evolved from protecting literary and artistic work to the subject of public interest in the digital world. Therefore hitherto total 6 amendments to the Copyright Act took place with the most recent in 2012.

Loopholes in existing Copyright Law in India
Intellectual Property Rights plays a pivotal role in social, economic and cultural development of a country. Copyright being its essential element encourages the creation of work by protecting the rights of the copyright owner. Advancement of technology has increased the dependence of people on the internet manifold nowadays everything is available to them at their fingertips. However with the increasing use of internet people are grappling hard with their rights at digital platforms as they are prone to infringement.

The piracy of author's content is also increasing with the increasing use of the internet. The Internet has become a threat to the exclusive rights given to Copyright owners as dissemination of author's work is quite easy and simple and it is difficult to find the original source of the content on the internet. The condition of the artistic work being reproduced in an unauthorized manner has been increasing day by day due to the ambiguity in laws which deal with copyright.

The Indian Copyright Act 1957, is the main statute governing the right of the authors of artistic work, since its enactment it had been amended 6 times but still it had too many loopholes.Section 13 of Copyright acts provides with the list of works in which copyright subsists like original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, cinematography films and sound recordings and how they are protected by Copyright Act. But the major concern is that are they really protected on digital platforms also?

Though Section 14 of the Copyright Act, provides that without the permission of the copyright owner no one has the right to copy, publish or disseminate it in the public domain. If any person does so or infringe the right of the copyright owner they will be punished for the same as guaranteed by the Copyright Act. But in cyberspace it is difficult and sometimes impossible to find out the source because of the way the copyright infringement takes place.

Even after the amendment of the Copyright Act in 2012 which primarily focuses on the technological aspect of copyright infringement, the administrative part dealing with section 65A and 65B of Indian Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 is ineffective.

The reason behind its ineffectiveness are:

1. Jurisdictional issues: On the digital platforms it is difficult to find whose laws would apply to the offender. Moreover the Copyright of every nation is not uniform.
2. Expansion of private use exception: The horizon of private use exception is greater in India in comparison to other countries. Even the copyrighted content is prone to be duplicated because of the ambiguity of the purview of private use exceptions.

Indian Copyright Act provides three kinds of licensing process: voluntary, compulsory and statutory licensing. In normal situations the interested party negotiates with the copyright owner to allow them to use their work with mutual consent, this is voluntary licensing. But in a situation where negotiation is not possible and copyrighted content is inaccessible, the interested party seeks for Compulsory and statutory licensing.

In the cases where contact with copyright owner is impossible because of various reasons like anonymity of owner or inability of the owner to give consent, in such situation the law provided the individual with the facility to approach Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) to get licence in such situation with some prescribed fee.

In the year 2021 the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) was abolished by the President. Now the whole responsibility has been transferred to Commercial Court and High Court. Dissolution of IPAB had led to the rise of burden on the Commercial Bench of the High Court where already a lot of other cases were pending. Now the pending cases related to the copyright will also pile up like other cases in high court. Moreover few provisions of TRIPS agreement are binding on India as India has complied with it, it includes to have a seperate tribunal to deal with the cases related to Intellectual Property Rights. Scrapping of the Intellectual Property Appellate Tribunal (IPAB) may negatively affect the Indian relation with other countries.

Copyright societies are authorised to grant licence to any work originally created by the owners or authors. Copyright (Amendment) Act, 1994 mandated that only copyright societies can grant copyright licence as per Section 33. Later on the act was amended again in 2012 which added section 33(3A) which necessitates that the copyright society which grants copyright licence needs to register itself again within a 12 months period right after the enforcement of the said amendment.

Moreover Section 18 of the Copyright act states that the copyright owner may assign to any person the copyright for any period as it deemed fit by the owner. As per Section 18 copyright owner can give his copyright to a production house and at the same time it can give it to any person. In this situation the production house would suffer huge loss because their idea was already available in public domain by that person. In this case copyright society is not needed. The copyright in itself is ambiguous as to whether Section 33 (3A) would prevail over Section 18 or not. Due to this ambiguity the courts find it difficult to deal with the cases when it comes to licensing rights of the work.

The Copyright (Amendment) Act 2012 had the chance to remove this ambiguity but it exacerbated the problem by adding sub section (1) to Section 33. After the amendment in 2012 the copyright societies were kept in an ambiguous position for granting copyright licence. This ambiguity has not been resolved yet. India needs to amend its Copyright Act again to remove the loopholes like this.

Way Ahead:
Indian creative owners have enjoyed exclusive rights for their works since 1957. But the exclusive rights given to them are being hampered in some or the other way because of the increasing use of the internet. Though the Copyright Act was made specifically to protect the rights of the author or owner of the original content, the act failed in many ways to safeguard the rights of the owners from infringement. The existing law is not able to keep pace with the changing environment.

There is a principle of "safe harbour" given in section 79 of Information and Technology Act, 2000 which acts as a shield for the Intermediary. Under this principle Intermediaries are not liable for copyright violations if they have followed due diligence. Similar provisions are given under section 52 (1) (c) of Copyright Act, which states that intermediaries are exempted for the " transient storage " unless it is established that they are well aware of it and have a valid ground to believe that copyright infringement had taken place.

As the economy grows, literacy rate increases and people become equipped with technological devices, over 900 people in India are using the Internet today. Hence it is mandatory to have stringent laws for the digital world as it is available in the physical world.

Though IT Act amendment in 2021 provided with Intermediary liability which imposed a responsibility on Intermediaries to take precautionary measures to prevent users from uploading such infringing content, the amendment failed to establish the ramifications when Intermediaries failed to comply with the rule. Hence there is an urgent need to amend the Information and Technology Act to make them conform with the increasing safety of online users safety. Accordingly the Copyright Act should also be amended, so that the IT Act and Copyright Act get aligned.

With the growing role of Artificial Intelligence by making computers think and mimic like human beings, machine learning has spread its prevalence all over the world. Initially it was created to solve complex problems through its machine learning but now it is outpacing the works done by human beings. It is capable of solving those data also which would have been impossible to solve by a human being. By thoroughly analyzing its work we can deduce that Artificial Intelligence creates its own work.

Section 2 of Copyright Act 1957 deals with the definition of work. In recent times we have seen a lot of AI generated works come into picture, the work by Artificial Intelligence have started getting recognition. Though most of the works are done or created by human intervention, the trust of news organisations and music producers on AI gives it another vitiate all negative sides of AI.

As of now the Copyright Act provides protection to humans only, they do not consider AI as human which is eligible to get Copyright protection. The laws need to be made for the works done by AI without human intervention.

Despite numerous efforts made to strengthen the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), infringement and counterfeiting remains the major problem which act as hindrance for growth of IP sector in India. There could be many reasons like enforcement agencies don't have sufficient resources and experts to tackle these problems, which eventually leads to its inaction.

Though the literacy rate of India is increasing day by day, the individuals still lack the basic understanding of IPR. Due to this most of the people are unaware of the infringement of their IP rights. Hence lack of IP awareness makes the enforcement of these rights difficult and challenging. In order to reduce the aforementioned problems India needs to simplify its regulations by establishing proper set up to keep check on the work of the enforcement agencies and the ambiguity related to getting Copyright license should also be removed as it is brought in by 2012 amendment to Indian Copyright Act, 1957. Moreover, transparency should increase so that the trust of the people does not get sacrificed.

In spite of the fact that copyright is considered not territory-bounded, it is still controlled by geographic limits. For example, in Google Play if the user moves to a new country and wishes to change their Google Play Country, they will need to wait for 12 months after initially creating a payments profile before they can change their country in the account. Further, when they change the country, they won't be able to use the Google Play balance they had in their old country and may also lose access to some books, movies, TV shows, games, and apps.

This shows how copyright content is governed by territorial restrictions and its impact on consumer satisfaction. Along with this, it is also overwhelmed by many contractual limits put upon it during the licensing or assignment of the copyright of the content. This makes copyright bound to territorial restriction despite the Berne Convention stipulating otherwise.

This is done to bind the use of copyright to keep economic jurisdictions separate to maximize profitability. For example, In India if a broadcasting company XYZ licenses its copyright in a cinematographic film to a broadcasting company ATC in USA, then it would be feasible for XYZ's profit to restrict the broadcasting rights of ATC over the film to just the country of USA so that ATC does not broadcast the film in India or in any other country in which ATC can further license the rights to.

The Copyright Intensive Industries (CII) in India can get an immense boost in their multiple economic profitability scope, the most pertinent of them all is through licensing. This can help in garnering long-term and consistent royalties which will prove to be a great service in expanding and supporting ventures. For instance Apple has a copyright on all of the packaging and labels for its products to protect them from infringement and to aid in the identification process by giving the products a specific look and feel. This also extends to the software codes that are used in operating systems. They too can be licensed to other mobile or laptop-making companies for creating a base operating system for their products.

For example - Samsung licenses its TV operating system – Tizen OS to many other TV makers. In early 2021 LG also set up a licensing platform to offer its webOS operating system to other manufacturers. This helps the MNC as well as the people involved in the creation process earn a continuous flow of profit in the form of royalties.

Each nation has its own rules that govern how the exception of fair dealing is applied and understood. In India, exceptions or defense for copyright infringement are given in Section 52 of the Copyright, 1957. The provision of fair dealing tells that for a deal to be 'fair' the aims of a contract must fit into the statutorily defined categories of private use, study, criticism, and review in order for it to be considered "fair."

Although the concept of fair dealing has not been defined in the Copyright Act, it is part of the doctrine of equity and simply on the basis of the facts and circumstances gives justification for the unpermitted use of the copyright. It also at the same time draws a line between a legitimate, bonafide fair use of a work from a malafide blatant copy of the work. India needs to set a thumb rule that determines the amount of work you can take without the content creator's permission for it to be classified under the exception of fair dealing.

The decision on this matter will depend on the court's discretion, although there will be a set of guidelines on the basis of which the court has to give its decision, amongst which public interest will be of utmost importance during consideration.

Much like the UK, India too has a very strict and limited understanding of the exception. This is because in India on the basis of the court's decisions, the matters of fair dealing are concluded and with this, the courts tend to restrict themselves to the exhaustive list of actions which come under the scope of fair dealing. This is in contrast with 'fair use'.

India needs to make provisions for monitoring and registration of the work automatically as it is there in WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). WCT and WPPT obligates the legislations of its member states to provide adequate and effective remedies for those who remove or alter the electronic rights management information without permission or make the copies of performances of phonograms available to the public without authority. In order to avoid copyright infringement, whenever the work is requested or transmitted on the internet, there should be a provision which ensures that the work is done by the authorised person only.

It protects the remuneration of the rightful owners of the copyright without any deviation or distortion by ensuring that the payment is made to the appropriate owner. As India is not a party to the following treaty, its responsibility to make legislation increases manifold in terms of the electronic rights management information as there is no parent organ to look into matters like this.

Though various technological devices like encryption and watermarking are there to protect the interest of the copyright owner, it is evident that these devices have been proved ineffective when it comes to piracy.

There is a need to encourage innovation by offering various tax incentives and funding should be provided for research and development and collaboration between industry, academia and government should also be promoted. Many states have realized the need to modernize their IT laws to be in conformity with the digital era. Among them the U.S is the leading one which enacted the Musical Works Modernization Act in 2018 with the aim to modernize the copyright issues related to music and audio recordings.

In 2019 also, the U.S passed the Copyright Alternatives in Small-Claims Enforcement Act. It was enacted to protect copyright claims of small value works. Similarly other nations are also working on similar provisions. Hence India should look in this direction to make its copyright law effective and in conformity with modern needs.

As the registration of copyright is very essential for its effective working, the process to get this registration done should be made easy by the required legislation. Separate boards like IPAB (Intellectual Property Appellate Tribunal) should be constituted to reduce the pendency of cases in the courts. The role and position of copyright societies should be made clear to them.

Conclusion
India being in the list of top 5 economies has not yet utilised its full potential in the IP sector. India is having a fairly rigid approach in the IP sector as it is not concerned to keep pace with the advancement of technology and the needs of society. It is working on the restrictive approach which defeats the very motive of having IP laws. There is an urgent need to bring an amendment to the Copyright Act of India to deal with the problems arising after 2012.

There are several areas in IP laws where it requires immediate attention by IP authorities so that they can provide policies for the growth of the nation. Indian GDP is increasing significantly which ultimately generates profits and with these profits the IP industry has sheer potential to overtake other developed nations by its IP driven innovations. The territorial nature of copyright should be in the conformity of the new era filled with opportunities to enjoy the exclusive rights given to the owners.