Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama reports a dispute between T-Series and MySpace which was argued before the Delhi High Court last Friday and is listed for arguments again this Thursday. T-Series has alleged infringement of its copyright by MySpace on whose site music content of the former is being uploaded.
While MySpace has apparently taken a defence under Section 79 of the amended IT Act, T-Series seems to have taken the stance that the proviso to Section 81 negates any safe harbour from liability for copyright infringement, which an intermediary may otherwise be entitled to under Section 79. The counsel for T-Series further argued that the IT Act does not prevent Courts from preventing or terminating copyright infringement.
The combined interpretation of Sections 79 and 81 of the amended IT Act has been discussed on SpicyIP in quite a few posts with the comments equally providing a lot of food for thought. Some of us argue that the proviso to Section 81 has the effect of depriving an ISP of the exemption to liability available under Section 79 and a few others are of the opinion that the proviso only clarifies that rights available to any party under the Copyright Act will not be nullified by any provision of the IT Act. It will be interesting to watch how the Court interprets these provisions.
We will keep the readers posted on the developments in this case.
Please upload the permanent injunction judgment copy.
As Section 81 of the IT Act, (also after amendment) clarifies, that these safe harbor provisions cannot be used to thwart the rights of a person under the Copyrights Act, 1957 and the Patents Act, 1970. It would be interesting to see if the court touches upon, the aspect of section 81 glaringly overlooking the rights of the Trade Mark holder, as well.
Copyright infringement or copyright violation is the unauthorized use of works that are exclusive rights of the original copyright holder. http://www.lawisgreek.com/cyber-laws-liability-for-infringement-of-copyright/