Author name: Divij Joshi

Divij Joshi is a lawyer and tinkers in technology and policy. He tweets @divijualsuspect.

Karnataka HC Rules Against Twitter’s Plea for Restricting the Scope of Online Blocking Orders

/ By / Others

In its judgement of June 30, 2023, in X Corp v Union of India, the Karnataka High Court ruled against Twitter in its plea to quash the Government of India’s orders issued under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act and Rules (‘Blocking Orders’), asking it to disable the accounts of certain users. The judgement by Mr. Justice Krishna Dixit expansively interprets powers to block information under the IT Act and could dramatically increase executive leeway for censorship under India’s …

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Book Release: ‘Archives, Ethics and the Law in India’ – A Guidebook for Archivists in India

/ By / Copyright, Privacy

I am happy to announce the launch of ‘Archives, Ethics and the Law in India’, an open-access publication published by the Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. This publication is intended to be a guidebook for archivists, on the intersecting questions of ethics and law that they routinely face in the course of their practice. The guidebook is one of the outputs of a larger project at the Archives at NCBS, which examines the intersections of …

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Delhi High Court Revives PPL’s Copyright Society Registration Application, Sets Aside Registration of RMPL

/ By / Copyright

The seemingly never-ending saga of copyright licensing societies in India has taken a fresh turn after the Delhi High Court (through Justice Yogesh Khanna) in its judgement of March 9, 2022, accepted Phonographic Performance Limited’s (PPL) Writ Petitions directing the Government of India to reconsider PPL’s application for registration as a copyright society, and accordingly, to set aside the registration of Recorded Music Performance Limited (RMPL) as a copyright society for sound recordings. We have previously written about the PPL/RMPL …

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Guest Post: Press Publishers’ Rights In Indian News Media Digital Space

/ By / Copyright

We are pleased to bring you a guest post by Mili Baxi, on the development of a publisher’s right in digital media. Mili is a graduate of Institute of Law, Nirma University, currently completing her LLM at LSE. Her areas of interest are Information Technology law, Intellectual Property law, Media & Communication Law, and human rights law.   Introduction The economic health of the traditional news media and publishing industry has deteriorated over the years, which is concerning for the …

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Strategic Legal Algorithms Against Public Participation: YouTube Disables Newslaundry’s Account Following Copyright Claims from Aaj Tak

/ By / Copyright

In a new low for Indian media, Aaj Tak (owned by the media conglomerate Living Media) has allegedly taken to using copyright claims to prevent criticism of its reportage by media watchdog Newslaundry. On October 8, Newslaundry staff revealed that its YouTube operations had been stalled pending an enquiry into 53 separate copyright notices received by YouTube from Aaj Tak. The videos flagged (according to Newslaundry, not independently verified by us) pertained to Newslaundry’s commentary and criticism of Aaj Tak’s …

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PPL’s Copyright Society Registration Rejected: Delhi High Court Issues Notice, Grants Ad-Interim Stay

/ By / Copyright

The Registrar of Copyrights has rejected the application of Phonographic Performance Limited India, (“PPL India”) a major collective rights organisation for sound recordings in India, to be a registered copyright society. Adding to the list of dramatic stand-offs between the Government of India and collective rights organisations like IPRS and PPL, the PPL has now approached the Delhi High Court to direct the Government to reconsider the registration application. Readers may be familiar with the strange saga of copyright societies …

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Angry-looking musician holding a mike on a stage

What’s in a Stream? The Confounding Case of IPRS’s Live-Streaming Tariffs

/ By / Copyright

The Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) has been keeping busy during the COVID pandemic. In an undated notice, uploaded earlier in July, it announced a new tariff scheme for ‘live-streaming of online events and live/disc-jockey performances’. After receiving backlash from singers, musicians and popular press, reports have emerged that the tariffs have been put on ‘hold’ until September, 2020. In this post, I will examine some of the issues and concerns this notice has raised. [Important Edit 29/7: I missed …

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Bombay HC Clarifies Nature of Reliefs Applicable in Cybersquatting Disputes

/ By / Trademark

In an interesting and important order and judgement delivered by Justice Gautam Patel, the Bombay High Court has shed some clarity on the nature of reliefs applicable in domain name cybersquatting disputes – disputes relating to the wrongful or fraudulent use of trademarks as domain names. The order dated June 12, in Hindustan Unilever v. Endurance Domain and Ors. is available here. In brief, the court held that domain name registrars can not be expected to ‘block access’ to a …

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Crawl Cautiously: Examining the Legal Landscape for Text and Data Mining in India – Part II

/ By / Copyright

We are pleased to bring to you a two-part guest post by Viraj Ananth, examining the legal landscape of TDM in India, an issue we have covered on this blog previously here. Viraj is a fourth year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Part I of this post studied the question of copyright infringement liability for TDM use in India, after introducing TDM technology and its popular techniques. Part II first explores international developments on copyright …

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Crawl Cautiously: Examining the Legal Landscape for Text and Data Mining in India – Part I

/ By / Copyright

We are pleased to bring to you a two-part guest post by Viraj Ananth, examining the legal landscape of TDM in India, an issue we have covered on this blog previously here. Viraj is a fourth year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Part I of this post first introduces text and data mining (TDM) and contrasts popular TDM techniques, namely website scraping, website crawling or indexing, and website archiving. It then studies …

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