Abstract

The Indian experience of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in music is a complex view of the development of copyright law in conjunction with age-old cultural practice and technology. Tilak Purohit of the Copyright Society of India, in a journal paper, describes how Indian music had up until that point traditionally been seen as a shared inheritance, not something owned by an individual; the advent of commercialization due to recorded music, however, changed this dramatically, and a system of organised copyright was necessary. The Copyright Act of 1957 soon mirrored this property acquirement, with readjustments to conform to the changing nature of technology and the recognition of international treaties, multiple amendments later. A key element of contemporary copyright, most especially for this topic, is the doctrine of fair use or ‘fair dealing’ as it’s called in India. A useful paradigm for measuring the equilibrium between property owner and user, it helps balance control and access to copyrighted material. As creativity and innovation become ever more dependent on the internet and technologies that facilitate sharing of content, this is of the utmost importance. Over generations, fair use and the modern equivalent, ‘fair dealing’, have worked to bring the necessity of protecting traditional owners’ rights into legal agreement with the needs of the public to use, access and adapt content. The music industry, then, has been at the forefront of disagreement over fair dealing. Content-heavy, brimming with technological gadgetry, identity issues and all manner of discourse, the nature of music and ‘fair dealing’ has become especially contentious, with technology, not creators, at the core of the battle. With the onset of new technologies such as MP3s and digital music, ‘ownership’ of music eroded the traditional relationship that existed between the listener and the tune.

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