By Hugh Stephens —On July 4, the Indian government announced that India will accede to the two WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Internet treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), 1996 and the WIPO Performance and Phonographs Treaty (WPPT), 1996. The Press Information Bureau statement indicated that accession to the Treaties will allow India to enable creative rights holders to secure a return on investment on the production and distribution of creative works, to create a level playing field for Indian rights holders and to “contribute to the development of a vibrant creative economy and cultural landscape.”
The WCT deals with protection for authors of literary and artistic works, such as writings and computer programs; original databases; musical works; audiovisual works; works of fine art and photographs; whereas the WPPT deals with protection for authors rights of performers and producers of phonograms.
The purpose of the two treaties is to update and supplement the major existing WIPO treaties on copyright and related rights, primarily in order to respond to developments in technology and in the marketplace…Among other things, both the WCT and the WPPT address the challenges posed by today’s digital technologies, in particular the dissemination of protected material over digital networks such as the Internet.
Both treaties require countries to provide a framework of basic rights, allowing creators to control and/or be compensated for the various ways in which their creations are used and enjoyed by others. Most importantly, the treaties ensure that the owners of those rights will continue to be adequately and effectively protected when their works are disseminated through new technologies and communications systems such as the Internet.
The treaties also require countries to provide not only the rights themselves, but also two types of technological adjuncts to the rights. These are intended to ensure that rightholders can effectively use technology to protect their rights and to license their works online.
The first, known as the “anti-circumvention” provision, tackles the problem of “hacking”: it requires countries to provide adequate legal protection and effective remedies against the circumvention of technological measures (such as encryption) used by rightholders to protect their rights.
The second type of technological adjuncts safeguards the reliability and integrity of the online marketplace by requiring countries to prohibit the deliberate alteration or deletion of electronic “rights management information”: that is, information which accompanies any protected material, and which identifies the work, its creators, performer, or owner, and the terms and conditions for its use.
This article first appeared on Hugh Stephens Blog.© Hugh Stephens 2018. All Rights Reserved.