Copyright is one of the most valuable intellectual property rights (IPRs). Indian copyright act 1957 is protecting copyright of various copyright holders in India. Although the copyright law in India is suitably protecting the copyrights of traditional works yet it has not been very successful in protecting online contents. Creation of online contents requires lots of time, energy and creativity. This is the reason why copyright law protects such contents. However, some unscrupulous website owners try to encash upon others labour and inputs.
The problem is more prominent where Google’s online advertisement program adsence has been activated on the offending site. This gives an additional reason to steal others contents for own benefits.
Although Google is aware of these activities yet it is very slow in taking actions against the culprits. What is surprising is the fact that these copyright violators are openly violating the copyright of others and even after a DMCA complaint Google has not taken action against the culprits. It seems Google is encouraging copyright violation by not taking action against the copyright violators.
A majority of these copyright violators are legal researchers who just copy, cut and paste online contents of others. According to Praveen Dalal, managing partner of New Delhi based law firm Perry4Law and a Supreme Court attorney, plagiarism is omnipresent in Indian legal research community. Law students and fresh law graduates do not wish to do the real hard work and take the shortcut of copy and paste, informs Dalal. This is not only violating the copyright law of India but is also reflecting poorly upon the legal research skills of India, says Dalal.
Irrespective of how copyright law of India punishes the copyright violators and copyright owners take actions against such offenders, Google also have a legal and moral obligation to deal with such offenders seriously.
Not only Google must remove such offending weblinks from Google’s search database but the Adsence program of such offending sites must also be canceled.
Recently, Google declared its policy to strictly deal with spam blogs. However, for the time being, content farming sites, splogs and copyright violators are defeating Google.
The present online copyright violation issues are not adequately dealt with by the present copyright law of India. The copyright law of India must also be suitably amended to give credit to the copyright holders and punish the copyright violators in an online environment.
