Linking of News and Copyright Law in India

Due to the google case ( Rescuecom Corp., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Google Inc., Defendant-Appellee April 3, 2009) there has been significant debate regarding whether news stories are protected by copyright law. The Associated Press of USA has taken action to prevent bloggers and other news site from using their stories. Specifically they have taken legal action against All Headlines News for using AP stories without their permission and they have implemented a new system to track digital articles. In addition, a federal judge in USA , proposed a ban on websites accessing or linking or paraphrasing a news article without the site’s consent. Now the question is whether it is possible to copyright a news story It is a general rule that ideas, factual information or news stories are not copyrightable. Only the original creations of the mind for e.g literary, dramatic or musical works etc are copyrightable. Stories that report facts and information are not creations of the mind and lack originality. As a result, the copyright laws have never extended to news stories. India’s Copyright Act 1957, Section 52 ,under the Fair Use provisions, “the copying of something for research or academic purpose or reproduction a criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship.” So when a blogger or website, paraphrases, quotes or does surface linking back to a news item, without obtaining the consent of the news source, currently, it is not a violation of copyright law. How to properly cite the copyrighted material The law is stricter when it comes to copyrighted material. A blogger or website can directly quote, paraphrase or do surface linking back to copyrighted material if: a. The site or blogger have taken the prior permission from the copyright owner during the posting the copyrighted material. b. If the copyrighted work is licensed under a creative common license, then the blogger or author is free to share, copy, and distribute the work if the blogger attributes the work to the copyright owner and does not use the work for financial gains or commercial purposes. c. Simply acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material is not a substitute for obtaining the copyright owner’s permission. (Taking Note by the Bloggers) Copyright infringement is now very easy and has become very common on the internet and copyrighted works are required to be protected. But re-posting news stories that are simply a reiteration of facts is not copyrightable material and should be reproduced and shared for the public benefit. If the copyright protection will be extended to news, it will restrict the free sharing of information. That will frustrate one of the basic object of the copyright and will be an antithesis to the doctrine of fair use.