8 ms·
As much as the common good benefits from tools like SciHub, I was not expecting there to be any legal footing for this case until the end of the article which m
by abalaji 5y ago
As much as the common good benefits from tools like SciHub, I was not expecting there to be any legal footing for this case until the end of the article which mentioned:
> Bapat, of Internet Freedom, says India’s copyright law is more progressive than many developed countries. “By that I mean that there's a research exception provided under the copyright act. It means that if you are using copyright material for research then it would not constitute infringement.”
And sure enough:
> 52. Certain acts not to be infringement of copyright. — [...] (i) private or personal use, including research [1]
I guess this is tangential to "fair use" exceptions under US copyright lawas.
[1] https://copyright.gov.in/Exceptions.aspx https://copyright.gov.in/Exceptions.aspx
- vkk8 5y ago> private or personal use, including research [1] Doesn't that mean that most forms of piracy should be legal in India? That is, torrenting movies or music, etc.?
- unmole 5y agoNo, the exceptions are for fair dealing which is limited in scope.
- webmobdev 5y agoThat sounds like stretching the law a bit too much. :) But, regarding piracy of copyright material, indian courts have said that downloading or streaming a movie from the internet is not a criminal act. It is only the distribution of copyright material that is illegal and a criminal act. Ofcourse, in this case (SciHub), I am guessing the argument would be that copyrighting research material (science / knowledge) is itself absurd and detrimental to society, and that should trump the interests of the copyright holder.
- alok-g 5y ago+1. What if someone claims they are watching movie for purposes of research!
- tediousdemise 5y agoThere is a similar phenomenon in India where international drug patents are largely ignored. Their pharmaceutical market is flooded with cheap generics. It's gotten to the point where the rest of the world just orders their meds online from India. I'm stating the obvious here: the only people who like copyright laws are the 1% who profit from them. The rest of the 99% get to suffer.
- shash 5y agoHere’s the relevant section from the Copyright Act in India: 2[39. Acts not infringing broadcast reproduction right or performer’s right.— No broadcast reproduction right or performer's right shall be deemed to be infringed by— (a) the making of any sound recording or visual recording for the private use of the person making such recording, or solely for purposes of bona fide teaching or research;
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoWhat would be the unintended consequences to porting this to the U.S.? As in, legislation that makes bona fide research an explicit fair use case?
- nicoburns 5y agoI think this might well be a case of: not a lot. This might be a pretty straightforward win:
- rndgermandude 5y ago>What would be the unintended consequences to porting this to the U.S.? Some Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and ACS lobbyists and counsels would lose their income.
- captn3m0 5y agoThere’s also an interesting precedent here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oxford_v._Rameshwari_Photocopy_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oxford_v._Rame...
- bubblethink 5y agoThat's not really a precedent. A shop making photocopies (generally at the request of its customers) is not at all similar to a website.
- unmole 5y agoIt is precedent because the judgement states: > Concerning the argument that there cannot be an intermediary when use of copyrighted material post reproduction takes place in the course of instruction... The argument concerning use of an agency is thus irrelevant. https://web.archive.org/web/20190530065215/http://lobis.nic.in/ddir/dhc/PNJ/judgement/09-12-2016/PNJ09122016RFAOS812016.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20190530065215/http://lobis.nic....
- bubblethink 5y agoThanks for the link. It was an interesting read. Nonetheless, it leans quite heavily on use in the 'course of instruction' which is not the case for sci-hub. The crux of that case seems to be that the University of Delhi had authorised the shop to make the copies, and hence the agency of the shop is rightly moot. AFAIK, no university has endorsed sci-hub (for e.g., by way of posting links to sci-hub on a university or a course page). Should that happen, I guess the ties to this case would be closer.
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoIndia also has patent law that says you cannot patent life, so Monsanto’s patents aren’t valid in India.
- devnull3 5y agoAlso Software patents. However, lawyers find an easy way around to somehow word it as innovation rooted in hardware.
- mandis 5y agoAnywhere I can read more about this?
- waterhouse 5y agoSearching a bit, you might check out Karmarkar's algorithm for solving linear programming problems in polynomial time. Note that it is literally called an "algorithm", and that linear programming problems were taught in my 11th grade math class. Yet it did eventually get patented, after controversy and publicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkar%27s_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkar%27s_algorithm The patent, linked from above: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4744028 https://patents.google.com/patent/US4744028
- svat 5y agoWhat makes you suggest Karmarkar's algorithm as relevant to Indian patent law? As the Wikipedia article you linked points out, Narendra Karmarkar left India in 1978, getting an M.S. from Caltech in 1979, PhD from Berkeley in 1983, and briefly joining IBM in California as a post-doc (1983) and then AT&T Bell Labs (later in 1983): he came up with Karmarkar's algorithm while at IBM and applied for the patent while at Bell Labs, so everything related to it happened in the US. (The fact that Karmarkar was from India, or that he returned to India in the late 1990s, has no bearing here.) (Unless your comment was about software patents in general, and not India's patent law specifically.)
- rmbyrro 5y agoNot just India, many developing countries didn't follow what European countries tried to enforce through Berne Convention. Thankfully they saw it wasn't on the best interest of economic and social development. Brazil and other Latin American countries have many provisions protecting freedom for private use, teaching and research purposes.
- netcan 5y agoImo, the net benefit of copyright and patent law is dubious broadly. For a developing country signing up to an IP system under which most of the important IP assets are foreign... I find it hard to see an argument.
- xyzzyz 5y agoThat’s because you have little experience with how developing countries actually operate. One common ways developing countries use to build their industrial know how and capacity is to get a foreign company to create a development in it. A factory, manufacturing center, or R&D site. Companies are much more reluctant to do so, if the host country is not willing to protect their IP.
- beckman466 5y ago"How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. Adopting a historical approach, Dr Chang finds that the economic evolution of now-developed countries differed dramatically from the procedures that they now recommend to poorer nations. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing counties from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used." -- Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective source: https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb
- anandrew 5y ago> India’s copyright law is more progressive than many developed countries In developed countries, each update to copyright makes it more restrictive, not less. So maybe the right word isn't progressive, but regressive.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYes, because the rich copyright monopolists are all located in developed countries and lobby their governments for laws that benefit them.
- alok-g 5y agoI see that the said clause excludes computer programmes. This brings an easy way around. Insert some scripts within the material to be protected. PDFs I believe can contain these.
- YeBanKo 5y agoIt is head spinning the the future of the US academic research depends on a renegade student in a adversary country and a foreign copyright law and court system.