Anti Circumvention Law for The Protection of Digital Rights And Its Management in India A Critical Evaluation

Abstract

Copyright belongs to category of rights known as Intellectual property rights. Intellectual property implies property rights given for creative work of human intellect. Thus, Copyright law protects certain creative works of human intellect and thereby plays an important role in promoting intellectual creativity. The primary purpose of copyright law is to foster the creation and dissemination of intellectual works for the benefit of the public. newlineCopyright Law operates on the principle of Quid Pro Quo , which means give and take . An author gives a creative work to the society and takes exclusive rights over it for a limited period of time, after the expiration of which the work falls into the public domain. The rationale behind providing copyright protection is both moral and economic. The moral rationale is that the author gets rights over his creations which form a part of his persona and the economic rationale is that the copyright law encourages authors to produce new works by providing exclusive rights for commercial exploitation. newlineThe higher the level of protection, greater the encouragement for authors to create and greater will be the intellectual wealth of a country. Copyright is a statutory property right which grants certain exclusive rights in relation to the copyrighted work including right to reproduce the work in any material form, to issue copies of the work in public, to perform the work in public, to make any cinematograph film or sound recording in respect of the work, to make commercial exploitation of the work. Laws protecting Copyright have been introduced as a response to the widespread commercial exploitation of works as a result of technological development in printing press methods. New technologies with its development posed threat to Copyright protection. The emergence of the digital environment posed a new era of opportunities and challenges for national and international property protection. newline2 newlineIn recent years, technological developments have led to digital content being more easily d