Broadcasting Archives - Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

Metadata by TLF: Issue 17

Posted on August 19, 2020December 20, 2020 by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

Welcome to our fortnightly newsletter, where our reporters Kruttika Lokesh and Dhananjay Dhonchak put together handpicked stories from the world of tech law! You can find other issues here.

SC moves to dismiss PIL implicating Jio’s liability in RCom’s AGR dues

Jio was recently made a party in a matter regarding adjusted gross revenue (AGR case) between companies in India and the Department of the Telecommunications and other telecom companies in India. The issue was regarding investigation into whether telcos like RCom, Videocon and Aircel wanted to evade paying their dues to the DoT by filing for insolvency. The DoT had decided that Jio was to be made liable for the 31000 crore AGR dues that RCom owed to the Department, since Jio was using RCom’s airwaves as evidenced by a 2016 spectrum sharing agreement. Jio sought to prove that the spectrum was simply leased and that they didn’t have any exclusive use of the spectrum. They further argued that spectrum sharing agreements do not assume a sharing of liabilities for DoT’s AGR dues.

Metadata by TLF: Issue 15

Posted on July 20, 2020December 20, 2020 by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

Welcome to our fortnightly newsletter, where our reporters Kruttika Lokesh and Dhananjay Dhonchak put together handpicked stories from the world of tech law! You can find other issues here.

PIL filed seeking identities of content moderation officers

Former RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya filed a public-interest litigation in the High Court of Delhi to prompt Google, Twitter and Facebook to disclose identities of designated content moderation officers on the basis of the Information Technology Rules. In response, Google submitted that the officers worked with government authorities to remove illegal content. Govindacharya claimed that without disclosure of the officers’ identities, no mechanisms to enforce obligations could not be adequately instituted. However, Google responded by stating that revealing the identities of officers would jeopardize their capacity to work efficiently with the government, as they would be exposed to public scrutiny and criticism.

Internet Broadcasting: Section 31D of the Copyright Act, 1957

Posted on December 11, 2019November 1, 2020 by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

This post has been authored by Anamika Kundu, a fourth year student at West Bengal University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata. It discusses Section 31D of the Copyright Act (put year), introduced in the 2012 Amendment.

With the advent of smartphones and numerous interactive mobile applications, listening to music through apps have become a common phenomenon across the world. However, this has created a number of issues pertaining to intellectual property in various jurisdictions including India. Section 31D of the Copyright Act was inserted through the Amendment of 2012. The provision essentially deals with statutory licensing for radio and television broadcasting of literary and musical works as well as sound recordings. Broadcasters are required to pay royalties to the copyright owner, at a rate fixed by the Copyright Board. A broadcaster wishing to communicate published work should do so by notifying copyright holders in advance. This notice includes information such as the broadcast content’s length and coverage region. Because of the restrictions placed on parties from entering into commercial negotiations to determine royalty rates, there has been huge criticism of this provision. Moreover, the owners of copyrights too are not given any mechanism to negotiate the terms of royalty with broadcasting agencies, which appears to be in violation of Article 19(1)(g) of the Indian Constitution.