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Indian Copyright Bill Declares Private, Personal Copying "Fair Dealing" 192

asp7yxia writes "India's new copyright bill sounds like a pretty good piece of work: it declares private, personal copying to be 'fair dealing' (like US fair use) and limits the prohibition on breaking DRM so that it's only illegal to do so if you're also violating copyright."
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Indian Copyright Bill Declares Private, Personal Copying "Fair Dealing"

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 24, 2010 @01:36AM (#31964914)

    A link to boingboing that links to a blog that links to the WSJ blog post [livemint.com] that actually talks about the topic. Way to go.

  • Re:What about ACTA ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by bbqsrc ( 1441981 ) on Saturday April 24, 2010 @02:06AM (#31965062) Homepage
    India is not involved with ACTA. Most of Asia is not involved with ACTA. ACTA will only affect the consumer as far as I can see, and it sucks.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 24, 2010 @02:56AM (#31965240)

    I don't think the argument is about being "better workers".

    Hire a professional company in India that charges the same (or economically equivalent) amount that and American company does, then compare the standard of quality.

    If you want work done cheap, expect cheap work to be done.

    When people take pride in the work that they do, you can expect a standard of quality. Sadly, though, this is not the common case in the Indian services industry where most people do a job they hate, with insane hours, solely for the economical sustenance.

  • by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Saturday April 24, 2010 @02:56AM (#31965244)
    I'm not saying India isn't trying or that it'll always be that way. but by your own admission the cast system still exists today, and it's a messed up part of Indian culture.
  • Re:Wonder why ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Saturday April 24, 2010 @03:01AM (#31965260) Journal
    India has nothing to lose internally at this point.
    Think back to pharma in India.
    India needed cheap, quality drugs without the R and D backend to treat its population.
    India did not have an export market for its own R and D, just the tech to produce very cheap drugs.
    So India pumped out drugs for its needs and noted other countries wanted them too.
    Suddenly what was an internal medical matter was a profit making dream.
    With profit came R and D and finally India had its own big pharma.
    Then came the fun part. India slipped from a free for all to a drug protecting world player with the international standing to enforce R and D.
    The profits from internal use where looking to be less than the projected profits from new drugs to the protected world market.
    Until India has their own exporting Adobe, MS, Apple ect, why pay for software on the international market?
    All paying for very expensive imported software does is hurt the current account deficit.
    Copy it for free, let your children and pros learn.
    When India has a software exporting sector, then they will do the math for trade protection.
  • by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday April 24, 2010 @03:11AM (#31965284) Homepage Journal

    Not surprising if you realize that third-world countries are badly hurt by IP hoarding. It means they have to pay too much for books, technology, drugs, etc., unless they choose to pirate — which, of course, they often do.

    I'm particularly grateful to India for their knockoff drugs. I don't understand all the legalities, but because of the difference in the way patents work in India, it's perfectly legal to reverse-engineer a patented drug and invent your own process for making it. In 2005, they changed the law so that patent holders can force makers of such unauthorized generics to pay royalties, but they still can't stop them altogether, the way they can in the U.S. As a result, unauthorized Indian generics are available for many drugs still under patent, at extremely low prices.

    This affected me personally a few years back when I was unemployed, close to broke, and needed to be using a fairly expensive drug on a daily basis. It was particularly galling that the original patent on the drug had expired, but the company had managed to create new patents on the manufacturing process that still gave them exclusive rights. Fortunately, the same drug was available from India for a fraction of the cost. The downside was that my phone was obtained by various mercenary Indian call centers, possibly including the one you saw in Slumdog Millionair.

  • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday April 24, 2010 @09:25AM (#31966592) Journal
    Keep in mind that all of these stories are from off-shoring efforts that are awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. If you work at the kind of company that takes these contracts in India, and you are above average, you quickly get head hunted by one of the better ones. If you are above average there, then you realise that you can move out of India for a few years, then return having made enough to retire by your mid 30s. The result is that you end up with companies full of highly motivated people who aren't competent enough to get a better job, taking contracts from foreign companies (who typically don't have any process in place to assess competence before hiring them), and doing a bad job. You can easily find similar levels of incompetence in the USA or EU (just see the daily WTF for countless examples), but these people are much less likely to be hired because they will be interviewed in person.

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