Extend copyright period for films to 100 yrs: industry

In the amendments sought to the Copyright Act, 1957 by the Govt, the Producers Guild has made a vehement appeal to extend the copyright period for films to 100 years, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 12, 2008, 02:40:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The legends of Indian cinema — Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy and Raj Kapoor — may be dead, but their legacy still commands a price in the Indian film industry, which wants to hold on to the copyright of their works.

In the amendments sought to the Copyright Act, 1957 by the government, the Producers Guild has made a vehement appeal to extend the copyright period for cinematic works to 100 years.

The Act prescribes a uniform period of 60 years to claim copyright, even though the international norm as per the World Intellectual Rights Organisation is 50 years.

What has apparently prompted the move is that the copyright of many of the works of RK Films, the production house of Raj Kapoor, and well-known movies of Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy, would be coming to an end very soon.

In most cases, families of the filmmakers no longer hold the copyright. They are now with big production houses like Shemaroo, Eros International and Yash Raj productions. Losing copyright would mean losing business because old Bollywood movies are still in great demand in the domestic as well as in the international market, says a film industry source.

Therefore, Indian film bigwigs like Yash Raj Productions have asked the HRD Ministry to extend the copyright of cinematic works to 100 years. This was in response to comments sought from different sections on the amendments in the Copyright Act. Interestingly, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has also backed the film industry’s claim.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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