In continuation of our series on comments made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee looking into India’s Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010, which submitted its recommendations to the Parliament yesterday, we now look what was said about parallel import of content, with implications for regional locks. Note that it's likely that these recommendations are likely to be incorporated without much debate. Download the report here. Parallel Import Of Content The changes to the copyright bill has opened doors for parallel imports of copyright protected content (movies and books in India. The law, as changed in the draft, suggests that "provided that a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy". So what does this mean for the digital space? Our reading of this is, that distributors can import multiple digital copies or DVDs for sale in India from markets where it has been released, without it being deemed copyright violation, even if studios have delayed the release in India. One can now legally bypass exclusive regional licenses. You should check with your lawyers, though. This is consumer friendly: it addresses the creation of artificial scarcity in the market, and encourages price competition. This is clause was brought in particularly to address educational content, wherein certain books can be priced high in the country, due to exclusive territorial rights. At times, new editions are not published until stocks of an…
