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The following request for comments is closed. Closed as inactive. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:48, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is a Request for comment to seek broader input to improve page: Help:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition) an option available under (Indian) Copyright act 1957 rules.

Disclaimers: General disclaimers and wikipedia legal disclaimers are applicable.

  • Breif Details:

Support requirements: at Help:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition)

  1. Proof reading correctness vis a vis Indian Copyright act 1957 (post 2012 amendment) for the sections refered for there correctness.
  2. Discussion on such requirement vis a vis already available open licences vis a vis http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
  3. Improving present customised document as per discussion and/or according to your knowledge.(Please cite reasons for majior changes in the document)


Purpose: Form I & Affidavit, Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition (without leaving any legal doubts under Indian copyright act 1957' Section 30, 30A, 19, 57

The document is expected to work independantly who want to relinquish rights with particular reference to Indian Copyright act 1957 and also free cultural work definition
The document also should work along with CC-by-sa-4.0-unported-international or PD licences (This document is not ported version of any license, rather a document with indian legal view without any legal restrictions.


Purpose Details:

section 21 of the copyright act 1957 (14 of 1957) and rule 5 subrule (2) of Copy-Right-Rules-2013 do provide for relquishment of copyrights. Along with section 21 section 30 deals with licences and section 30A in turn states that section 19 remains applicable. And this circular argument may leave chance for legal ambiguity in certain cases which may not be in line with 'free cultural work' definition which wikimedia foundation wants to pursue in thier licensing policy since wikimedia foundation asks to follow licences.
Applicability of which sections can lead to legal ambiguity?:
  1. Section 21 subsection (3) leaves scope for situation that work is not freed by all copyright owners ?
  2. Section 21 drops necessity of signature but section 30A pertaining to licensing takes you again to section 19 subsection 1 which asks for signature, subsection 4,5 and 6 limit period and territoty of assignment, subsection 8 seems to make assignments (licences) void if a work is already assigned to a copyright society; Section 57 subsection 1 clause (b) leaves room for damage claims vis a vis derivatives if author or any of his heirs get agreived on pretext that the derivative work is prjudicial to authors honour and reputation.


*Please see: Section 21subsection (3), Section 30A, Section 19 subsections 1,2,4,5,6; Section 57 subsection(1) clause (b)
  1. Section 21 subsection (3):" The relinquishment of all or any of the rights comprised in the copyright in a work shall not affect any rights subsisting in favour of any person on the date of the notice referred to in sub-section (1)."
  2. Section 30A."Application of section 19:The provisions of section 19[6thAmnd 35] shall, with any necessary adaptations and modifications, apply in relation to a licence under section 30 as they apply in relation to assignment of copyright in a work."
  3. Section 19. Mode of assignment
16[(1)] No assignment of the copyright in any work shall be valid unless it is in writing signed by the assignor or by his duly authorised agent.
4[(2) The assignment of copyright in any work shall identify such work, and shall specify the rights assigned and the duration and territorial extent of such assignment.
(3) The assignment of copyright in any work shall also specify the amount of royalty and any other consideration payable[6thAmnd 1], to the author or his legal heirs during the currency of the assignment and the assignment shall be subject to revision, extension or termination on terms mutually agreed upon by the parties.
(4) Where the assignee does not exercise the rights assigned to him under any of the other sub-sections of this section within a period of one year from the date of assignment, the assignment in respect of such rights shall be deemed to have lapsed after the expiry of the said period unless otherwise specified in the assignment.
(5) If the period of assignment is not stated, it shall be deemed to be five years from the date of assignment.
(6) If the territorial extent of assignment of the rights is not specified, it shall be presumed to extend within India.
(7) Nothing in sub-section (2) or sub-section (3) or sub-section (4) or sub-section (5) or sub-section (6) shall be applicable to assignments made before the coming into force of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 1994.]
[6thAmnd 2](8) The assignment of copyright in any work contrary to the terms and conditions of the rights already assigned to a copyright society in which the author of the work is a member shall be void.
[6thAmnd 3](9) No assignment of copyright in any work to make a cinematograph film shall affect the right of the author of the work to claim an equal share of royalties and consideration payable in case of utilization of the work in any form other than for the communication to the public of the work, along with the cinematograph film in a cinema hall.
[6thAmnd 4](10) No assignment of the copyright in any work to make a sound recording which does not form part of any cinematograph film shall affect the right of the author of the work to claim an equal share of royalties and consideration payable for any utilization of such work in any form.
  1. Section 57. Author's special rights..
4[(1) Independently of the author's copyright and even after the assignment either wholly or partially of the said copyright, the author of a work shall have the right-
(a) to claim authorship of the work; and
(b) to restrain or claim damages in respect of any distortion, mutilation, modification or other act in relation to the said work [6thAmnd 5] if such distortion, mutilation, modification or other act would be prejudicial to his honour or reputation:
PROVIDED that the author shall not have any right to restrain or claim damages in respect of any adaptation of a computer programme to which clause (aa) of sub-section (1) of section 52 applies.
Explanation : Failure to display a work or to display it to the satisfaction of the author shall not be deemed to be an infringement of the rights conferred by this section.
  • year 2012 amendments in above sections:
  1. ↑ for the words "royalty payable, if any”, the words "royalty and any other consideration payable” substituted;..by clause (i) of Section 9 of Act 27 of 2012, w.e.f. 8th June, 2012
  2. ↑ subsections 8,9,10 inserted after sub-section 7 of Section 19 of the principal act..by subsection (ii) of section 9 of Act 27 of 2012, w.e.f. 8th June, 2012
  3. ↑ subsections 8,9,10 inserted after sub-section 7 of Section 19 of the principal act..by subsection (ii) of section 9 of Act 27 of 2012, w.e.f. 8th June, 2012
  4. ↑ subsections 8,9,10 inserted after sub-section 7 of Section 19 of the principal act..by subsection (ii) of section 9 of Act 27 of 2012, w.e.f. 8th June, 2012
  5. ↑ Words "which is done before the expiration of the term of copyright" omitted ..by subsection (i) of section 36 ofAct 27 of 2012, w.e.f. 8th June, 2012

References

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[author missing] (2015 [last update]). "History of Creative Commons in India —". cis-india.org. Retrieved 2 June 2015.  Check date values in: |date= (help)

Discussion of this RfC

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Your comments are most welcome. I am specifically seeking comments from Indic Wikipedians and also who work on Copyright laws, free cultural works and/or free licensing processess like Creative commons etc. We are seeking just comments and improvements, so please avoid voting.

Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 06:05, 8 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This page is extremely unclear; after digging a bit I understood what the author meant and I changed title. As you apparently question the ability of Creative Commons licenses to take effect in India without additional paperwork, this is a legal question, not a request for comment. As such, it should be directed to Wikilegal. --Nemo 08:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC) P.s.: There is very little information online on the matter, but some context can be found at [1] [2].[reply]


Well, may be, my way of reading Indian Copyright Act 1957 has been conservative, After reading of sections mentioned by me, precise view on exact applicability of CC licences can be known from people who study CC licence deeds in detail.
My reading and understanding of CC licence deeds is brief, and with this limited understanding my present contention is, even if we consider that CC licences are largley applicable in India there may be atleast small gaps which we need to cover.
If the gaps between CC licences and Indian Copyright act are small enough and can be filled with a customised affidavit by attaching the same with apropriate declaration to commons:Template:Self or a simmiller template. As of now on mr- wikipedia I have done the same by making template w:mr:Template:स्वतः which along with verbatim copyright relinquishment declaration (as expected by indian law) states that the relinquishment declaration obliges to both to the customised affidavit and to the respactive chosen free license. Since discussion has come to this point my querry is whether such arrangement will suffice under the Indian law and also with respective free licences usually used on wikimedia projects.
>>This page is extremely unclear; << Please some one help me, because present status of my english is refered as broken, so I need help on this aspect too :)
Thanks and warm regards
Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 10:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I can help you by posting at talk:Wikilegal or whatever. --Nemo 15:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Hi, per my communication with Wikilegal team they are still researching the subject and it is likely take its own time. My view is let discussion on 'Applicability of Creative Commons in India' continue in future too. It would be always safe to have additional documentation Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition) until then, than regret in future. At Marathi wikipedia we can attach this document to Template:Self while making copyright relinquishment declaration, and we can go ahead with our campaign of apeal to update licences. Besides this documentation any way will be usefull on par with email template as discussed at Help talk:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition)
Rgds
Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 01:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arjunaraoc, I have made request to indic users who have been supporting copyright related matters in their respective indic wikipedia project, so I hope we may get some help from them.
I also need help on english spellcheck and grammar so I will request you to make a round after couple of days for one more round of proof reading changes, if any, on language front .
Once again thanks for your kind support. Rgds
Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 07:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • OTRS is not a secure environment and I would be deeply concerned by the risk that full legal names (then identifiable against anonymous account names) and residential addresses would be accidentally exposed on the internet. The current suggestion in the FAQ that the form would be emailed to permissions-commons(_AT_)wikimedia.org would give a false sense of assurance that OTRS is a guaranteed service by Wikimedia suitable for legal documents or private correspondence. --Fæ (talk) 12:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Fæ thanks for bringing this important point in to discussion, in immidiate enthusiasm many people tend to miss importatnt points even after putting up clear notice to that effect. Because in this case if some one sends the same document to Indian Copyright Office; Indian Copyright office is supposed to upload info on their website.
No doubt, anonimity and privacy are issuces of significant importance. Still we will need to continue discussion on improvement of the said document for the people who are not seeking anonimity. At mr wikipedia my personal observation has been 6 out of 9 people create accounts with real name, and even many with different user name at some point of time tend to declare their identities.
And we will need to find some alternate ways to improve privacy environment for those who seek/need higher privacy level. I suppose Indian copyright law allows publishers to represent anonymous authors to some extant. But in wikimedia case would wikimedia take such role and how much success would be possible are the questions since as you already stated OTRS in itself is not a secure enough environment.
Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 04:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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