Copyright Implications of the Convergence of Telecommunication, Broadcasting & Information Technology - Lesson for India

The paper identifies copyright implications of convergence in India, examining especially how Indian law is approaching convergence of telecommunication, broadcasting and information technology issues. The delicate balance of rights and obligations of intermediaries of Internet such as copyright owners, domain name holders, consumers, netizens and internet service providers can be upset when trying to keep the legal developments abreast with the technological advances. As more and more digital products in network environment are emerging efficient management and controlled distribution of such products have become one of the important considerations, in an unprecedented way. The copyright owners are under a constant threat of loosing control over their products on the information superhighway and are experimenting various technological adjuncts to retain control. Differences in rules are beginning to be questioned. Now legal regulation is a great challenge before the world because the way legal and regulatory reforms are carried out will eventually determine the manner in which convergence affects our lives. The converging technologies raise several core issues such as telecom sector is concerned with infrastructure regulation and access issues; broadcasting industry is more worried with access and content issues; information technology is trying to deal with contribute with new regulatory issues of framing, hyper linking, deep-linking, inlining, fixation, communication, publication, parallel imports, rights management information, allocation of frequency spectrum, fair dealing, implied license, liability of Internet Service Providers (ISP), and jurisdiction etc.This paper in particular questions the regulatory framework for the telecommunications, broadcasting and information technology sectors in a convergence environment, and taking in to account relevance and need to safeguard the public interest.