India and the copyrights

The Indian film industry has demanded that the copyright period for films should be increased to 100 years from the current 60 years. Since old films are still good business in Indian, none of the big businesses want to let go the cash cow. Interestingly, the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting Ministry has backed the claim.

Draconian copyright laws is not an oft-discussed topic in India even though at 60 years it is full 10 years more than the 50 years prescribed by the World Intellectual Property Organization and full 46 years more than the optimal period of 14 years as pointed out by some researchers.

But as the times change copyright is gonna get more and more important in India. First of all, the Indian film and music industry like its American counterpart is a big money business. Secondly, the Indian film and music industry is much-less if at all tech-savvy than its American counterpart. Its a matter of time when we would have our own home-bred MPAA and RIAA start suing people left and right. And thirdly, as the Hollywood influence increases, we would tend to follow the bad precedent. Though, Indian judiciary is over-worked and has a long queue of pending cases, so its not anytime sooner that we would see people facing trials for this kind of stuff.

This might not happen at all and I hope it doesn't. And old films are part of the Indian culture now. And nobody gets a monopoly over our culture ? Right ?