All Indian Government Funded Work Must Be In Public Domain
The Government of India funds a lot of creative work. Government departments create maps. Census department creates huge amount of data about our demographics. Courts of India publish a lot of judgements. NCERT books are funded by government. And so on.
All these works are funded by our money. Tax paying public of India has funded these works. But we can not use these works whose production we funded.
Government has no clear guideline on copyright of the works produced by various Government agencies. Most of the time there would be no Copyright mentioned. In some cases you will see strict NO COMMERCIAL USE OF THIS WORK ALLOWED like warnings (I am looking at you CDAC). NCERT straight away has copyright notices and you can not spread the excellent books written by our tax money for educational purpose in India or abroad.
This is completely unacceptable to me. I can understand the legacy of the past. We inherited a lot of our laws from Britishers, and probably no one gave this any thought. I also understand that some Government funded work are already publicly accessible. Like I am sure court judgements are in public domain. But with each government agency I have to do this study. I do not even have a proof to show that court judgements are indeed public domain. If I want to start a startup which will use some government generated data, the venture capitalists will ask me to show legally solid evidence that the data is okay to use for commercial purpose, and most VC will not accept my assurance that yes the court judgements are indeed public domain.
This is not good for India. CDAC has produced some software that can be used by mobile apps today to promote Hindi, but the enterprenuers can not use that software or database because CDAC has a very anti commercial approach. Who decides that court judgement, funded by our money should be public domain, but CDAC software, or data files, or fonts, funded by our money should be commercial. And no I do not want to just apply to CDAC to get their permission. I do not want to make rounds to CDAC office, bribe the clerks to get a meeting arranged to find the right person who can discuss my requirements and consider if I should be granted license or not etc. NOT ACCEPTABLE.
The public funded it, and it MUST be public domain. If you get paid by government grants, government salary, your work is public, PERIOD. If you are a private agency, who produced a work due to government contract, that work is public domain.
Note that I am only talking about Copyright of Intellectual Property here. I am not claiming travelling in Local or Metros should be made free. I am not some socialist who is demanding free everything to everyone. This docterine that intellectual property produced by government must be public domain, is there in United States too, and they are fully committed to Capitalism and are not Socialistic.
I want, no, DEMAND the Indian Government to pass a simple one sentence bill:
Notwithstanding anything else said anywhere, any intellectual property produced directly or indirectly through government or any agency working for or on behalf of government, will be in public domain. Anybody can use them for any purpose, with no conditions or limitations.
-- Signed, The President of India