Evolution of Copyright Law in India

Every time you stream a film on your phone, photocopy a chapter before an exam, or hum a song that someone else wrote, you are brushing against copyright. Yet the first Indian statute on the subject is barely a century old, and it was not even really Indian: it was a British law wearing an Indian label. How did we get from that borrowed law to the Copyright Act of 1957, and why has Parliament kept reopening it ever since?

In two minutes

Indian copyright law began as the British Copyright Act of 1911 applied to India, was re-enacted as the Indian Copyright Act 1914, and was replaced by the Copyright Act 1957, which has since been amended again and again to absorb new technology and India’s treaty obligations.

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