IRC17, Bengaluru, March 03-05, 2017

 

13. #CopyLeftRightLeft
Impact of Digital - Studying the Evolving Copyright Notions in Tamil Content Space

Last updated on Oct 31, 2016.

 

Description of the Session

The session deals with studying the impact of digital in evolving notions about Copyright in Tamil content space in state of Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu known for its welfare state politics was the first Indian state to "nationalize" works of literary stalwarts making those works accessible widely, while ensuring economic protections to creators. Post economic reforms in India, content industry steered towards seeking greater copyright protections, creators increasingly exercising rights. The history of these notions of copyright is key to understand how copyright was viewed in Tamil landscape.

Reach of internet has changed the content creation / consumption methods, patterns completely and notions of copyright. Adopting existing copyright laws into digital world lead to its own problems were also witnessed in the state, leading to detailed debate.

The copyleft movement created, distributed variety of content through internet. The session aims to have a look at opensource, online collaborative projects like Wikipedia, FreeTamilEbooks, which disrupted the existing notions of content licensing.

It will also discuss the raise of pro-piracy movement seeking greater, affordable access to content through social networks.

In order to effectively study the subject of research, use of social media and knowing the internet culture of the demographic not only remains key differentiator, but sometimes are the only source of information.

Session Plan

Session will be a Powerpoint presentation for 60 minutes followed by 30 minutes group discussion or Q&A.

Documentation Plan

As a YouTube video.

Paper Abstracts

Not applicable.

Details of the Team

Ravishankar Ayyakkannu

Srikanth Lakshmanan