Dear all,
In his love for maintaining the OSA regime, our moderator forgets the fact that we are a democracy and our legal regime is different from what it is in the West. There is no copyright for the State on documents produced by the State or its agencies in India, ordinarily. Copyright is protected by the Copyright Act whether registered initially or not. Unless the document in question is the nature of an expression or creation over which intellectual property can be claimed, no copyright claim is valid. Let us take an exmaple: An FIR filed with the police is a public document and will sit in some file or the other eventually. The final report of the police investigation in a criminal case that is filed before a magistrat'es court will ordinarily be in the form of a file. So if I get a copy of that file at the rate of Rs. 2 per page which law prevents me from mass distributing it?
And I would really like to know who has the copyright on these papers? will it be the station house officer who wrote the complaint? or will it be the person who lodged the complaint with the police? or will it be the accused persons named in the FIR- because without their actions there would be nothing to record as an FIR. or is copyright that of the victims of the crime who are suffering? and which law prevents me from mass distributing copies of the FIR or the charge sheet if I can afford it? In fact such documents must be mass distributed in every instance where the police foul up or goof up the investigation. This is necessary for kick starting the battle of accountability of public officials.
We need to read the OSA carefully. Please recognise OSA for what it is- it is an anti-spying law, period. Of course it has been misused and we learnt to abuse it from those who drafted that law (The Britishers who probably forgot to Gazette it). the kind of interpretation that our moderator gives to its provisions opens up more opportunities for abuse of its provisions. According to OSA, unauthorised possession of government-held information amongst others actions is an offence. Mere possession is not enough. please read the sections carefully, almost everywhere possession and transmission or alienation of such information must be proven to be prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. How can a citizen who obtains any information under the RTI Act use it against the safety of the State? Such information will not be given to him under the RTI Act in the first place as we have strong protection in the form of exemptions listed in Section 8(1) of the RTI Act.
when the information is provided under the RTI Act, it is deemed to be authorised possession. There is no law under which the State can prosecute a citizen if he wishes to make money out of selling such information, to the best of my knowledge. However this is also the question of ethics. No one should be able to make commercial gain out of RTI. In developed countries, some RTI laws and several assets disclosue laws place restrictions on commercial re-use of such information. We do not have that protection in India.
As for priced publications, it depends upon what instances we are talking about. If it is information in which intellectual property exists and can be recognised in law then commercial reuse of this information without permission from the rightsbearer is forbidden. But let us take the simplest example of the bare texts of the law which private law book publishing houses are publishing. This is information contained in a public document which they are reprinting (and sometimes make several mistakes in the reproduction) and making money out of it. The Constitution allows everybody the right to publish verbatim even the reports of parliamentray proceedings, provided they do not misreport. so in such cases where does the copyright vest? Does it vest with all the officers who signed the documents that got gazetted eventually? Did their section officers and clerks also have a copyright on it? Do MPs have intellectual property claims on the things they say in Parliament? In a democracy when we say 'State's copyright' where does such right ultimately vest? What is the democratic State without its people? or What is any kind of State without its people? When the Constitution belongs to the people, everything that is done under its aegis belongs to the people ultimately. So the State's copyright also belongs to the people. This is why Section 9 says violation of the copyright of the State cannot be a ground for refusing access to information under the RTI Act.
There are some countries where officials can claim intellectual property over their views tendered on file or on the intellectual contribution to government policymaking. In India I am not in favour of having such a regime of potection until the proportion of bureaucrats abiding by the fundamental principle of any functional democracy, that is "rule of law" goes up to 99.999999... ...%.
Thanks
Venkat
Dear Ram
Notwithstanding the wish list of some of our members (if wishes were horses beggars would ride <wink>), the legal position is very clear - information of any kind disclosed / obtained in RTI cannot be reproduced legally.
Leaving aside the OSA, the copyright of all such information continues to vest in the State. For example if you buy a priced publication (say copy of BIS standard IS:1234/1972) for Rs. 250 under section 4 process or otherwise you cannot reproduce it or any part thereof without specific permission of the copyright holder. Likewise if you obtain copies of some Govt file at Rs.2 per page reproduction charge, you cannot further mass distribute it at Rs.0.40 per page xeroxing charge on No-Profit basis. Lastly, it is entirely possible (and very legal) that the State may decide to give Mr.X some information in RTI but decline exactly the same info to Mr.Y.
Sarbajit
--- In rti_india@yahoogrou ps.com, "Ramnarayan. K" <ramnarayan.k@ ...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Arun <arun_agrawal@ ...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > I think that Ram is referring to publication/ distribution of RTI related
> > rules .
> >
> Nope, am referring to "rules" if any that "govern" publication of
> information acquired under the RTI act.
>
> Basically can information got under RTI be distributed. It seems a waste if
> one gets info and is not allowed to pass it on further in a more public
> manner.
>
> ram
>
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