Screenwriting as Business or Service: An Indian Legal Analysis

International journal of research and review, 2021

Moral Rights and Economic Rights are Exclusive Rights that cannot be separated in relation to Copyrights. Copyright protects all forms of work, one of which is Film Script Writing as referred to in Article 40 paragraph (1) of Law Number 28 of 2014 concerning Copyright (UUHC). One of the forms of infringement on the copyrighted work of the film script is the reuse of the film script without the permission of the creator, resulting in the loss of the moral rights and economic rights of the creator. The problems in this study are: how to use the principles of Moral Rights and Economic Rights of the Author in claiming protection against Copyright infringement on Film Script Writing, how legal remedies can be taken in the form of legal protection for the Author of Film Script Writing used without permission, and how analysis of the Judge's decision on the violation of Moral Rights for the Creator in the dispute of the film "Benyamin Biang Kerok" based on the decision of the Panel of Judges Number 09/Pdt.Sus-HKI/Cipta/ 2018/PN Niaga Jkt. Pst. This research is descriptive analytical with a normative juridical approach. Qualitative analysis methods are used to process and analyze research data and then draw conclusions using deductive methods through a normative framework. The results of the research show: the use of the Principles of Moral Rights and Economic Rights of the Creator as a claim for infringement of Copyright

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008

The Project team preparing this study was comprised of Carter Eltzroth and Bhamati Viswanathan. Carter Eltzroth, MA (Oxford), JD (Columbia), is legal director for the DVB Project and former General Counsel of Nethold (MIH group). He has written extensively on broadcasting and development and has assisted the World Intellectual Property Organization in its work on a treaty protecting broadcasters' rights. He can be reached at celtzroth@helikon.net. Bhamati Viswanathan, MA (Pennsylvania), JD (Michigan), is a specialist in intellectual property law, notably copyright and informational and cultural creativity, and is completing her doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School on copyright law and policy and universities, including distance education.

Journal of emerging technologies and innovative research, 2020

The doctrine of Idea- Expression Dichotomy is a vital base of copyright law. Ideas are discussed as human mental conceptions or illustration. Thinking is generally viewed as concept manipulation and thus, involves expressions. What is eligible as a protectable factor in a movie plot? And how will it be properly judged? Therefore, the idea-expression dichotomy represents a tricky sliding scale in India. The purpose of this research is to understand the position of India in comparison to the laws of USA and United Kingdom. In this study an endeavor will be made to examine the various laws on Idea-Expression Dichotomy across various nations. This paper initiates the discussion by enumerating the evolution of the doctrine of idea-expression dichotomy and further proceeds by depicting its approach in American, English and Indian jurisdictions discussing how the Indian courts are following foreign laws to decide upon the infringement cases. The research further lays down various exception...

BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2018

This article is an attempt to rethink the intermedial practice and discourse of screenwriting during the first Indian talkies through a study of the margins of print, theatre and film history. I engage with the unfortunate archival absence of film scripts from the early years as a heuristic rather than a handicap, employing intermediality both as an archaeological and a conceptual tool in reconstituting screenwriting as a converged media practice. I argue that the widespread circulation of screenwriting manuals for amateurs constituted a pedagogical infrastructure separate from, but parallel to, the other infrastructural flow of ideas and professionals from the Parsi theatre into the film industry. The autobiographical accounts of some of the first playwright-turned-screenwriters bear testimony to the spaces they negotiated for themselves in the talkies after a successful stint with the Parsi stage. These memoirs form an interesting counterpoint to the testimonies of another group of screenwriters from the Indian Cinematograph Committee evidences (1927-1928) in which these writers express great apathy towards the practice in the Indian studios and declare their freelancing associations with Hollywood studios which solicited story ideas from viewers worldwide.

Theorizing Cultural Work: Labour, Continuity and Change in the Cultural and Creative Industries, 2013

Journal of British Cinema and Television vol. 5 no. 2, 2008

2017

The intellectual property rights have undergone a major transformation in the fast paced economic, social, cultural and technological development. The technological development has increased the contours of intellectual creation and innovation. We are living in the knowledge economy which has enhanced the focus on intellectual creation. This has lead to the debate on whether the intellectual property requires greater protection. Whether there is a requirement of change in the existing law or they are sufficient to protect the intellectual property in this technological world. The technology has digitalized the form of creation and innovation. This has affected all form of intellectual properties i.e. patent, trademarks, copyright, trade secrets, etc. The author will explore issues and challenges and the changes in the copyright law due to the technological development. Copyright law protects the author or creator who by skill, capital and labour creates an original work. Copyright protects the author by providing exclusive rights to create and reproduce the work. However, technology allows flawless, inexpensive and instantaneous copying, reproducing and distributing the work. There is an enormous growth not only in the creation of works but also the illicit consumption. The

Academic books on Indian cinema and film industry have not kept pace with the prodigious number of films produced in India each year that, by some accounts, is the second largest film producing industry in the world. Given this mismatch, Aswin Punathambekar's From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry is a timely reminder of the untapped potential of Bombay's film industry for extending existing theoretical frameworks in media, film and production studies. The book provides a critical interrogation of the 'sociohistorical conjuncture of the past two decades' (p. 3) in the history of Bombay cinema that marks a transition between two worlds – the older traditional one dominated by family-owned studios conducting business along kinship networks – giving way to a newer one that, responding to and engaging with processes of globalization , seeks to break free from past shackles to adopt newer aesthetics, business practices and markets. Relying on close analysis of cinematic texts, of the discourse within and about the industry and of key events in the lead up to and during this transition, Punathambekar weaves a fascinating tale of interest to scholars of Indian cinema and those probing relationships between texts and industry more broadly. This is a tale of technological and economic transformation enabled by the state, the city of Bombay and the Indian mediascape. But it is also a narrative of the battle lines that get drawn due to an ideological struggle between competing cultural practices of media production with corporatized and 'professional' pitted against traditional and preexisting. This book should be of immense interest to students and academics alike seeking to expand scholarship on non-western cinemas, but also to a broader audience comprising viewers and consumers who have noticed a shift in the grammar of Indian movies while lacking a theoretical vocabulary to explain the change. The book's framework of analysis is centrally grounded within the emerging scholarship on industry studies and production cultures. It seeks inspiration from scholars such as John Caldwell's ethnography of film and television industry professionals in Los Angeles and Michael Curtin and Serra Tenic's emphasis on the spatial aspects of media production through analyses of key cities such as Hong Kong and Vancouver. The choice of these frameworks is aimed to supplement the predominantly text-centric scholarship on Indian cinema by unmasking the complex relationalities within which production cultures of media industries embed and thrive. As is evident in the structure of the book, this method does not elide textual analysis but supplements it with close readings of networks of consumers, producers, financiers , marketers and critics. Tracing these circuits of transfer and exchange along material

New Writing, 2016

In the last decade screenwriting as a profession has changed significantly, with the writing of a screen idea no longer a singular individual pursuit (Macdonald, 2004). Screenwriting has become a truly collaborative practice, and even though the screenplay is considered by some as being 'authorless' (Conor 2014) or a 'signpost not a destination' (Harper 2015), it is also an activity that inherently recognizes writers as the creators of novel and original content. This re-examination of screenwriting situates the practice inside the academy as a place where future practitioners can understand the industry they aspire to work in, and the contexts within which it operates. To this end, the screenwriter steeped in the traditions of creative writing can become more creatively responsive to the industrial and economic factors driving the processes of screen production. By reconceptualizing the screenwriter as a creative and conditioned agent who plays a specific part in the realities of the contemporary screen industry, we can better prepare students for professional practice scenarios that will enable them to make creative contributions that shape and change the industry.