Earlier the economic rights were not granted to the broadcasting organisation under the Copyright Act. The reason being that in most of the cases of that time, sound and television broadcasts were ‘live’ transmitted and because of their ephemeral nature, they could not fit into the then existing categories of copyright subject matter, which required that the subject of copyright should be reduced to writing or be in tangible form. The Broadcasting organisations are the via-media through which the public gets to see the content made by a production house. Unlike copyright, the broadcaster's rights are not based upon a creative contribution to the work. They are rather based on the protection of the broadcaster's investment, and are obtained simply by broadcasting the work to the public. The paper deals with the questions such as what are the economic rights of broadcasting organisation, why they have been acknowledged and granted so late under the Indian legislation.
Economic, broadcasting, Copyright, live, transmitted, ephemeral, via-media, protection
