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Back in September last year, Mike wrote about the remarkable court ruling in India that copyright is not inevitable, divine or a natural right. As we have been reporting since 2013, the case in question was brought by three big Western publishers against Delhi University and a photocopy shop over "course packs" -- bound collections of photocopied extracts from books and journals that are sold more cheaply than the sources. Although the High Court of Delhi ruled that photocopying textbooks in this way is fair use, that was not necessarily the end of the story: the publishers might have appealed to India's Supreme Court. But as the Spicy IP site reports, they didn't:
In a stunning development, OUP, CUP and Taylor & Francis just withdrew their copyright law suit filed against Delhi University (and its photocopier, Rameshwari) 5 years ago! They indicated this to the Delhi high court in a short and succinct filing made this morning.
This withdrawal brings to an end one of the most hotly contested IP battles ever, pitting as it did multinational publishers against academics and students. The law suit was filed as far back as 2012 and it dragged on for 5 long years!
[...] That's an important point. So often it seems that copyright only ever gets longer and stronger, with the public always on the losing side. The latest news from India shows that very occasionally, it's the public that wins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @06:12PM
When I was in grad school in the 90s, all the Indian students had copies of the physics textbooks they got from India. The books were all blatant photocopies done by a company who bound them up in paperback form and sold them for something like $5 to $10. I don't think this issue was about anyone copying their own purchased copies for themselves, but it was about a whole industry built up up doing this practice as a business model. I think even most of the "information wants to be free" crowd would argue that isn't a justifiable model, but then again, a fair number of people around here brag how clever they are to download torrents of things because they feel entitled to it, so maybe not.