On August 4, 2023, India’s Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023, received Presidential assent and became the law of the land. Enactment marked the culmination of a decades-long process to update the country’s anti-piracy laws by cracking down on camcording in theatres and imposing significant penalties for distribution of illegally recorded films.
On August 11, 2023, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDPA”) became law. The provisions of the DPDPA are yet to come into effect.
In this Industry Spotlight with Vikram Sahay, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. and Lohita Sujith, Sr. Director, Copyright & Digital Economy, Motion Picture Association, discussed the OCC Industry, IFFI and the newly launched Best Web Series Award.
An elite force of female soldiers, the Agojie, is all that stands between the African Kingdom of Dahomey and the combined forces of the Oyo Empire and Mahi people. The Oyo and Mahi plan to raid Dahomey villages and sell their captives to European slavers. We open on a Mahi village where raiders heat their machetes over a fire at night.
When he returned to feature filmmaking, writer/director Clement Virgo followed his instincts. Since his last feature, Poor Boy’s Game (2007), Virgo has been directing TV, working more or less nonstop. He’s directed episodes of Empire, Netflix’s Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and OWN’s megachurch drama Greenleaf. He was thinking about getting back into features when a friend handed him a copy of David Chariandy’s novel “Brother,” about two Trinidadian immigrants in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough during a smotheringly hot summer in 1991.
A ruined world, decimated by a fungi-borne plague and teeming with zombified hordes and hardened survivors who can be just as dangerous. A biopic about one of the all-time greatest musical tricksters who created an astonishingly successful career parodying hit songs.
On August 3, almost 30 organizations,[i] representing 50,000 Canadian writers, visual artists and publishers released an open letter to newly appointed Heritage Minister Pascale St. Onge urging her to tackle “meaningful copyright reform”.
Big Studio Movie Licence, part of Heritage Films International, provides a blanket movie licence to organisations including senior living communities and religious institutions so they can enjoy films legally from Hollywood’s biggest studios.
Newly (and hastily) augmented with generative AI, Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has been normalizing piracy, drumming up business for piracy rings, and instructing internet users how to access piracy sites in countries where they have been blocked pursuant to court orders.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) held a stakeholder consultation meeting on August 23, 2023, to discuss the following issues related to copyright societies:
Single window system of copyright licensing
Single equitable remuneration
Issue of exemption under Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957
Interplay between Section 30 and 33 of the Copyright Act, 1957