Copyright in the Information Age: Librarian's Viewpoint

The intellectual work musi be produced and it must be accessible. The copyright act attempted to balance the rights of authors to benefit from their writing and stimulate creativity and needs of the readers to have ready access to information. This article explains lnternational Copyright Law and Indian lami of copyright briefly. It also describes copyrightable items and reasons for infringement of copyright. 1. 1NTRODUUlON direction. The work must be produced; it must be accessible; and neither can be sacrificed. It i s an era of knowledge explosion. With the developments in the fields of information 2. COPYRlGH-f technology and communications, knowledge i s being shared without any restrictions. It is also an era of globalization. With the emergence of new concept of 'Intellectual Capitalism', capital i s no longer in banks but in minds. The return on intellectual capital is considerable and not measurable by any standard. It manifests itself as tangible asset in the form of inventions, technologies, designs, books, etc. The intellectual capital requires protection from piracy and imitation. The Copyright Act attempted to balance the rights of authors to benefit from their writing and stimulate creativity and the needs of the readers to have ready access to information. This is a difficult balance to achieve and it i s important that scale does not tip far in eithe