25 May 2023: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

C. GS 3 Related

Category: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

1. On copyright infringement and AI

Syllabus: Issues relating to intellectual property rights

Prelims: About Copyright and various types of intellectual property rights

Mains: Copyright infringement, exemptions from liabilities, observations made by the U.S.courts in AWF Case and its implications

Context

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. v/s Goldsmith et al. Case.

Copyrights

• Copyright is a collection of legal rights extended by law to an intellectual property owner. 
• It provides a set of exclusive rights for artists over their creative output.
• Copyright law protects the work of diverse artists which include creators of literary, dramatic, artistic works, and musicals, photographers and the producers of cinematographic films and sound recordings. 
• The extent of rights includes control over the manner in which others reproduce or modify the work of copyright holders. 

Read more – Copyright Law in India

Exemptions from infringement liability

• The copyrights are usually balanced with the rights of the users with the help of exceptions mentioned under the copyright laws and different jurisdictions follow different approaches to exceptions.
• European Nations: These nations, particularly the countries in continental Europe, have followed an “enumerated exceptions approach”.
  • As per this approach, an instance of copyright infringement in question must be specifically covered under the law in order to be considered an exception.
• The U.S.: Various other countries, including the U.S., have adopted an “open-ended approach”.
  • There is no need to specify exemptions beforehand. However, guidelines are in place that mention the types of uses that can be exempted.
  • The courts in the U.S. usually take into account four key factors while determining a copyright infringement case, they are:
    • Purpose and character of the use (courts have usually given the highest priority)
    • Nature of the copyrighted work
    • Amount and substantiality of the portion taken by the defendant
    • Effect of the use on the potential market of the plaintiff’s work
  • The open-ended approach ensures that there is a considerable amount of flexibility to deal with challenges that arise due to emerging technologies.
  • However, a major limitation is that it is hard to predict whether an activity will be exempted from copyright infringement liabilities until it undergoes a litigation procedure.

Also read: Intellectual Property Rights – An Overview

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. v/s Goldsmith et al. Case (AWF case)

• Lynn Goldsmith, who is well known for her concert and portrait shots, had photographed the famous musician Prince in 1981 and one of these photographs was licensed by the Vanity Fair magazine for use as an “artist reference” in 1984.
  • Lynn Goldsmith was paid $400 for the licence by Vanity Fair.
• The licence had particularly mentioned that the illustration could appear once as a full-page element and once as a one-quarter-page element, in their November issue of 1984.
• The magazine then hired Andy Warhol, a famous visual artist to work on the illustration. 
  • Andy Warhol came up with a silkscreen portrait of Prince using Goldsmith’s photograph. 
• This silkscreen portrait, then, appeared in the magazine with appropriate credits to Lynn Goldsmith. However, Andy Warhol created 13 such screen prints and two pencil sketches, while the licence had authorised only one illustration. 
• In 2016,  a media conglomerate that publishes Vanity Fair, approached the Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) to reuse the 1984 illustration and upon realising that there were more portraits available, they opted to publish one of them and they paid $10,000 to AWF as part of the license and nothing to Lynn Goldsmith.
• Realising that Lynn Goldsmith might file a copyright infringement suit, AWF filed a suit to declare that it had not committed infringement. 
  • Lynn Goldsmith later filed a countersuit accusing AWF of copyright infringement.

Observation of various courts in the AWF case

• A district court had ruled in favour of the AWF and it observed that Andy Warhol’s use of Lynn Goldsmith’s photo constituted fair use. 
  • According to the court, Andy Warhol’s work was “transformative” as it had a different character, gave Goldsmith’s photograph a new expression, and used new aesthetics with creative and communicative results distinct from that of Goldsmith’s.
  • The court also noted that Warhol’s work added something new to the world of art and the public would be deprived of this contribution if the works could not be distributed.
• The Court of Appeals, however, reversed these observations and said that Warhol’s use of the photograph did not constitute fair use. 
• The case ultimately ended up in the Supreme Court of the U.S. and it gave its final verdict on May 18, 2023.
  • The majority of judges opined that if an original work and secondary work have similar purposes and if the secondary work is of a commercial nature, then the factor of “Purpose and character of the use” would not favour a fair-use interpretation unless there are other justifications.
  • The majority of the judges, in this case, felt that both Goldsmith’s photos, as well as Warhol’s adaptations, had more or less the same purpose.
  • They held that while copying may have helped convey a new meaning or message, that in itself did not suffice to grant exemptions from copyright infringement liabilities.

Implications of the Judgment

• The U.S. Supreme Court’s judgement is bound to create ripples across the field of visual arts.
• This decision is also expected to impact the manner in which regenerative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT have been conceived. 
  • Such regenerative AI tools are trained in a manner to use various texts, photos, and videos from the internet without considering whether they are copyrighted or not.
• The observations made on the issue of the commercial nature of the use might also lead to a deviation from the established view.

Implications for Indian copyright law

• Experts feel that there might not be any direct impact on Indian copyright law, as the framework for granting exceptions is different in India. 
• India has adopted a hybrid model of exception, according to which, a copyrighted work is exempted for specific purposes mentioned under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act of 1957. 
• India has a long list of exceptions mentioned and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court could influence the courts while determining the “fairness” of litigation.

Nut graf: The latest ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the AWF Case is expected to have far-reaching implications over the established copyright regulations as it adds unpredictability to the process of exempting copyright infringement from liabilities.