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The market in India is hot with Software Copyright issues being discussed vehemently both in the Legal and the IT circles. After the arrest of Radiant officials following a complaint from Oracle, and the announcement of the Nasscom reward scheme, the industry is worried that minor differences in interpretation of a Copyright agreement can land people in jail. How many of the users know the fine print conditions which may say for example, "License to use" does not include "License to use in Training others"? as might be the substantial point of debate in the Radiant case. If this point is conceded, it may mean that if you have installed a
legal copy of Windows 2000 and use it for training others how to use it,
it may amount to violation of Copyright. Now the hundreds of training establishments
in India which are providing training in various application software including
Photoshop, Macromedia, Microsoft Office etc will have to ascertain whether the user
license prohibit commercial training .
The first thing is that most of such training institutes have to close down or seek specific "Training License" from the original software. Obviously the Companies will say that they will themselves open "Authorized Training Centers" and not allow others to carry on training in their software. They may however be prepared to permit such training at a suitable price. No marks for guessing that this would increase the cost of IT training several fold, reduce student intake and manpower export from India. (Remember SAP Course fees from authorized Centers?) The Radiant issue is therefore larger than the "Unreasonable Arrest" and "Police Excess" that have been highlighted in these columns. (Incidentally, when the IT Bill was in the Parliament, several politicians opposed it vehemently for Sec 80 on the powers of the Police to search and seize without warrant. I wonder where have they all gone now?. One of the TMC leaders in Chennai had in a TV programme told us that "ITA-2000 is worse than the Rowlatt Act". I wish TMC now takes up the cause of IT Employees against the "Radiant Type Harassment"..) The solution to this lies in the interpretation that the Court may have to give in the instant case. If the Court holds that "Fair Use" of an application software "Includes its use for Training", then the IT training industry can breath freely. NIIT's, SSI s, Aptech s and scores of other training establishments will have to pray for the decision to be in their favour. It is however possible that Oracle may simply withdraw the case following a compromise and not let the case be decided one way or the other. I wish that in such a case, a PIL has to be filed to let the Court debate the issue and come to the conclusion of what is a "Fair Use". In the meantime, the lawyers handling the case for Radiant should take care that they prepare their arguments properly so that the case can throw some useful light on the interpretation of Copyright in India. Naavi
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