Legal Remedies for Copyright Infringement in Broadcasting

When a television channel invests crores of rupees to acquire the exclusive rights for broadcasting a major cricket tournament, the last thing it wants is for that content to be re-streamed illegally on dozens of websites – for free, often with third-party ads generating revenue for the infringer. This is not a hypothetical situation; it happens constantly. And it is precisely why Indian law provides broadcasting organizations with a robust set of legal remedies to combat copyright infringement. Understanding these remedies is essential for anyone studying intellectual property law, as they define the enforcement backbone of broadcast reproduction rights.

What counts as infringement in broadcasting 🔗

Before looking at remedies, it helps to understand what triggers them. Section 37 of the Copyright Act, 1957 grants every broadcasting organization a broadcast reproduction right – a distinct category of right that protects the broadcast signal for 25 years from the beginning of the calendar year following the year in which the broadcast was made. This right is independent of any copyright subsisting in the underlying content, such as the music, film, or performances within the broadcast.

Under Section 37(3), the following acts, if done without a licence from the rights owner, constitute infringement of the broadcast reproduction right: rebroadcasting the broadcast; causing it to be heard or seen by the public on payment of charges; making a sound recording or visual recording of the broadcast; reproducing such a recording where it was made without licence or for purposes not covered by the licence; and selling or commercially renting out such recordings. So if a cable operator records a satellite broadcast of a live match and retransmits it to subscribers without authorisation, every one of those acts is an infringement.

It is also worth noting that Section 39A of the Act makes several civil and criminal remedy provisions applicable to broadcast reproduction rights in the same way they apply to copyright in a work – with necessary adaptations. This bridging provision is what allows broadcasting organizations to invoke the full range of remedies that a copyright owner would otherwise access.

Civil remedies available to broadcasting organizations 🔗

Chapter XII of the Copyright Act, 1957 lays out the civil remedies for infringement. These are the most commonly pursued remedies when a broadcaster wants to stop an infringer and recover its losses.

Injunctions 🔗

An injunction is typically the first and most urgent relief a broadcasting organization seeks. Under Section 55, a court can issue restraining orders that stop the infringer from continuing the infringing activity – whether that means shutting down a website stream, halting cable retransmission, or preventing the further sale of pirated recordings.

Courts can grant two kinds of injunctions. An interlocutory (interim) injunction is issued at an early stage of proceedings before a full trial, when the harm is ongoing and urgent. A permanent injunction is granted at the conclusion of the case. In the context of live broadcasting – say, a cricket series or a pay-per-view event – broadcasters routinely seek interim injunctions because the event itself has a narrow time window and any delay would render the relief meaningless.

Courts have also developed the concept of dynamic injunctions and John Doe orders specifically for the digital broadcast context. In the landmark case of Star India Pvt. Ltd. v. Haneeth Ujwal (2014), the Delhi High Court granted an injunction against both identified and unidentified defendants – including 107 “rogue websites” – that were illegally streaming the 2014 India-England cricket series online. The court directed Internet Service Providers to block these websites entirely, not just individual infringing URLs, because a website could simply alter its URL to evade a narrower block. The dynamic nature of the order meant it could cover future pirate domains as they emerged, which set an important precedent for broadcast enforcement in India.

Damages 🔗

Beyond stopping the infringement, a broadcasting organization can claim compensatory damages under Section 55 – monetary compensation for the financial loss caused by the infringement. Courts assess these damages based on factors like the commercial value of the broadcast rights, the scale of unauthorised use, and the revenue lost by the rights holder. Where the infringer has profited from the act, courts can also award conversion damages, calculated on the basis of the value of the infringing material.

Account of profits 🔗

In cases where the infringer has made money from the unauthorised use – for instance, a website that streamed a live broadcast illegally and earned advertising revenue – the court can order an account of profits. This requires the infringer to submit a financial account of what it earned through the infringing activity and surrender that amount to the rights holder. This remedy is particularly relevant where advertising-funded piracy websites exploit broadcast content at scale.

Rights against persons dealing in infringing copies 🔗

Section 58 of the Copyright Act gives rights owners the power to act against persons who are found in possession of, or dealing in, infringing copies. A court can order that such infringing copies – or any equipment used to make them – be delivered to the rights holder. This is especially useful when physical recordings of broadcasts are being sold commercially.

Criminal remedies and their deterrent function 🔗

Civil remedies are primarily restorative – they aim to put the rights holder back in the position they would have been in but for the infringement. Criminal remedies, on the other hand, serve a deterrent function. The Copyright Act, 1957, treats infringement of broadcast reproduction rights as a criminal offence under Chapter XIII.

Section 63 – Imprisonment and fines 🔗

Under Section 63, any person who knowingly infringes or abets the infringement of broadcast reproduction rights can be punished with imprisonment of not less than six months, which may extend to three years, along with a fine ranging from ₹50,000 to ₹2,00,000. The statute sets a minimum term of imprisonment to signal that copyright infringement – particularly commercial-scale piracy – is not treated as a trivial offence. The quantum of punishment is influenced by factors such as the extent of financial harm, commercial intent, and whether the accused is a repeat offender.

Section 63A – Enhanced penalty for repeat offenders 🔗

Section 63A provides for an enhanced penalty on second and subsequent convictions under Section 63. This escalation is designed to prevent recidivism. Broadcasters dealing with persistent cable operators or habitual online pirates can invoke this provision to seek stiffer consequences.

Section 64 – Police power to seize infringing copies 🔗

One of the most operationally significant criminal provisions is Section 64, which empowers police officers to seize infringing copies without a warrant, provided they have reasonable grounds to believe that an offence under Section 63 has been committed. For broadcasting organizations, this means that when an organised piracy racket is distributing recordings of their broadcasts commercially, enforcement agencies can move swiftly without having to wait for a court order. The seized goods may be handed over to a magistrate, who can subsequently order their delivery to the rights holder.

Sections 65A and 65B – Protection of technological measures 🔗

Inserted by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012, Section 65A criminalises the circumvention of technological protection measures – the digital locks that broadcasters use to encrypt their signals. Section 65B penalises the removal or alteration of rights management information – the embedded data that identifies the rights owner. Both provisions attract imprisonment of up to two years and a fine. These provisions directly address the modern problem of signal piracy, where infringers decode encrypted satellite or DTH signals to retransmit them without authorisation. As the Lexology analysis on broadcasting rights notes, Section 65B also penalises distribution or public communication of content where the rights management information has been unlawfully removed.

Administrative remedies 🔗

Beyond the courts, administrative remedies offer a third avenue of enforcement. The Customs authorities, operating under Section 53 of the Copyright Act, can detain and seize infringing copies of works at the border – for instance, physical recordings of broadcasts being imported for commercial distribution. While this is more relevant to physical media, it forms part of the complete enforcement framework. In the digital context, Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 enables the government to issue directions to block websites engaged in piracy, a tool that has been used in conjunction with court-ordered injunctions to take down streaming piracy portals.

Exceptions to broadcast reproduction rights 🔗

The law does not treat every unauthorised use of a broadcast as infringement. Section 39 of the Copyright Act carves out specific exceptions under which no infringement is deemed to have occurred. These include: making a sound or visual recording solely for private use; use for bona fide teaching or research; use of excerpts of a broadcast consistent with fair dealing for reporting of current events or for review; and other acts that do not constitute infringement under Section 52. A news channel using a short clip from a competitor’s broadcast to report on a breaking news event, for instance, would typically fall within the fair dealing exception. The existence of these exceptions ensures that the legal framework balances the rights of broadcasters with legitimate public interest uses.

The layered nature of copyright protection in broadcasting 🔗

One aspect that often confuses students is the layered structure of rights in the broadcasting sector. When a broadcaster airs a film, there are at least three layers of rights at play: the copyright in the film itself, the performers’ rights of those who appeared in it, and the broadcaster’s own broadcast reproduction right in the transmission. Infringing any of these layers independently gives rise to separate claims. Section 39A explicitly preserves this layered protection by providing that no licence to reproduce a broadcast can be granted without the consent of both the rights owner and the performer, where performers’ rights also subsist in the content. This means a person cannot simply obtain a licence from the broadcaster to reproduce a broadcast if doing so would also involve reproducing a performance – the performer’s consent is separately required.

This is also why the Bombay High Court, in the early case of Garware Plastics and Polyester Ltd. v. Telelink (AIR 1989 Bom 331), held that a cable TV operator broadcasting a video film for charges without authorisation infringed the broadcast reproduction right under Section 37. The court’s reasoning reinforced that each layer of rights must be separately licenced, and commercial exploitation without proper authorisation at any layer creates liability.

Why this legal framework matters 🔗

The remedies discussed above collectively serve two purposes. First, they compensate and restore broadcasting organizations that suffer financial harm from piracy. Second, they deter future violations by making infringement economically and legally costly for would-be infringers. The broadcasting sector involves enormous investments – in acquiring rights, deploying infrastructure, hiring technical staff, and building distribution networks. If those investments can be freely exploited by others without consequence, the incentive to make them in the first place collapses. The legal framework, by combining civil, criminal, and administrative remedies, ensures that broadcasting as an industry can function sustainably and that rights holders have meaningful recourse when their rights are violated.

With the rise of digital streaming, OTT platforms, and real-time piracy, this framework is being tested constantly. Courts are adapting – through dynamic injunctions, John Doe orders, and engagement with IT law provisions – to ensure that the remedies remain effective in the digital age. For law students, understanding how these remedies work in practice, and not just in statute, is what bridges the gap between black-letter law and real-world enforcement.

What do you think? Given that digital piracy can re-emerge almost instantly under new domain names after a court order, do you think the current remedy framework is adequate to protect broadcasting organizations in India – or does it need further legislative reform? And should criminal penalties for broadcast copyright infringement be made more stringent, or is civil enforcement through injunctions and damages sufficient to deter large-scale piracy?

References

1. https://lawgist.in/copyright-act/37
2. https://lawgist.in/copyright-act/39A
3. https://www.copyright.gov.in/documents/handbook.html
4. https://ssrana.in/ip-laws/copyright-law-india/copyright-misuse-and-infringement-india/
5. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/143962771/
6. https://onlinelawconnect.com/actsandrules/ipr/copyrightact/overview.php
7. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6526199f-85cd-4291-989d-155a7dc50272
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_India
9. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d2992d76-bb54-4756-ac85-3847f755a56c
10. https://www.myadvo.in/blog/copyright-infringement-in-india
11. https://lawgist.in/copyright-act/39
12. https://www.quickcompany.in/articles/rights-of-broadcasting-organization-under-the-copyright-act-1957