Can we circulate News Paper free of cost on Whats App ?

There were Wrong Perception that the newspapers can be carriers of the Corona virus, along with distribution being severely cut down during the lock down. Therefore the newspaper delivery came to a standstill across the country. In the absence of physical editions, e-paper editions of newspapers hold readers linked to their favourite publications. Newspapers are now back in circulation, though, and the industry has come out with many awareness campaigns together to emphasis that newspapers are not carriers of the virus. Therefore a new issue arose regarding the PDF versions of newspapers being circulated on Whats App groups, which has put print publishers into action.

Can we circulate News Paper free of cost on Whats App ?

Can we circulate News Paper free of cost on Whats App?

There were Wrong Perception that the newspapers can be carriers of the Corona virus, along with distribution being severely cut down during the lock down. Therefore the newspaper delivery came to a standstill across the country. In the absence of physical editions, e-paper editions of newspapers hold readers linked to their favourite publications. Newspapers are now back in circulation, though, and the industry has come out with many awareness campaigns together to emphasis that newspapers are not carriers of the virus. Therefore a new issue arose regarding the PDF versions of newspapers being circulated on Whats App groups, which has put print publishers into action.

The Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar stated in its May, 2020 issue that exchanging PDF versions of newspapers on Whats App groups is a breach of the law. The report claimed that this was causing the newspapers to lose their profits. A Gujarati newspaper also carried a news report on the same subject. After which, the Indian Newspaper Society cautioned against piracy and theft of newspapers in digital format.

"A statement released said," Most newspapers are available online in the morning every day in the e Paper format, some of which are charged and some free. In reality, many users copy the newspaper and build PDFs that they distribute to readers in Whats App and Telegram groups, leading to a loss in both print newspaper subscription revenue and digital e Papers.

There were a set of recommendations laid down to print publishers on protecting their Intellectual Property.

  • Communicating explicitly in the applications, blogs and newspapers that it is ILLEGAL to circulate any copies or part of them and strong legal action will be taken against people with heavy penalties.

  • In addition, with any legal action taken, publish few news to address the massive fines and litigation brought against criminals to prevent others from doing so.

  • Take legal action against perpetrators, especially against administrators of WhatsApp and Telegram who offend and cause legal notices (administrators of the WhatsApp community are responsible for anything illegal that occurs in their groups)

  • Build certain product features that escape or at least slow down piracy, such as Download cap for PDFs, Photos, Add pages with Java script code to avoid copying, Install a non-humanly identifiable user Id code, so that circulated social media PDFs can be traced back to individuals, Auto create and block list of users downloading more than a certain number of PDFs per week.

 

It was claimed by the president of INS, Sailesh Gupta that “It is okay to forward PDF files which are free, but it is not okay to copy a PDF from a paid e Paper service and forward it.”

However only few newspaper publications supported such a move. Some, like the Express Group, said they were going to proceed with free PDFs. HT Media also offers the Hindustan Times and Hindustan e Papers free of charge, while the business daily Mint is given one month of free access. For a period of 21 days and 15 days respectively, the e Papers of Business Line and The Hindu are offered for free trial. The April 2020 edition of Forbes India were been made free to downloaded.

It was further found that PDF and e Paper versions can shore up the readership and circulation numbers. This, in turn, would draw marketers who, during these periods, are moving to other platforms, such as digital. The very sector of newspaper publishers would be hit by the lack of ad revenues. In addition, it will also affect regional publications.

In any Whatsapp group, it was just a morning routine by some eager social media enthusiast. "Such PDF files are not posted to Twitter or Facebook, but are just circulated on Whatsapp," he pointed out. There was no serious reading of the news from such PDF files, and Whatsapp was accessed mainly on tiny mobile screens.

Therefore, it is not illegal to transfer newspaper PDF that are available free to the public, but the ones that needs to be paid for should not be converted into a PDF and forwarded on groups.

Similarly, The Delhi High Court in Jagran Prakashan Limited v. Telegram FZ LLC, CS (COM) directed social media messaging app Telegram to take down channels who are illegally distributing e-papers of the plaintiffs newspaper, Dainik Jagran in PDF format on their platform. As per the Plaintiff, their newspaper website had a security feature whereby a reader could read the newspaper in the digital form on the website itself and could not download it in PDF format. At present, the readers of the newspaper have the option to either subscribe the physical/print newspaper or to read the daily newspaper in the digital format on the web page of the newspaper itself. Considering the present COVID-19 situation, the Plaintiff was contemplating imposing fee on the digital newspaper in India. It was alleged that some users of Telegram had created channels on the platform to share e- papers of Plaintiff in PDF format on regular basis. Such activity permitted its users to download all the previous editions of the e-paper published in the past, which is otherwise available to a user only if he/she paid a subscription fee. The Court opined that the Plaintiff had made out a prima facie case in its favour and granted an injunction.

 

 

BY:-

Raksha Singhal