Dear Ms Hena Gupta, The chapter XI of the Indian Copyright Act clearly indicates that a copyright is infringed when anyone distributes anything either for trade or in a way affecting prejudicially the owner of the copyright. Copyright protection has never been and cannot be applied rigidly to avoid hampering of progress in the society particularly in academic and research frontiers. A balance is always maintained between the interest of the creator and of the community while applying the law by the executive and judiciary. Most of the social purpose activities are exempted from the operation of the act. Research and private study are specifically among them. So there is no much to guard against any act which you are convinced as bonafide and can prove to be a non-commercial academic activity. The word distributes is not much important, but the resultant effect of the action of distribution is more important when somebody looks through the eyes of the law. The law is now being carefully looked upon as the copying is an easier task and digital world permits copying and distributing anything easier than ever before leading to so frequent violations. K Rajasekharan Librarian, Kerala Institute of Local Administration(KILA) Mulagunnathukavu, Thrissur - 680581 , India ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Original Message: Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:43:33 +0530 From: HENAG <HENAG@infosys.com> Subject: Re: [- Does it Violate Copyrights Laws Hello Ms Vasumathi, I need a clarification of your point number 3 below. You said librarian from a commercial organization can make copy of an article from a subscribed journal or library book for an employee of the same organization. However not allowed by the same or anyone else to get several copies of the said article or pages to distribute. Is there any line that we can draw between the word DISTRIBUTE and SERVE to the user of library? I am bit confused for the word fair use / single use, and I think specially when we librarians in a profit making organizations are concerned the copyright laws are not very transparently/ clearly expressed . It is somewhat vague or not thought of us while written them . If you have better way or explicitly written authorised document please name it , I would like to go through that . Best Regards Hena S Gupta ( Sr. Librarian) -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.