Krisha Kothari, Shruti Nikam,
The assembly opened up the question of originality vs copying with a round of questions asked the audience regarding trends they’ve ‘copied’ from social media. This was done to build upon a discussion of the case of The Humans of Bombay (HoB) suing the People of India (PoI) for copyright infringement for repeating the same business model. The Humans of Bombay and the People of India are both storytelling platforms that share stories of people and places. These stories are sometimes textual and are sometimes in the form of audio and visual formats, such as videos on YouTube or Reels on Instagram and Facebook. The Humans Of Bombay are one of the several 'Humans of' platforms that have emerged after the 'Humans of New York' (HoNY) platform launched by Brandon Stanton in 2010. Only a short time after being launched, Humans Of New York became very popular for sharing human-centric stories from New York. The initiative led to several 'Humans of' platforms coming up across the world. Even college and university campuses started making 'Humans of' pages on Facebook where they would share stories from campuses. The Humans of Bombay (HOB) has filed in the Delhi High Court that the People of India (PoI) has copied its content in multiple ways. Based on the allegation, the Humans Of Bombay has sought an injunction against PoI.
The Humans Of Bombay have argued that the People of India (POI) on several occasions interviewed the same persons as the Humans Of Bombay and identically uploaded their photos. The Humans Of Bombay also claims that the PoI has "started an identical portal/service having identical content" and "has replicated many images and videos" from the Humans Of Bombay. In their lawsuit, the Humans Of Bombay has further said that the PoI has "completely replicated" their business model and stories. The case made headlines in India after Brandon, the founder of Humans of NY, commented on it on Saturday on X - "You can't be suing people for what I've forgiven you for", he posted.
The topic of the assembly, might not have been welcomed by many but, was chosen such that, youth who are the peak users of social media, could relate to such cases. This is because social media has become an essential of the time, a metaverse living is crafted which is a source of income and living of the contemporary times. Hence, discussions about such are vital for its users, as they lay a new layer of ethics for metaverse operators.
Diverging a little away from the above case, some examples of similar past cases regarding copyright infringement, Intellectual Property, trademarks etc were opened up to understand these terms and pose questions for discussion.
コメント