The Legality of Parody and Satire in India

Abstract

Parody and satire are valuable to democracies as they provide fresh narratives on contemporary issues in public forums without any form of violence. However, archaic legislations such as the sedition law and the anti-blasphemy laws have allowed powerful groups to mislabel them to invoke criminal sanction and suppress any form of political dissent or controversial issues. Moreover, the status of Intellectual Property Laws is not elaborate or descriptive enough to clearly demarcate satire from parody as it broadly classifies them as one and the same under the defence of fair use. Hence, the defence of fair use is applicable to both the forms, regardless, thereby making it eligible for copyright protection as well. The paper focuses to discuss the scope of parody and satire under the right to freedom of speech and its legality under the present intellectual property laws by comparing them with the laws of other countries such as the USA in order to highlight the differences between them. It also discusses the various obstacles to achieving freedom of expression in the form of parody and satire within the country.