From Civil to Criminal: The escalating role of criminal enforcement in copyright infringement

Abstract

This paper analyses the criminalization of copyright violations in India, charting its historical, legislative, and judicial development. It investigates how colonial legacies, international intellectual property regimes, and local reforms have influenced the legal treatment of copyright violations, transforming them from civil wrongs to criminal offences. By examining the intersection between copyright enforcement strategies, property theory, and criminal jurisprudence, this research reveals theoretical and practical paradoxes that lie behind such change. It questions the justification of copyright infringement as theft and defies the morality, harm, deterrence, restraint and proportionality-based framework for criminal liability. By means of doctrinal approach, the study argues that the wholesale criminalization of copyright exploitation is disproportionate, theoretically flawed, and far more likely to be self-defeating, especially in the age of internet. It urges a more differentiated legal regime between infringement for commercial gain and minor, non-commercial use, proportioning copyright protection against notions of justice, equity, and creativity.