1. For as long as there has been art, there has been copying. The student learns from the master by imitating (in the performance arts) and copying (in the plastic arts). In music and dance in particular, a student is not allowed to improvise till she is able to imitate the master exactly and acquires a certain mastery over the act of imitation.

2. From almost the earliest times, there has also been reproducibility. The Indus civilization had seals, though I am not sure if they used casts, like the Greeks did. In the Middle Ages, techniques of engraving, etching, and woodcuts developed. These were followed by lithographs. The movable type revolutionized printing, making it faster and easier to reproduce both text and images.

3. Photography, in the visual sphere, and sound recording techniques, in the aural sphere, speeded up reproduction enormously. These techniques also helped standardize reproduction. Verisimilitude of a hitherto unprecedented level was now possible.

4. Walter Benjamin ('The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility') makes the point that photography, for the first time, freed the hand. Now, the eye did all the work. For the first time, dexterity and skill of the hand was no longer required to create life-like images.

5. "Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was enormously accelerated, so that it could now keep pace with speech" (Benjamin). From here, it was but a short step to synchronizing image to sound, and create film. With cinema, for the first time, the reproduction of art was not a post-facto afterthought, but built very much into the very act of creation. There is no "original" performance which is recorded and reproduced. What is recorded is only fragments of the whole, and the act of creation is as much in the assembling of the fragments as in the recording of it. The art of cinema makes absolutely no sense without its mechanical reproduction and dissemination. In other words, for the first time in the history of art, there is virtually no notion of the "original" artwork. What is seen by the spectators is always-already a copy.

6. In cinema, though, there is still the notion of the "master" print, which is then used to make copies. If one were to make copies of copies, there would be a loss of quality from generation to generation. In other words, there is still some difference between the master and the copy. There is also a limit to how many copies a master can generate without itself beginning to degenerate. This difference is obliterated in the digital era. Now, there is no difference at all between the master (there is actually no "master") and its copy. There is also now no limit to how many copies can be made of any work.

7. The internet not only accelerates the process of copying, it also opens up potentialities of dissemination beyond barriers of financial affordability and national boundaries. The internet also smashes barriers of time in the dissemination of art. Benjamin quotes the French poet Paul Valéry: "Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs with minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign." Even the most prescient of commentators, like Benjamin himself, could hardly have imagined anything like the internet in the 1930s.

8. The internet (and digital technology in general) also enormously accelerates another development foreseen by Benjamin (in connection with the spread of the printing press): "the distinction between author and public is about to lose its axiomatic character." With the internet, not only do readers become authors, but viewers become filmmakers, and listeners musicians. Inherent in digital technology, then, is the tendency towards democratization.

9. In the theatre, the notion of "copying" as well as "reproducibility" works differently than in almost any other art. The theatre actor does not learn by copying her master, as a painter, sculptor, dancer or musician does (except in "classical" forms like Kathakali, which are highly coded). The modern theatre actor, from the very beginning, is encouraged to improvise.

10. The dialectic of theatre is that it simultaneously embodies reproducibility as well as resists it. It embodies reproducibility because players act out a play several times, over time (and most often, over space as well). However, it resists reproducibility of the mechanical or technological sort. To date, theatre is something that is most typically seen live. Recordings of theatre performances are sometimes made, and even sold commercially, but never in the way that recordings of live music concerts are sold.

11. The act of theatre, while embodying reproducibility, resists it at a more fundamental level as well. It could be argued that no two performances of a play, even by the same set of players, at the same venue, one after another, are in fact "copies" of one another. There is no one, unique original or master, which is copied again and again. Each performance is in fact a unique performance - the pace, rhythm, tempo, feel, power, cadence, energy can, and do, vary over performances. Theatre is the art of the impermanent, the transient, the here and now.

12. Some arts are "pure." The purest of all arts is perhaps music, in particular Hindustani vocal music. Not only is it pure in the sense that it can, theoretically, exist without any instrumental accompaniment (and is, in fact, performed with fairly minimal instrumental accompaniment), it is "pure" also in the sense that it has least dependence on words or images. It is the expression of abstract thought. Even when Khyal singing, for instance, uses words or phrases, through repetition as well as conventions of articulation, the singer draws the listener's attention away from the meaning of the words themselves. In forms like Dhrupad, of course, even the notional use of words or phrases is absent. The Hindustani singer improvises in performance within the notational framework of the raga, and the stylistic framework of the gharana. However, both these frameworks are in practice fairly open-ended.

13. Theatre is at the opposite end of the spectrum. It is the most "impure" of arts. It is an agglomeration of many arts (or crafts, if you will): writing, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, carpentry, design, tailoring, singing, dancing, acting, and so on. Any performance of a play is always much more than a reading of its script. In every language of the world, a play is always "watched," never "heard." In other words, a theatre performance is always sedimented - actors, musicians, designers, and so on, add their own layers over and above the text given to them by the playwright. Not to mention the very critical input of the theatre director, who welds all of this into a single artistic piece based on her vision and "interpretation." Indeed, what makes theatre theatre is not only its impermanent nature, but also the possibilities of interpretation it opens up.

14. Theatre is the one art that most easily takes to new technological developments. Thus, for instance, if Piscator (in Germany) and Meyerhold (in Russia), in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Revolution, made use of projected film newsreels, recorded speeches, mechanical devises like moving ramps and so on, the modern theatre artistes are taking to video projections (of both recorded and live action), installation art, sophisticated sound mixing technologies, and so on.

15. This has a very important implication. The play in performance ceases to be the product of a playwright's creative labour alone. This is the reason that the best-written plays of all time can be disasters in particular stagings, or vice-versa: a very ordinary play can attain great artistic heights in the hands of the right players.

16. In a word, theatre resists copyright. A written and published playtext may be under copyright. However, in performance, the playtext has always-already transformed into a sedimented creation, the kernel of which may be a particular playtext. However, the same kernel may, and often does, produce two (or more) vastly different works of art. The layers of creation that deposit themselves over the kernel prove very hard to clearly delineate, separate, catalogue, and therefore copyright. How can you copyright Mohan Agashe's high-pitched nasal voice and heavy yet graceful gait that have come to define the character of Nana Phadanvis in Vijay Tendulkar's Ghashiram Kotwal for generations of theatre-lovers? In performance, Mohan Agashe's acting, Bhaskar Chandavarkar's music, Chandrakant Kale's and Ravindra Sathe's singing, Jabbar Patel's direction, etc., all add to the kernel of Tendulkar's playtext to transform it beyond the text. All this complicates enormously the question of "authorship."

17. In actual fact, whatever their claims may be, playwrights are plagiarists. If Shakespeare is reputed to have based some of his plays on other contemporary plays which flopped, Brecht based many of his plays on other eminently successful plays. Many of Girish Karnad's and Chandrasekhar Kambar's plays are based on ancient myths and tales. Habib Tanvir has fashioned plays out of local "folk" tales. One of Govind Deshpande's plays is a rewritten version of a Tendulkar play, with characters and situations from the original, but different politics. The history of theatre is replete with such and similar examples.

18. Indian theatre has seen, since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a very large number of translations/adaptations. Shakespeare was translated widely, sometimes in ways that might amuse the modern reader. For instance, Narayan Bapuji Kanitkar published Shashikala Ratnapal, his translation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in 1882. However, he changed the end of the play, from tragedy to happy end. The reason: because a tragic end belies the belief that God is kind and forgiving. He did this, he claimed, on the advice of many friends. He was referring, among others, to "Nyaymurti" Mahadev Govind Ranade and "Lokhitvadi" Gopal Hari Deshmukh. Ranade felt that the play ending on "shok-ras" is contrary to "Marathi kavyapadhdhati." In any case, since the translator had rectified two other flaws in the original - that the lovers fall in love while still rather young, and that some amount of "phajilpana" (naughtiness) is involved in it - a tragic end was unwarranted. One thing, however, has remained unchanged since then. When Indian theatrepersons translate/adapt a playwright from another culture, we make him our own. Shakespeare and Brecht, Chekhov and Fo, Ibsen and Miller, all seem to us our own.

19. The field of modern Indian theatre has been predominantly an amateur field, in that most of the theatre activity in India is neither professional nor commercial in nature. With an absence of corporate interest, and a lackadaisical attitude of the state towards it, theatre earns, even in instances where it is commercial or professional, very little revenue. Therefore, models or notions of rights developed on the commercial stages of the West have little or no relevance to Indian theatre practitioners.

20. Theatre, because it is here and now, because it resists reproducibility, has had little to do with the internet for a very long time. There is no Napster equivalent on the web for theatre. There is no site (to the best of my knowledge) which posts videos only of plays, or where you could download entire plays. There aren't even very many play script banks on the web. All that you get are programmes of performances, and even those (at least in India) are often incomplete, erratic, and concentrated in the metros. You cannot even get details of performance spaces (size, dimensions, facilities, rentals, location, etc.) for any Indian city on the web.

21. There have been stray incidents, however, where being on the internet has proved a nuisance for performing groups. A theatre group in Mumbai was recently sent notice by the estate of a dead Western playwright, demanding royalties for an adaptation of his play that they were doing. This is just the beginning. We are likely to see more such instances. After all, J.K. Rowling's lawyers did sue a Puja pandal in Calcutta because it was based on the Harry Potter theme.

22. The myth about copyright, of course, is that it protects the creative individual's interests. In fact, though, it typically protects the interests of corporate entities. Napster had to be shut down not because individual musicians protested against their songs being downloaded for free, but because music companies perceived a threat to their bottom lines.

23. Interestingly, while copyright regimes recognize the ownership of corporations - which are in any case recognized as legal individuals under US law - but not communities. Thus, the company that owns the music of the Hindi film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam could sue discotheques that play Nimbuda, the company itself has to pay nothing to the Rajasthani community from which it has stolen that song.

24. Copyright regimes are also designed to typically protect the blockbuster from piracy. However, not every novel or film is a blockbuster; and certainly, most plays do not earn millions. My own hunch is that a number of writers and other creative people would be happy to have their work read/heard/seen without bothering too much about royalties. Once their work is owned by a company though, this possibility ceases for them. In other words, while copyright regimes protect blockbusters from piracy, they also typically prevent non-blockbusters from being disseminated widely.

25. The idea of copyright itself needs to be critiqued because it obstructs the free flow and growth of knowledge. It is in opposition to copyright regimes that movements for free software (as opposed to proprietary software), for copyleft and creative commons licenses have grown. Playwrights and other theatrepersons need to study these options, so that corporations do not come in the way of the wide dissemination of their work.

26. In most cases, laws are framed to regulate practice on the ground; practice does not evolve out of nowhere simply because there is a law on the books. Similarly, law adapts to changes in practice and technology. Old law has to cede ground to new law if it goes against common practice. Till 1945, according to American law, the right to private property in land extended to all the space above the land, going till infinity. In that year, the Causbys, a family of farmers in North Carolina, sued the federal government because low flying planes scared their livestock, but the judge dismissed the case because "common sense revolts at the idea" that planes should fly on an alternative route because the right over land included the right to space above it. The question, then, is: can the practice of theatre lead to changes in law that are in harmony with realities of Indian theatre?

27. This may seem utopian. But there are some leads to look at. The Free Software Movement in one. If I were to develop new software, I can cede the copyright over that to the Free Software Foundation, which then makes my software freely available to others, while ensuring that free software is not stolen and made proprietary, or that other software that is developed out of my software is also made freely available. Similarly, one can think of a body like the India Theatre Forum becoming the repository of rights over playscripts, etc., which are made available by it, perhaps via the internet, to the larger body of theatrepersons in India and abroad under the condition that the material not be used in proprietary ways.

28. A group of documentary filmmakers and lawyers in the US have worked on a Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. This has three purposes: it acts as a source of information for documentary filmmakers (since they are often misinformed about copyright); it acts as a source of information for the insurers, the broadcasters, the distributors, and others (in a word, "gatekeepers"); and if a filmmaker operating within this code is actually subjected to a lawsuit, it would act as a tool of defence (see Contested Commons/Trespassing Publics: A Public Record, New Delhi: Sarai, 2005, p. 105). Maybe it is time to think of something along these lines for theatrepersons in India.

*The writer is an Actor and Director with Jana Natya Manch, Delhi. He works as an Editor with LeftWord Books First Presented at the National Free Software Conference, Cochin, 15-16 November, 2008.