India moves toward mandatory AI royalty regime – Digital Watch Observatory
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Government experts would fix revenue-based royalty rates for AI systems, with periodic reviews and scope for court challenges.
India is weighing a sweeping copyright framework that would require AI companies to pay royalties for training on copyrighted works under a mandatory blanket licence branded as the hybrid ‘One Nation, One Licence, One Payment’ model.
A new Copyright Royalties Collective for AI Training, or CRCAT, would collect payments from developers and distribute money to creators. AI firms would have to rely only on lawfully accessed material and file detailed summaries of training datasets, including data types and sources.
The panel is expected to favour flat, revenue-linked percentages on global earnings from commercial AI systems, reviewed roughly every three years and open to legal challenge in court.
Obligations would apply retroactively to AI developers that have already trained profitable models on copyright-protected material, framed by Indian policymakers as a corrective measure for the creative ecosystem.
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