Terms of Use & Copyright Notice
Please read this before using this website. By continuing to use it, you accept these terms.
Who owns what is on this website
Every photograph, video, text, design, logo and graphic on this website is original work and is protected by the Copyright Act, 1957.
Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the owner of this website. Photographs supplied by others are used with permission and remain the property of their respective owners.
Nothing on this website is free to reuse, and nothing here is in the public domain.
What you may do
- Read, view and browse this website
- Share a LINK to any page, anywhere you like
- Print or save a page for your own personal reference
- Quote a short passage of text with clear credit and a link back to this website
What you may not do without permission
Each of the following requires written permission from the owner. Doing any of them without permission is copyright infringement:
- Copying, saving or reproducing any photograph for use anywhere else
- Publishing, printing or displaying any photograph in a poster, banner, hoarding, pamphlet, newspaper, book or advertisement
- Uploading any photograph to any social media account, page, channel or group not operated by the owner
- Editing, cropping, retouching, recolouring or morphing any photograph
- Removing, hiding, cropping out or altering the watermark, credit or copyright mark on any photograph
- Using any photograph or text in political material, campaign matter, merchandise or any commercial product
- Using the content of this website to train, fine-tune or build any artificial intelligence or machine learning system
- Copying the design, layout, code or structure of this website
- Using automated tools, scrapers or bots to collect content from this website
- Presenting any content from this website as your own work
What the law says
Copyright Act, 1957 — Section 51 defines infringement. Section 63 makes knowing infringement a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment of six months to three years and a fine of fifty thousand to two lakh rupees. Section 55 allows the owner to claim damages, an injunction, and the profits made from the infringement.
Sections 65A and 65B — removing or altering a watermark or rights-management information, or defeating a technological protection measure, is a separate offence punishable with imprisonment up to two years and a fine.
Information Technology Act, 2000 — Sections 43 and 66 cover unauthorised downloading, extraction and copying of data from a computer resource. Sections 66C and 66D cover identity misuse and impersonation.
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — provisions on cheating, forgery and defamation apply where content is altered, misattributed or used to mislead.
A morphed, edited or misleadingly captioned photograph of a person may also give rise to a separate civil claim for defamation and for violation of personality and publicity rights.
A record of your acceptance is kept
When you accept these terms, the following is recorded: the date and time, your IP address, your browser and device description, the page you were on, and a random identifier stored in your browser.
This record exists for one purpose only — to establish that these terms were shown to and accepted by a visitor, should that ever need to be proved. It is not used for advertising, and it is not sold or shared with anyone.
An IP address by itself does not identify a person. Where infringement is found, the owner may seek a court order requiring the internet service provider to identify the subscriber, and may issue notices to the platform hosting the infringing material.
This record is kept only for as long as it may reasonably be needed for legal purposes. You may write to the owner to ask what is held about you.
If you need to use something from here
Permission is often given, and it is usually given quickly. Write to the owner using the contact details on this website, saying which photograph or text you want, where it will be used, and for how long.
Press and media are welcome to request photographs for news reporting.
Asking costs you nothing. Not asking can cost a great deal.
What happens if these terms are broken
The owner may, without further notice:
- Send a takedown notice to the website, platform or social media service carrying the material
- Send a legal notice demanding removal and compensation
- File a civil suit for injunction, damages and account of profits
- File a criminal complaint where the infringement is knowing and deliberate
Where infringement is small, unintentional and stopped promptly on request, the matter is usually closed there. Deliberate commercial or political misuse is pursued.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of India. The courts of the district in which the owner resides shall have jurisdiction.
If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the remaining parts continue to apply.
These terms may be updated from time to time. When they change materially, acceptance is requested again.
These terms are a genuine legal notice, not a formality. A record of acceptance is kept and can be produced as evidence.