Question

Read the following statements and choose the correct option. Under the Copyright Act, 1957: Statement I: In the case of a posthumous literary work, copyright subsists for sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the work is first published. Statement II: For such works, publication refers to making the work available to the public by issue of copies or by communication to the public.

• A. Both Statements I and II are false
• B. Only Statement II is true
• C. Both Statements I and II are true
• D. Only Statement I is true

Hint:

Copyright for Posthumous works = 60 years after the publication year! It's not based on the author's death, but on the date of publication.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Posthumous works create a timing problem for copyright law, since the author is no longer alive to see the work published, the law has to pick some other fixed point from which the protection period runs, and that point has to be defined clearly enough that everyone can calculate it with certainty.

Section 24 solves this by anchoring the term to first publication rather than to death, giving the posthumous work its own sixty year window measured from the start of the calendar year after it is first published. This is exactly what Statement I describes, so it stands correct.

Once the term depends on the date of first publication, the law needs to say precisely what counts as publishing a work, otherwise the sixty year clock could never be set with confidence. The Act answers this by treating publication as making the work available to the public, whether through issuing copies of it or through communicating it to the public. This is exactly what Statement II describes, and it too is correct.

Because the second definition exists specifically to make the first rule workable, the two statements are not competing ideas but two connected parts of the same rule, and both hold true together.

So the correct reading is that both statements accurately state the law.
\[ \boxed{\text{Both Statements I and II are true}} \]

Answer 2

Placing Section 24 alongside the Act's general rule for literary works helps confirm both statements without needing to recall the section number directly.

1. The general rule for a published literary work is that copyright lasts for the author's lifetime plus sixty years counted from the year following the author's death. Posthumous works break this pattern because the author had already died before the work was published, so a lifetime-based calculation is impossible.
2. The posthumous exception, described in Statement I, instead counts sixty years from the year following first publication, giving such works a comparable period of protection measured from the point the public actually gained access to them. This matches the statutory rule, making Statement I true.
3. The trigger point for this exception is publication, and Statement II explains what that trigger means, namely making the work available to the public through issuing copies or through communicating it to the public. Since the exception in Statement I depends entirely on this trigger being defined, and the Act does define it this way, Statement II is also true.
4. Testing the four options against this, both statements false is wrong because both hold up, only Statement II true is wrong because Statement I also holds up, only Statement I true is wrong because Statement II also holds up, leaving only the option that both are true as consistent with the law.

Both the sixty-year term from first publication and the definition of publication underlying it are accurately stated.

Therefore, the correct answer is Both Statements I and II are true.