India Proposes Mandatory Licensing For AI Training

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade published a working paper on December 11, 2025, proposing a mandatory licensing framework to remunerate Indian content producers whose material trains large language models. The plan would allow public web scraping while channeling payments through a non-profit copyright society based on developers' revenue, addressing enforcement difficulties and ongoing litigation, though industry representatives dissent.
Key Points
- 1Proposes mandatory licensing framework allowing limitless scraping while ensuring payments to Indian content producers.
- 2Seeks to balance AI innovation and creators' rights by centralizing royalties through a non-profit society.
- 3Requires practitioners to budget for licensing costs and adjust data sourcing strategies and model training.
Scoring Rationale
Major official policy proposal with industry-wide implications, but critical details and enforcement mechanisms remain unresolved and contested.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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