Vyas discusses copyright’s “balance” metaphor, alleged to have originated in the 1785 British case Sayre v. Moore. This paper aims to contribute to the exploration of the genealogy of this concept in copyright, especially in the Indian context and examines the impact of its use on knowledge governance. It claims that the roots of copyright’s “balance” talk are in colonialism, that there exists no clarity regarding what is to be balanced at neither a national nor international level, and also argues that the increasing reliance on fair dealing and rights language further masks the unclarity surrounding the balance metaphor.

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