Govt nod to Copyright Amendment Bill

The government on Thursday gave its nod to the Copyright Amendment Bill along with two other bills which would see setting up of innovation universities and mandatory accreditation of higher education institutions.

The Copyright Bill, which was deferred by the Cabinet on April 26 amid differences between Human Resource Development and Information and Broadcasting ministries over some of its provisions was vetted today with further "fine tuning", sources said, adding no provisions have been dropped in the process.

The legislation was opposed in Parliament in the last session over the statutory licensing for radio broadcast of literary and musical works.

The amendments to the Copyright Act, 1958, aim at according unassignable rights to 'creative artists' such as lyricists, playback singers, music directors, film directors, dialogue writers who will be paid royalty every time the movie they have worked in is aired on a television channel.

The Cabinet cleared the decks for introduction of the 'Universities for Research and Innovation Bill, 2012' which provides for establishment and incorporation of universities for research and innovation which would be at the fount of making India the global knowledge hub.

The sources said setting up of 14 such universities under the proposal will no longer be "sacrosanct". The universities will be set up which can be fully public funded, fully private funded or in the PPP mode.

The government will examine proposals and once they are found acceptable, the government will enter into a memorandum of agreement with the promoter which will then be notified.

Each such MoA will be placed before the Parliament and the Parliament will have a right to reject or amend the MoA. The aim of the innovation universities would be to set benchmarks for excellence for other institutions of higher learning through path-breaking research and promoting synergies among teaching, learning and research.

The Cabinet in its meeting also cleared the amendments to the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2012, for introduction in the Parliament. The Bill was introduced in the Parliament on May 3, 2010, and then referred to the department related standing committee. The amendment proposed include assessment of infrastructure and faculty to be mandatory before any higher educational institution starts the process of admissions and accreditation of the academic quality of programmes/courses to be mandatory after six years of existence of the institution.

A statutory authority is proposed to be established for registering and licensing the accreditation agencies and regulating the process of accreditation in the country. The other proposed amendment include broad basing the authority by increasing its strength from four to eight members and inclusion of one member each from SC, ST, minorities and increased number of women members in the authority, sources said.

They said chairman of the selection committee of the authority is proposed to be a past or serving national research professor instead of the cabinet secretary.