Kapil Sibal introduces Copyright (Amendment) Bill

  • IndiaGlitz, [Tuesday,April 20 2010]

HRD (Human Resource Development) minister Kapil Sibal introduced the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010 in the Rajya Sabha yesterday.

If the Bill is passed then lyricists, composers and singers will enjoy autonomous rights as the authors of literary and musical works in films. The proposed Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010 allows professionals like authors and lyricists to get royalties and other benefits from the commercial exploitation of their work. Currently, the right to receive royalty lies with music companies and producers.

The Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010 also addresses the concern of the music industry that has been complaining about remixes of original songs and depriving music companies of royalties.

The Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010 gives the producer and the director joint ownership of the copyright, thus giving more power to directors. Until now, producers were the sole owners of copyright.

Earlier the government formed a 10 member committee comprising Aamir Khan, Mukesh Bhatt, Javed Akhtar, Vishal Bharadwaj, Vishal Dadlani, Prasoon Joshi, Boney Kapoor, Anjum Rajabli, Madhu Mantena and T-Series CMD Bhushan Kumar to look into the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act.

And everybody knows that Aamir and Javed Akhtar had a heated argument over this issue resulting in Aamir to resign from the committee.

Note: It’s a proposal and the Bill needs to be passed to be implemented, the reactions of the industry will be taken as and when the bill gets passed.