The Registrar of Copyrights, Copyright Division of the Department of Secondary & Higher Education under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, has issued a notification inviting suggestions and amendments to the Copyright Act, 1957. It is available online at www.copyright.gov.in, along with a list of the proposed amendments.
A new Section 65A for "Protection of Technological Measures" providing that "any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by ths Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extent to two years and shall also be liable to fine." While Section 63 already imposes stringent punishment for infringement of copyright, defining "copyright infringement" in very clear terms under Section 51, the propsed Section 65A is vague and seeks to punish licencees in an arbitrary manner. Further more, changes to Section 52 have also been proposed.
The effects of these and other changes proposed may need to be carefully studied and analysed.
Earlier, a memorandum was sent to CSIR, requesting them to publish all their research under open formats and licenses promoting public use. This may be the right occasion to send in suggestions in response to the notification, so that the Copyright Act, by default, makes the works of all Public and Educational Institutions freely available to the public using open standards.
There is a need to encourage authors to release their works under the GPL, FDL or other general public licenses, and the Registry may make provision for free online registration, publication and download in such cases (probably, with just a cvs).
Please send in suggestions to improve, strengthen and safeguard the rights and works of authors contributing to the general public domain.
Ramanraj K