Copyright on consensus - House unity on Akhtar bill - 17th May
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New Delhi, May 17: Bollywood veterans and political pragmatists closed ranks today to pass a bill that is aimed at ensuring royalty for creative contributors such as lyricists, scriptwriters and singers.
The Copyright (Amendment) Bill, which was pursued with messianic zeal by poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, was passed by the Rajya Sabha today with the support of a cast featuring Jaya Bachchan, BJP’s Arun Jaitley, Congress’s Kapil Sibal and Left members.
The much-delayed bill aims to align Indian copyright laws with international rules and introduce a system of statutory licensing to protect the owners of literary and musical works.
Once the law is promulgated, those who use a film’s dialogues or songs for commercial purposes, such as in advertisements, will have to pay a fee to the scriptwriter, the music director and the lyricist. They will also earn royalty every time the film is screened on a television channel. So far, only the copyright holder — usually the producer or a company — was eligible for the fee.
Akhtar himself was recently sucked into a related controversy when a proposal came for remakingZanjeer, the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer that was part-scripted by the poet-lyricist. He later resolved the issue amicably with the producer.
Akhtar played an important role in lobbying all political parties to ensure the passage of the bill. However, until now, the BJP was not positively disposed towards the legislation and had not allowed it to be introduced in the Rajya Sabha.
While the Lok Sabha passed the bill in the monsoon session last year, it was blocked in the Rajya Sabha in December when Opposition members alleged “conflict of interest”, saying minister Sibal’s lawyer-son represented an audio company.
Some parties had said the objections were intended at helping big business — an indirect way of insisting the underground piracy economy should not be meddled with.
Several others had tilted more towards the owners of the copyright than the original creators of the literary or musical works.
But today, all political parties, including the BJP, voted for the bill. Not all BJP members were happy supporting it, though.
Sources said it was Akhtar’s forceful advocacy of the bill with leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley, who sat through the discussion, that worked.
In the Congress, Sibal went on the frontfoot by piloting the bill without depending on the government’s floor managers, sources said. He reached out to Samajwadi and BSP leaders as well as Mamata Banerjee and Jaitley. BJP sources said Jaitley made up his mind to support the bill on the “issue of principles”. So did the Left parties.
The respect Akhtar enjoyed made a difference. Akhtar had been straining every nerve to get the amendments legislated. “I have seldom seen this degree of emotional involvement with a bill,” a Congress source said.
BJP member Prakash Javadekar, too, played a key role. Javadekar was a member of the HRD standing committee that vetted the original draft bill and he made it a point to attend each of the 15 meetings that lasted over 60 hours.
A committee source said: “The bill was overhauled. Of the 19 recommendations we made, the minister (Kapil Sibal) accepted 17.”
Javadekar said the bill was an example of the hard work parliamentary standing committees did in the law-making process, an effort that is seldom appreciated.
Akhtar initiated the discussion. He said music companies controlled the rights of a song, and its creators, such as musicians and songwriters, did not earn any money from a song’s commercial success. “Music company dictates terms to even noted musicians like A.R. Rahman and others,” Akhtar said.
Jaya, who has been in the limelight this week because of the entry of Rekha into the Rajya Sabha, highlighted the widespread menace of music piracy. She hoped the bill would address the issue. She stressed that everybody associated with creation of a film song should be rewarded as these are “created collectively”.
Nobody is saying the bill is perfect, though many applauded the consensus-driven initiative.
Replying to the debate, Sibal said a clause for giving royalty to the principal director of a film had been dropped in keeping with the suggestion of the parliamentary standing committee. “We wanted to actually give this right over royalty to principal director. He is perhaps the principal creator. But there was a feeling expressed by the parliamentary standing committee that the time is not ripe to give that right. So, we are dropping it,” he said.
Sibal’s individual out reach to the Opposition, the Samajwadi and the BSP in this session has resulted in the passage of five HRD bills.
On Monday, the penultimate day of the budget session, he is hoping to get the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill through in the Lok Sabha, mainly with the BJP's help. Sources said Sibal spoke several times to BJP’s Lok Sabha Opposition leader Sushma Swaraj.
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