Facilitating Educational Needs in Digital Era: Adequacy of Fair Dealing Provisions of Indian Copyright Act in Question

• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Date: 01 July 2015
• Author: Pravesh Aggarwal,Narayan Prasad
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jwip.12036

Facilitating Educational Needs in Digital Era:

Adequacy of Fair Dealing Provisions of Indian

Copyright Act in Question

Narayan Prasad and Pravesh Aggarwal

Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab

Therecent educational policy of India hasrecognized the use of Information andCommunication Technologies(ICTs) to

meet the educational needs in the digital era. But some of the objects of the policy like making available suitable

e-content, preparing knowledge modules, facilitating e-learning etc. look far-off, given the extant set of fair dealing

provisionsin the Indian Copyright Act. Againstthis backdrop, this paper delineatesthe doctrine of fair use and that of fair

dealing followed by an account of international regime of fair use in copyright specif‌ic to education. Subsequently, it

analysesthe concerned fair dealing provisions of IndianCopyright Act and f‌inds that they are too narrow and inadequate

to fosterthe educational needs. The paperconcludes with the view and suggestionthat India needs to step beyond the fair

dealingdoctrine and head towards the doctrineof fair use through complementaryrole of the legislature and thejudiciary

on the lines how it happened in Canada. Over andabove, there is a need to undertake some incentive-oriented policies

encouraging copyright ownersto forgo their commercial interests to some extent for the sake of education.

Keywords Indian Copyright Act; fair dealing and fair use; educational needs; ICT

It is a remote understanding that the Indian Copyright Ac t has an increasing role to play in the

facilitation of education al needs of the country and in the digital era, in fa ct, it becomes a crucial

instrument in fostering th e educational policy of the country. Wh ile the Government of India in recent

years has shown maturity in pol icy-making by undertaking high-end am bitious missions like National

Mission on Education through Inf ormation and Communication Technology ( NMEICT) (Cabinet

Committee on Corporate Affair s, 2009) and National Mission on Library (NML ) (Ministry of Culture,

2013; President's Secreta riat, 2014), as well as by constituting Natio nal Knowledge Commission

(NKC) (Prime Minister's Off‌ice, 2005), the objectives seem unrealisti c without the legal backing of the

Copyright Act which thereby needs to be mou lded accordingly. To put it in perspective, it is imperative

to enumerate some of the objecti ves of NMEICT (Department of Higher Education, Minis try of Human

Resource Development, 2 009, pp. 10–11):

Availability of e-knowledge contents, free of cost to Indians.

Development of knowledge modules having the right content to take care of the aspirations of the

academic community and to address to the personalized needs of the learners.

Use of e-learning as an effort multiplier for providing access, quality and equality in the sphere of

providing education to every learner in the country.

Providing e-books and e-journals, utilizing the repository of contents generated so far and the

automation of evaluation processes.

Preparation of metadata and timed index preparation for educational video/audio content on tape or

other media.

Besides, the National Mission on Library (NML) has its agenda of content creation, setting up of

community information centres and facilitation of research work (Chitralekha, 2014, p. 24; Tankha, 2014),

150 ©2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The Journal of World Intellectual Property (2015) Vol. 18, no. 3–4, pp. 150–163

doi: 10.1111/jwip.12036