Who owns the copyrights of the contents of NPTEL ?
The copyrights are owned jointly by the MHRD, IITs/IISc and the faculty. MHRD has encouraged faculty to convert their electronic content to text books in various engineering and science subjects (which will not affect what is freely available). The rest of the issues are being studied carefully at present. Barring a few courses, the rest of the material will be distributed under a Creative Commons license in the future.