Deadline Looms For Comments On New Clauses In South African Copyright Amendment Bill

South Africa’s Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry in Parliament has published a list of select clauses of the Copyright Amendment Bill for public comment. The deadline for comments is 18 July.

The window for the public submissions process was initially set for 9 July but the committee issued a notification to stakeholders that due to the high number of requests, the deadline for the submissions period has been extended to 18 July. The latest call for comments is here [pdf].

Intellectual Property Watch has seen email correspondence from the committee informing stakeholders about the extension and that “stakeholders should note that public hearings were already held on the Bill which did not include these specific clauses.”

The draft Copyright Amendment Bill was published in the Government Gazette by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTi) in July 2015. This opened a public submissions process into the bill which ran until September 2015. The Bill was then revised in 2017 and again further submissions were made by stakeholders and public hearings were held in Parliament by the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry in August 2017.

The Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry’s call for public comments on the selected list of clauses of the Copyright Amendment Bill can be found here [pdf].

Denise Nicholson, scholarly communications librarian at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said that the clauses the committee want the public to comment on were not a surprise.

“The clauses that the Committee want the public to comment on seem to be issues raised in public hearings or others that have not yet been resolved,” she said. “The Portfolio Committee does not want comments on the whole Bill, but only on the specific clauses provided in its communique of 20 June 2018.”

“From the current Draft 2 of the Bill, we assume that fair use remains in the Bill, and necessary exceptions for education and research, including libraries, archives and related entities, and people with disabilities,” she added.

Broadly defined, “fair use” refers to rights within copyright law to use protected works without license or permission of the rights holder to serve various public interests.

Intellectual Property Watch has been informed by various stakeholders – which include local and international academics and artistic creators among others – that they are working on submissions to be shared with the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry before the 18 July deadline.