The Daily Maverick reports that South African Minister of Trade and Industry Ebrahim Patel and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will soon meet to discuss a dispute over South Africa’s proposed Copyright Amendments Bill.
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has launched a formal review of South Africa’s trade benefits through the General System of Preferences (GSP), to investigate whether the Amendments violate the GSP’s eligibility criterion that beneficiary countries provide” provide adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights.” It is doing so at the request of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a US-based trade group representing publishers.
The Copyright Amendments Bill contains more robust, flexible copyright exceptions, including a fair use clause similar to the one found in U.S. law. Observers have noted that broader copyright exceptions would benefit students by lowering the cost of studying, expand access to education, enable modern library services, benefit people with disabilities, and advance AI-based research.
The ReCreateZA Coaltion, formed by South African filmmakers, writers, artists and others in support of the bill, stresses that the bill will “help creators by expanding their ability to earn from, own and create copyright protected works.”
Earlier this month, Wits University hosted an Indaba on the Copyright Amendments Bill, where PIJIP attorney Sean Flynn and Library Copyright Alliance attorney Jonathan Band stressed the benefits of the legislation. The Maverick reports:
US-based intellectual property lawyers Sean Flynn and Jonathan Band criticised each of the US entertainment industry objections at the Copyright Indaba held at the University of the Witwatersrand this week and have written extensively on the matter.
At the indaba, they commented, for example, that “reversion rights exist in the United States, 35 years after the transfer. And, as in the South African bill, this reversion can occur notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary.”
They further commented that the bill’s fair use right and other exceptions are modelled on US law. “The ‘broad new exceptions’ described by IIPA are no broader than current exceptions in the US.”
In a panel discussion at the Copyright Indaba, Band and Flynn said that at the heart of the Copyright Amendment Bill, which has provoked heated debate, is a set of provisions that give creators rights to earn royalties and otherwise benefit from contracts assigning their rights to labels and publishers.
“In both the US and South Africa, there is a long history of record labels and other media companies exploiting creators, especially artists of colour. Many performing artists have aged in poverty because they signed away all their rights in their youth, and media companies have denied them a fair share of the profits. There is unequal bargaining strength between sophisticated companies with their armies of lawyers and individual artists who focus on their craft. The South African bill correctly tries to level the playing field,” Flynn said.
