infoJustice

The South African National Assembly has approved for the second time a sweeping copyright amendment bill that seeks to promote the interests of local creators and users of copyrighted content. 

The passage of the bill has been supported by a coalition of creators – including musicians, actors and other artists – as well as “user” groups such as education unions, libraries, and organizations representing people who are visually impaired – who hail its provisions as “a vital and urgent piece of legislation aimed at valuing artists,” which also “ensures that marginalised groups have fair access to creative works and works of knowledge such as textbooks.” A rival coalition organized by publishers and collective management management organizations decried the passage of the bill as “disheartening,” and threatened constitutional litigation against it as an arbitrary deprivation of their property rights. The debate over the bill has led to many news outlets referring to the legislation as “controversial.”

The South African legislation is the latest major copyright reform effort to seek to better tailor the law to promote both creator and user interests in the face of increased prevalence and power of global multinational companies distributing and using copyrighted content. For example, just three major record labels control almost 70% of the world market and almost 60% of the song rights. Similar concentration exists in academic publishing markets. Such concentration permits these distributors to extract most of the profit in the market, operating as both a monopsony (lowering prices paid for creative content) and monopoly (raising prices to consumers). The South African legislation seeks to respond to this context through a mix of expanded rights of creators – including to fair remuneration in contracts, new rights of performers, and regulations of collective management organizations — and of users – including through a new open and general “fair use” exception.
Other recent laws that have taken a similar approach in expanding the rights of both users and creators vis a vis publishers include the EU’s Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive and national reforms in Singapore and Nigeria.