Day December 4, 2019

Remembering … Then and Now – Rights Administration and the South African Publishing Industry Before and After the End of Apartheid

The beginning of the end of apartheid came very suddenly so was a turbulent period with emotions running very high, veering from extreme euphoria at the prospect of a free and democratic South Africa, to an overwhelming sense of fear that this dramatic change might prove illusory. There are memories of the period that remain very vivid, in spite of the time that has elapsed since then, and these remain relevant, not least in understanding the turbulent responses to the introduction of a new copyright regime.

What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain?

[Jacob Flynn, Rebecca Giblin, and François Petitjean] Copyright’s underuse hypothesis is simple: that, unless publishers are assured of exclusive rights in older works, they won’t continue to invest in making them available. This of course contradicts a core tenet of classical economic theory, that investors will continue to produce copies of books (or anything else) so long as they can expect to get back more than they put in... We have now carried out the first international test of the underuse hypothesis – across the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And, since we were analysing availability of works across jurisdictions, that enabled us, also for the first time, to examine how the availability of identical works differed according to copyright status.