Petition for a consultative, development-focussed Copyright Review
Posted by Celia Walter | 28 May, 2010The National Consumer Forum (NCF) and The African Commons Project (TACP), two registered Section 21 companies operating within South Africa, on behalf of South African consumers hereby request the Minister to urgently consider a consultative, transparent review of the current Copyright Act.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/1978_update/
The Act, initially drafted more than 32 years ago, should be reviewed in light of the digital innovations that have occurred within the last three decades which have dramatically altered the way we create, share, distribute and use information materials and cultural products.
The limited monopoly conferred to rights-holders by copyright has the potential, in the absence of adequate legal flexibilities (especially copyright limitations and exceptions) to limit a number of important human rights enshrined in our Bill of Rights, notably the right to receive and impart education, the right to participate in cultural life, the right to education and the right to equality. For example, the current Copyright Act does not contain any limitations or exceptions to allow permission-free adaption of copyrighted materials for visually-impaired persons, and this gap in the law unconstitutionally infringes the constitutional right to equality of visually-impaired persons.
We believe
that the human rights dimensions of access to copyright protected materials are critical ones which have been largely overlooked. Empowering ordinary South Africans to access knowledge, be educated and express themselves is just as important to the development of the country, and in many respects even more important, as protection of rights-holder economic interests, particularly given that a large portion of copyright royalties paid in South Africa go to corporations based in the global North.
We believe
that whilst there should always be consideration for the rights of the creators and owners of information and cultural products, so too should there be consideration for the rights of consumers who interact with these information and cultural products on social, cultural and economic levels.
We believe
that the Copyright Act is currently too ambiguous in many areas, making the Act difficult to interpret for the digital age, both for creators and for consumers. We believe that this ambiguity has been leveraged by multi-national corporations and private enterprises to:
- attempt
to develop their own digital rights management (DRM) processes which lock down digital content and impede certain rights and actions of consumers (example such as fair dealing uses) that are otherwise permissable under the current Copyright Act; and
- call
on more
stringent protections and penalties to be included in the Copyright Act in an effort to broaden the net of criminalised actions in relation to creation and consumption of cultural products.