In the Second Reading Debate: Copyright Amendment Bill and Second Reading Debate: Performers’ Protection Bill. It is rumoured that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s wealth is double that of Mick Jagger’s, one of the greatest rock stars of all time. While it took Jagger a lifetime to accumulate his wealth, it took the President with his political ties only 20 years.
If the young Cyril Ramaphosa had decided to make a career out of singing rather than politics, he would probably not have been wealthy today even though he put the same amount of hard work and dedication into building his career. At least not nearly as wealthy as he is today.
The point is that copyright authors (artists) generally struggle to make a living and they have to work very hard and have a lot of talent to get to the top. Only a handful of the extraordinarily talented artists succeed in reaching the top, which is associated with wealth. Most artists merely struggle to make a living and, therefore, it is important to protect the ownership of their intellectual property.
This Bill fails to do that. There are several shortcomings in the Bill, one of the most important being the obfuscated expropriation without compensation principle which will be implemented by means of the vague notion of “fair use”. The term can be interpreted to suit the user and it comes down to the fact that artists will get the short end of the stick.
The artists who cannot afford litigation will be left powerless against exploitation by international corporations, like Google and Facebook, that build their business models on offering free services and access to copyrighted products on their respective internet platforms.
Not only will artists be disadvantaged by the notion of “fair use”, but the entire economy will also be adversely affected. The members of the Motion Pictures Association of America, who have invested millions of dollars in South Africa’s economy, have serious misgivings about the Bill.
In the Committee meeting, the director general of the Department of Arts and Culture lashed out at copyright authors and said that Google can invest in the country should film producers withdraw their investments. Thus, the government is quite willing to forego the existing frequent Hollywood investments for investments by Google that may not even realise. That alone makes adopting the Bill irrational. The fact that there was no economic impact study conducted underlines the irrationality.
Another fundamental problem is that the Bill also does not comply with South Africa’s international legal obligations in accordance with the Bern Convention and The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
In general, the amendments are rigid, implausible and will have unforeseen consequences. Maybe I should illustrate it with an example. Large film makers, like Steven Spielberg, will be deterred because they will not be allowed to truly have ownership of the elements that make up a movie, like the soundtrack and script.
This would have been a great cause for concern for the young musician Ramaphosa. His music would probably never be used in a Spielberg movie and he could also forfeit ownership of his music without receiving any payment for it according to the notion of “fair use”.
Numerous well-known authors, like Athol Fugard, Wilbur Smith, JM Coetzee, Breyten Breytenbach and Deon Meyer, have voiced their objection to the Bill by means of a petition and the President needs to realise that if he adopts the Bill, it will bring about a drawn-out legal battle.
The Performers’ Protection Bill is also of importance here. Its aim is to protect the rights of artists in the audio-visual field, but the notion of “fair use” in its hybrid form will in this case also erode all the good intentions of the proposed law.
Read the original article by Adv Anton Alberts on FF Plus
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