South Africa's Proposed Fair Use Right In Copyright Bill Is Surprisingly Good -- At The Moment

South Africa's Proposed Fair Use Right In Copyright Bill Is Surprisingly Good -- At The Moment

6 years ago
Anonymous $RBasgWKaIV

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180724/07474940298/south-africas-proposed-fair-use-right-copyright-bill-is-surprisingly-good-moment.shtml

Too often Techdirt writes about changes in copyright law that are only for the benefit of the big publishing and recording companies, and offer little to individual creators or the public. So it makes a pleasant change to be able to report that South Africa's efforts to update its creaking copyright laws seem, for the moment, to be bucking that trend. Specifically, those drafting the text seem to have listened to the calls for intelligent fair use rights fit for the digital world. As a post on infojustice.org explains, a key aspect of copyright reform is enshrining exceptions that give permission to Internet users to do all the usual online stuff -- things like sharing photos on social media, or making and distributing memes. The South African text does a good job in this respect:

A key benefit of the Bill is that its new exceptions are generally framed to be open to all works, uses, and users. Research shows that providing exceptions that are open to purposes, uses, works and users is correlated with both information technology industry growth and to increased production of works of knowledge creation.

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