DA Welcomes President Ramaphosa’s action on Copyright Amendment Bill

22 June 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that President Ramaphosa’s decision to refer the Copyright Amendment Bill back to Parliament is the right decision.

This follows the DA’s petition to President Ramaphosa in 2019 to have the Bill sent back due to constitutional concerns.

When the Bill was before the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry in the 5th Parliament, The DA argued at the time that it was fatally flawed for a number of reasons including:

The introduction of ‘fair use’ which gives individuals the right to use copyrighted work ‘fairly’, in essence to circumvent copyright protections and republish them without consent;

The Bill will undermine our commitment to international treaties such as the Berne Convention and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of International of International Property Rights;

Local content producers and education contributors will be severely prejudiced due to their works not being protected in South Africa and aboard. This could have devastating consequences for schools and universities; and

Insufficient public consultation on the final version of the Bill which contains clauses that were changed without input from stakeholders.

Unfortunately, the ANC in the committee and parliament dogmatically refused to listen to our concerns and chose to bulldoze the Bill through in the hope it would prop up their election prospects.

As a result of the Copyright Amendment Bill, South Africa was put on notice that we would be placed on review for our Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) which allows R12 billion in exports to the United States at favourable tariffs after the  International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) successfully lobbying the US government to reconsider South Africa’s preferential trade access.

The referral back to Parliament by President Ramaphosa gives the Portfolio Committee and Parliament a final chance to rectify the serious flaws with the Bill and get it right in order to promote copyright protection as well as protect our preferential trade agreements.

Issued by Dean Macpherson,DA Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry, 22 June 2020