South Africa’s Proposed Copyright Fair Use Right Should Be A Model For The World; Intellectual Property Watch, July 24, 2018

Intellectual Property Watch; South Africa’s Proposed Copyright Fair Use Right Should Be A Model For The World

[Kip Currier: I'm teaching 15 online students in my Intellectual Property and "Open" Movements course this Summer Term and posted this announcement on our Courseweb site today:


I highly recommend reading this article, especially as a capstone to the material we have explored this term and in conjunction with your reading of this course's final required text, Reclaiming Fair Use by Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi.

Questions to consider:

• What did you notice about fair use from reading the article?
• In what ways does U.S. fair use compare with South Africa's proposed fair use right?
• What are some ways that the proposed South Africa fair use right may impact copyright holders, users, and other stakeholders?
• Did you notice which persons and organizations are the authors of the article?
• How about that fair use is a "defense" in the U.S. and a "right" in the South African proposal?
• How does the proposed South African fair use right compare and contrast with the recent controversial European Union Copyright Directive?
• What else...?]

"Sean Flynn, American University Washington College of Law
Michael W. Carroll, American University Washington College of Law
Peter Jaszi, American University Washington College of Law
Ariel Katz, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
Leandro Mendonça, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Cultural Production Department
Diane Peters, Creative Commons Corporation (HQ)
Allan Rocha de Souza, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ)

In addition to a set of more open specific exceptions, the South Africa bill contains a well-crafted and unique general exception for “fair use.” The magic of the South African general exception is not in adopting the term “fair use.” The phrases “fair use” and “fair dealing” mean the same thing. The key change is the addition of “such as” before the list of purposes covered by the right, making the provision applicable to a use to a use for any purpose, as long as that use is fair to the author...

We believe that the South African proposal gets it just right. We commend its Parliament on both the openness of this process and on the excellent drafting of the proposed fair use clause. We are confident it will become a model for other countries around the world that seek to modernize their copyright laws for the digital age."