Printing SA has shared the latest status on the Copyright Bill. The association recently called on President Cyril Ramaphosa not to sign the Copyright Bill, believing it will have unintended and detrimental consequences.
The EU delegation sent a letter to South African Presidential Cabinet on 20 March 2020, following the Parliament passing the Copyright Amendment Bill in March 2019. The Bill has since been with the President to be signed into law. The letter ‘humbly questions whether it may not be opportune to defer the adoption of this reform, possibly by engaging in a process which would more closely anchor the South African copyright regime to the international conventions and treaties’.
The delegation also said that ‘this significant departure from the level of protection of copyrighted protected works, contrary to the international standards in force in most of the countries, is therefore likely to result in non-negligible effects for the South African economy.’
This was followed by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) accepting a petition filed by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA). The petition alleged that the Government of South Africa does not provide adequate and effective copyright protection for U.S. copyrighted works. The South African hearing was held in Washington DC on 31 January 2020. SA delegates advocated that South Africa should continue to retain eligibility for the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP).
The Copyright Coalition of SA, which Printing SA is part of, has been calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa not to pass the Bill into law in its current form as it will have unintended consequences. Printing SA also humbly requests the President to take note of the European Commission recommendations.
View the EU letter to SA Cabinet
View written submissions of SA to USTR
PRINTING SA
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