Copyright bill means expropriating creativity without compensation

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Copyright bill means expropriating creativity without compensation, writes Keyan G Tomaselli

ReCreate’s arguments for free reuses of copyright material in tertiary education do not explain its support for the whole of the bill. The “fair use” provision and copyright exceptions are also intended to work outside the educational field, for example enabling multinational search engines and social media platforms to disseminate copyright works with no permission or remuneration, and allowing the government to make free use of copyright works.

Publishing organisations have cautioned against publishers being punished to achieve other political objectives, like the balancing of university budget shortfalls. But to their dismay economic impact studies quantifying the loss to authors and publishers as a result of the Copyright Amendment Bill have simply been brushed aside. The publishing sector should be strengthened, not weakened, and the integrity of academic research valorised by enhancing protected local content.

The bill was intended to benefit SA authors of educational and academic works but instead it will cut them off from their income, resulting in a disincentive to create educational works in SA. Killing the publishing industry and the transactional nature of intellectual property in favour of an extreme legislative approach to “fair use” and copyright exceptions will reduce local knowledge production and increase reliance on foreign knowledge, thus facilitating intellectual recolonisation.

International textbooks lack the specificity of the local — historical, cultural and social — and that often conflicts with students’ experience in their lives and environments. In that sense, the demise of academic and educational publishing will lead to the recolonisation of teaching and learning. Following the activist siren song of “decolonising copyright” will instead result in education being recolonised.

 

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