Esta es la versión HTML de un fichero adjunto a una solicitud de acceso a la información 'EEAS letter to the Office of the South African President on the South African Draft Copyright Bill'.



sound recording, that use would seemingly fall within the exception, thereby wholly 
undermining the well-established market for the licensing of sampling in South Africa. 
The exception would thus not meet the three-step test as it would conflict with the 
normal exploitation of the works and would unreasonably prejudice the interests of 
right holders in licensing such uses. 
3) Personal copiesThe international practice with respect to exceptions for the purpose of
private copying is that such exceptions are typically accompanied by a remuneration (or
“levy”) system by which right holders are recompensed for the losses they inevitably
sustain as a result of private copies being made. The Bill does not provide for any such
system.
Of particular concern is section 12B(2)(c) which permits the making of electronic copies
in an electronic storage medium or facility accessed by the individual who stored the
copy or the person responsible for the storage medium or facility
”. A substantial volume
of infringing activity takes place on so-called “cyber lockers”, which purport to be
personal storage services, but in fact are open hubs for infringing content designed to
facilitate sharing of links to stored copies of protected sound recordings on a massive
scale. The wording of section 12B(2)(c) is inadequate to prevent the proposed exception
being used by such cyberlocker services as a shield against liability. Our first
recommendation would be for section 12B(2)(c) to be deleted altogether.
At the very least it should be amended to clarify that it would apply only where the
stored copy (1) is made from a copy acquired lawfully and owned by the individual, (2)
the stored copy may be accessed exclusively by that user, and (3) the sole beneficiary of
the exception is the user and not the provider of the storage service. At present, section
12B(2)(c) does not contain any of these three essential qualifications and as such it is
dangerously overbroad.
II.
Technological protection measures (TPM) (Section 1(h) and related provisions
The definition of “technological protection measure” is problematic because it refers to
technologies that achieve the result of preventing or restricting infringement, as
opposed to being designed to have that effect. While the WIPO Internet treaties require
countries to provide remedies against the circumvention of effective TPMs that
obligation does not mean that there is no infringement where a TPM has been
circumvented. Logically, if the mere fact that a TPM has been successfully circumvented
were to mean that the TPM was not ‘effective’ and thus there was no actionable
circumvention, there would be no reason for having the provision in the first place. This
was clearly not the intention in the WIPO treaties and equally, it is not believed that the
bill aims to introduce a provision which would defeat the purpose of introducing a
prohibition on circumvention of TPMs. We therefore recommend that, in line with

Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC), the following amendment 
be made to the definition in section 1(h) of the Bill: 
technological protection measure’ 
(a) means any process, treatment, mechanism, technology, device, system or component
that in the normal course of its operation is designed to prevents or restricts
infringement of copyright in a work; and

We also propose the deletion of paragraph (b) in the definition. TPMs are often 
deployed by a distributor service (e.g. an online streaming platform) to prevent access 
to works ; the question of whether users would be seeking access to these works for 
non-infringing or infringing purposes does not arise at this stage and it should not have 
the effect on the status of the measures as TPMs. Rather, the provision of section 
28P(2)(a) would apply to enable the user to seek assistance from the rightholder in 
gaining access to the work in question. 
We also recommend that the definition of ‘technological protection measure 
circumvention device
’ be amended also to include devices that (a) are promoted, 
advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or (b) have only a limited 
commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent TPMs. This would 
ensure that the definition is adequately scoped to encompass all TPM circumvention 
devices, and would also be consistent with Article 6(2) of the EU Copyright Directive. 
The exceptions in section 28P in relation to prohibited conduct in respect TPMs (in 
section 28O) are inadequately defined, therefore rendering them incompatible with the 
three-step-test and substantially reducing the effectiveness of the protections afforded 
by section 28O, because: 

Under section 28P(1)(a)  it would be extremely burdensome, if not impossible,
for rightholders to establish that the use of TPM circumvention device by a user
was to benefit from an exception.

A provider of an unlawful circumvention technology could rely on section
28P(1)(b)  to claim they are acting lawfully merely by showing that the
technology can be used to access a work in order to perform a permitted act.
There is a substantial risk that this provision would be abused by those providing
circumvention technologies for unlawful purposes. The same is true of section
28(2)(b).
We therefore recommend that provisions such as those set out in section 296ZE of the 
UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 be included instead of the sections 
highlighted above. Section 296ZE makes available a complaints mechanism for users 
who are denied access to a work for the purposes of carrying out a permitted act. This 

ensures the correct balance is struck between the protection of TPMs and the 
importance of enabling access to works for the purpose of carrying out permitted uses. 
III.
Accreditation of collecting societies
Section 22B(2)(b) implies through the words “A collecting society that has been
accredited by the Commission to administer rights on behalf of performers or owners

(emphasis added) that it may not be possible for a performers’ and producers’ society to
be accredited jointly. International practice has shown that performers and producers
operating joint societies results in substantial efficiencies in licensing, to the benefit of
rightholders and users alike. This has been the experience of SAMPRA in South Africa.
We would welcome confirmation in the Bill that joint societies of producers and
performers may continue to operate and be accredited to do so.
IV.
Reciprocity between “countries”
There appears to be a drafting error in section 22C(3)(c) in that it foresees reciprocal
agreements between South Africa and other countries. In practice, the reciprocal
agreements are between collecting societies in different countries and not between the
states.
V.
Performers’ remuneration
Proposed sections 9A(2)(a) and 9A(2)(b) and (c) appear contradictory in that the former
(s. 9A(2)(a)) prescribes that revenues (from the uses of sound recordings covered by the
provisions – namely, broadcast, public performance and linear non-interactive
communication to the public) be shared equally between the producer on the one hand
and performers on the other, and the latter (s. 9A(2)(b) and (c)) states that the
performer’s share must be “fair and equitable”. For certainty, we recommend that the
provisions be clarified to state that revenues from the affected uses (broadcast, public
performance and linear non-interactive communication to the public) are shared 50% to
the sound recording producer and 50% to the performers, in the absence of an
agreement to the contrary, in line with existing South African and international practice.
VI.
Missing provisions on term extension and WIPO Internet Treaties (WPPT/WCT) accession
We note that the bill is a good opportunity for South Africa to accede to the WIPO WPPT/WCT
treaties, following in the steps of Nigeria and India to name but two recent examples.
In addition, while the government is seemingly minded to improve the legal protection of some
categories of rightholders (e.g. performers, hence the separate Performers Protection Bill) it has
not yet proposed the most basic form of protection, namely, matching the duration of
protection for sound recordings in which both performers and producers have rights to the
duration of protection offered in most important music producing countries around the world –
i.e. 70 years from publication. Countries in which this term of protection (or longer) is the
applicable legal standard account for 91% of the total revenues returned to the music industry