Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1698137881252.pdf (South Africa)
2 July 2021 Dear Mr. D. Nkosi, Chairperson: Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry, Parliament, Cape Town Re: Copyright Amendment Bill [B-13B of 2017] - Submission I am writing in my personal capacity as an academic and Professor at the University of South Africa.

I am also a scholarly author, editor, reviewer, supervisor of postgraduate students, member of various international committees, and IT and scholarly data management specialist.
I would like to commend the Department of Trade and Industry and Parliament for their efforts to update our very outdated Copyright Act of 1978, but it is unfortunate that the above Bill still has not been enacted.

I appreciate the opportunity to make comments on selected sections of the Bill.
I fully support the Sections 12A to D, and Section 19 B and C, for the following reasons:-  Current Copyright Act is non-functional: In my various abovementioned roles, I have found the current copyright law to be extremely restrictive or prohibitive, in fact it is non-functional.

My work and scholarly responsibilities and those of my colleagues and students are hampered daily by the lack of exceptions to address our needs in the digital era.
There are no exceptions for sharing journal articles or book chapters in course-packs (print or electronic) for students, or for digitisation, digital curation, scanning, format-shifting, conversions from old to new technologies as they evolve, resource-sharing via online platforms, USB flash-drives, email, or social media, etc.

Copyright clearance is necessary before engaging in any of the above activities.
This often involves high copyright fees and applying and waiting for responses from rightsowners, many of whom do not respond.

This means alternative material must be found to substitute those items.
I am aware that most tertiary institutions pay millions of Rands annually for printed and electronic resources to publishers (mostly international), and then millions more to the local reprographic reproduction organisation for copyright fees for material (often from already paid-for electronic databases) which they provide to students in coursepacks or via elearning platforms.
This has been the practice for decades as the cost of textbooks and other reading material in South Africa is well above the budgets of most students in South Africa.

Many students are distance-learners or do University of South Africa College of Science, Engineering and Technology School of Computing C/o Christiaan de Wet and Pioneer Avenue Florida Park, Johannesburg, South Africa www.unisa.ac.za/cset