National Assembly signs Copyright Amendment Bill in favour of Blind SA
Blind SA and SECTION27 was thrilled after the National Assembly committee voted in favour of them to advance the county's copyright legislation towards realisation of blind and visually impaired people's rights.
SECTION27 and Blind SA welcomed the National Assembly’s vote in favour of the Copyright Amendment Bill (CAB) during its plenary session on February 29.
The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramophosa, will now receive the CAB for approval. This will advance the country’s copyright legislation towards the realisation of blind or visually impaired people’s rights.
Blind SA is an NPO with the primary goal of promoting the freedom and dignity of blind and visually impaired South Africans.
SECTION27 is a human rights organisation that seeks to achieve substantive equality and social justice in South Africa.
CEO of Blind SA, Jace Nair, said they were delighted that the National Assembly has adopted the Copyright Amendment Bill, and especially Section 19D which provides exceptions to transcribe reading material into accessible formats, such as audio, large print, and braille.
“This will reduce our book famine, and it will no longer be a criminal offence to convert books into accessible formats without the consent of the copyright holder, in terms of the apartheid Copyright Act,” Nair said.
The CAB amended certain aspects of the Copyright Act, 98 of 1978, which is the law regulating copyright in South Africa.
When enacted into law, significant changes to the act will be introduced, which includes exceptions that will allow persons with disabilities to convert published works into accessible formats without requiring the permission of the copyright holder.
These exceptions are in line with the Marrakesh Treaty and the Constitutional Court judgment handed down in 2022 about the constitutionality of the Copyright Act. It will drastically improve how persons who are blind or visually impaired will access books they can read.
The president has been given the chance to accede to the CAB before.
In May 2017, the CAB was initially presented to the National Assembly, but the president expressed his disapproval of the Bill and sent it back to parliament in June 2020, more than a year after legal actions were taken to force the president to sign the CAB.
Since then, the matter returned to parliament and has been the subject of extensive public hearings and deliberations in both the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. The Constitutional Court also placed parliament under pressure to finalise the CAB.
“Today’s vote in the National Assembly’s plenary is potentially the last leg of CAB’s journey before assent and enactment into law. Therefore, marking the end of a severely protracted parliamentary process,” said Sasha Stevenson, executive director of SECTION27.
In 2022, Blind SA, represented by SECTION27, took the Minister of Trade Industry and Competition to the Constitutional Court to challenge the constitutionality of the Copyright Act for the discrimination against persons with these disabilities.
The court found the act to be unconstitutional – to the extent that it required persons who are blind or visually impaired to obtain the consent of the copyright holder before being able to convert books.
The case was revisited and the court ruled in favour of Blind SA. Among other things, the court directed parliament to amend the Copyright Act by the end of September 2024 to protect the rights of blind and visually impaired people and provide them with access to books in accessible formats.
“The amended Copyright Act will also allow South Africa to become a part of the Marrakesh Treaty. Ratifying this international treaty will allow persons who are blind or visually impaired in South Africa to engage in the cross-border exchange of accessibly formatted reading materials. It will make hundreds and thousands of titles in accessible formats available to them,” Nair explained.
The entities urge the president to promptly assent to the CAB.
