P Jordan: Consultative Workshop on Copyright and National Library and
Information Services Legislation

20 July 2006

Ms Rita Hayes, Deputy Director-General, World Intellectual Property
Organisation
Mr McDonald Netshitenzhe, the copyright expert from the Department of Trade and
Industry
Members of the National Council for Library and Information Services Council,
the Legal Deposit Committee, the National Library of South Africa and the South
African Library for the Blind
Officials of various government Departments and of the publishing and broad
information sector
Honoured guests and participants,

My task this morning is to address you on the impact of the Copyright Act,
1978 (as amended) on the four national Library and Information Services Acts
that the Department of Arts and Culture administers. I trust that you are all
aware that this workshop follows the one held in Cape Town in 2005, where the
stakeholders discussed this national legislation with a view to its updating
and amendment.

The recommendations made at today’s workshop, which will focus specifically
on the crosscutting impact of copyright issues on all four Acts, will be
consolidated with the recommendations for amendment made at the 2005 workshop.
They will then be presented to me for consideration. This initiative of the
National Archives and Records Service of South Africa, a Chief Directorate in
the DAC’s Heritage, Archives and Libraries Branch, dovetails with the current
exercise of revising all the heritage legislation administered by the
Department of Arts and Culture.

The national Library and Information Services legislation I have referred to
above comprise the National Council for Library and Information Services Act of
2001; the National Library of South Africa Act of 1998; the South African
Library for the Blind Act of 1998, and the Legal Deposit Act of 1997. The Bill
of Rights in our Constitution declares that everyone has the right of access to
information. This is a right that our government has enshrined in legislation
in the form of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

The Department of Arts and Culture is responsible for creating, maintaining
and administering this broad legislative framework for library and information
services at the national level. I hope that we all recall how important the
sharing of information was during the years of our struggle for national
liberation. In the collective national effort to stimulate socio-economic
development and to sustain human rights, the sharing of information is
indispensable.

Ladies and gentlemen, in order to understand why the question of copyright
is such a crucial and often a vexing issue for libraries, let us briefly
reflect on why libraries are so important for society, especially in a country
with a history like ours. In this era, which has been variously dubbed the
information age, libraries play a vital role. Democracy is reliant on an
informed public. Consequently giving citizens access to all the information
necessary to make informed decisions enriches and enhances democracy. It is as
necessary for young learners as it is for mature adults. The concept of
lifelong learning would be unattainable without libraries.

Library and Information Services are at the core of the information
revolution. South African society, including the LIS sector, is being
transformed in a concerted effort to eliminate past injustices and inequities.
The LIS sector, especially public and community libraries are facing a huge
increase in the demand for their services. These challenges must be addressed
in order to promote democracy and the socio-economic development of our
country.
These challenges include:
* raising the levels of literacy and access to information technology
* promoting a culture of reading and life-long learning
* stimulating the publishing industry to publish more works in all literary
genres and non-fiction in African languages in order for South Africa to become
a nation of readers and
* most importantly, the transformation of information services and library
collections to answer the needs of all communities.

Our government has taken a major step towards dealing with these challenges.
The National Treasury has allocated an amount in excess of R1 billion to the
Department of Arts and Culture for revitalising the public and community
libraries of South Africa. I understand that has generated great excitement in
the LIS community understandably so. A tender has just been awarded to
investigate a best-practice funding model for these funds allocation. Recently,
our National Library received a substantial donation from the Carnegie
Foundation. It is my belief that the upgrading and expansion of the public
library system will be of immense and long-lasting benefit to our society.

The challenges we face also exist within the global context of the
development of electronic information and the internet. Across the world
librarians and archivists are debating how this profound revolution is
transforming their professions. One of the biggest challenges is the
preservation of information in the electronic environment. This complex issue
affects intellectual property, copyright, legal deposit, archival and other
national issues. Our national institutions, including the National Library of
South Africa, Blindlib, the National Council for Library and Information
Services, and the Legal Deposit Committee play a vital role in providing the
policy for handling these matters of national importance.

We are all aware of copyright issues in our daily lives, affecting not only
the copying of books and other reading materials but also duplication, buying
and selling of pirated copies of, for example films, music and designs.
Numerous articles and reports in newspapers and other media sensitise us to the
fact that a crime is committed when intellectual property rights are violated
resulting in the originator of a creative work being deprived of income. This
vicious cycle can have serious financial repercussions for the publishing
industry and the authors they publish.

I am well aware that there are diverse points of view on how strictly the
Copyright Act, 1978, should be applied in developing countries. If a learner or
student desperately needs a book which is too expensive to buy, or which is
simply unavailable except in a library, what should the teacher or the
librarian do? Should they turn a blind eye and photocopy the text to help the
library user, knowing no other way to provide the information needed? Under
such circumstances, can we not condone such a practice? Is it not morally
justifiable to follow that course if our whole country will eventually
benefit?

However, there are other considerations. The law cannot be broken without
serious consequences for society. It has been illustrated, for instance, that a
diminishing income for publishers and authors results in books becoming more
expensive, putting them even further beyond the reach of those who need them.
Should the random and uncontrolled copying of books be permitted it would be
practically impossible to export works of literature, thus depriving the
national economy of another possible source of income.

From this it becomes clear that copyright problems are not easy to resolve
and that copyright, along with the broader issues of intellectual property
rights, have important impacts on the economic development of a country.
Copyright issues are also of great importance to Blindlib which re-publishes
reading material in Braille and makes it available in audio format for those
who are sight impaired. There are no easy answers. But we have to find
solutions.
What meaning do we attach to copyright as it affects music in our day?

Given the advances in information and communications technology over the
past fifteen years, it is conceivable for someone as far away as Japan to
download the work of a musician in Johannesburg by punching a few keys. Is our
response to apply the law more rigorously or do we have to explore more
creative responses that take account of the technologies of tomorrow which even
as we speak are being worked on in research and development laboratories in
every part of the world?

Is the pirate merely a thief, who silently robs the creative artist and
thinker of his/her intellectual goods or is the pirate a bold innovator who
explores the limitless possibilities of our information technology? Would the
creative persons amongst us prefer their work to be legally protected but
consequently accessible to a limited audience? Or would they rather that it was
widely disseminated even if it costs them royalties?

These dilemmas of the information age have to be seriously addressed because
they will not disappear or decline as we move forward. Every step we take in
the development of our information technology will compound these problems,
making it imperative that all stakeholders discuss in earnest the need to
reconfigure the entire legal regime governing copyright. If the law is not to
be reduced to an object of ridicule, it must keep abreast of the technological
advances that have made it possible to communicate with the entire world in a
matter of minutes through cyber-space.

I am glad that we have gathered here a number of experts who will address us
on the socio-economic aspects of copyright relating to authors, publishers and
libraries. I would like to thank the Department of Foreign Affairs for
arranging for Ms Rita Hayes, a very senior official of the World Intellectual
Property Office in Geneva, to give the keynote address on copyright and
developmental issues at this workshop. I would also like to thank Ms Hayes for
accepting the invitation.

I wish you very fruitful deliberations. I am confident that the many
viewpoints presented at this workshop will be both stimulating and thought
provoking. I look forward to your contribution to the efforts of the Department
of Arts and Culture to align our national Library and Information Services
policy with other government policies and legislation. We can then truly say
that the stakeholders have been consulted.
I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
20 July 2006
Source: Department of Arts and Culture (http://www.dac.gov.za)