COPYRIGHT, PERFORMERS’ PROTECTION AMENDMENT BILLS: ONE STEP AWAY FROM BEING PASSED

COPYRIGHT, PERFORMERS’ PROTECTION AMENDMENT BILLS: ONE STEP AWAY FROM BEING PASSED

• 16 February 2024
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

Please note:

• According to the latest official parliamentary programme (published on 24 February 2024), the Bills will be considered at a National Assembly plenary on 29 February 2024. They will probably be passed by majority vote.
• Before signing them into law, President Cyril Ramaphosa is required to consider whether Parliament responded adequately to his concerns about the Bills' constitutionality when ‘D’ versions were passed by Parliament in March 2019.
• He will probably focus on whether the parliamentary committees responsible made appropriate changes to provisions in each Bill’s ‘D’ version to which he drew their attention in June 2020, when he returned them to Parliament.
• He will probably also consider whether the NCOP and provincial legislatures' public participation process was sufficiently robust. Adequate public consultation and participation in the law-making process is a constitutional requirement. Where legislation affects the provinces, public hearings must be held in all provincial districts – organised by the provincial legislatures.
• In considering these matters, the President will probably be advised by experts in constitutional law and international copyright law. This is likely to take some time.
• In addition, regulations giving practical effect to the Bills will need to be drafted and released for public comment before being finalised. This, too, is likely to take some time.
• There is only one deadline law-makers are obliged to meet: the Copyright Amendment Bill's clause 19D (in the parliamentary committees' view, reflecting the Constitutional Court's September 2022 Blind SA ruling on accessible format copies) must – in terms of that ruling – be operationalised before 21 September 2024. 

The revised Copyright and Performers’ Protection Amendment Bills have taken what is generally assumed to have been the penultimate step in completing their passage through Parliament. An ‘F’ version of each Bill was adopted by majority vote on 14 February 2024 during the closing moments of a four-hour meeting of the National Assembly’s Trade, Industry & Competition Committee focusing on National Lottery Commission woes.

Ruling party representatives in the committee endorsed all changes proposed by the NCOP in September 2023. Opposition party representatives voted against both Bills in their entirety. It took less than an hour to put the matter to bed.

The committee has since tabled separate reports in the House recommending that the ‘F’ version of each Bill be passed and sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa for signature.

According to these reports, the committee is satisfied that the latest version of each Bill adequately responds to concerns expressed by the President about the constitutionality of ‘D’ versions passed in March 2019 and remitted the following year.

The process of developing regulations to operationalise the Bills could take some time and is likely to be fraught. Stakeholder positions in support of and opposition to the Copyright Amendment Bill in particular have hardened considerably during the Bills’ second passage through Parliament.

• parliamentary papers
• Copyright Amendment Bill ‘F’ version
• remitted ‘D’ version
• Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill ‘F’ version
• remitted ‘D’ version

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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