Trade and industry minister Rob Davies recently responded to a letter from the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors’ Association of SA , sent in advance of the National Assembly’s adoption of the Copyright Amendment Bill.
Anfasa’s position on copyright law is that it should provide the balance between authors’ entitlement to reward for their talents and labour on one side and, on the other, the needs of society to benefit from what the authors have written. Copyright law is complex and delicate, and when that balance is disturbed there are unintended consequences, to the detriment of scientific and cultural development.
Many of our members are themselves teachers and academics, and they are as worried that many, if not the majority, of students can’t afford to buy books. That is why there is a collective licensing system that allows copying of extracts from published educational material for a small fee. For a university holding a “blanket licence” to copy chapters and articles and distribute them in course packs, the fee per student per annum is R129.56, plus VAT.
The association unreservedly supports decisions that lead to benefits for students. Learning and knowledge production are at the core of our ideology. However, when making free what is currently licensable will lead to a student saving R129.56 per year while significantly reducing authors’ earnings, one cannot help but question the wisdom of that decision.
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