Hello everyone,
Just in case an email I sent earlier did not go through because of a pdf attachment that was too large I have sent this one as well.
Last week Friday Wikimedia South Africa made a written submission to the parliament of South Africa urging that a Freedom of Panorama clause be included in any new version of the South African Copyright Act. We are hoping to give an oral testimony before parliament so as to explain why such a clause should be included into the act.
You can also see the submission on commons at the link here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_ZA_submission_to_the_ Parliementory_comittee_on_Trade_and_Industry_-_7_July_2017.pdf
Both the Wikimedia ZA board http://wikimedia.org.za/wiki/Board_Meeting_12_December_2016 as well as the broader editing community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_South_Africa#Copyright_Act_amendment in South Africa voted unanimously to for us to advocate for Freedom of Panama in South Africa. In support of this effort we also ran a banner campaign (see landing page here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Panorama_ZA) on Wikipedia in South Africa which collected 720 petition signatures https://www.change.org/p/ahermans-parliament-gov-za-freedom-of-panorama-in-south-africa .
Hopefully we will be given a chance to present to Parliament in early August on the matter just before this year's Wikimania in Canada.
Regards,
Douglas.