Re: [Wikimedia ZA] South African Copyright Act urgent call to action | Join us in parliament

Hello everyone, I am writing to ask you to consider coming in person to a crucial meeting of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee *Friday 18 May, 9am*, National Parliament, Cape Town. *To attend* the committee meeting, arrive by *08:30 this Friday*. Consult the schedule for Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry, Report back by the subcommittee on the Copyright Amendment Bill. This is the last scheduled meeting of the Committee on the Copyright Amendment Act. Scheduled for discussion is consideration of the creators rights issues in the Act, specifically rights to - Parody and satire - Incidental use of background content - Use works in public places (Freedom of Panorama) - Digital archiving - Create educational works - Research, including through data mining, indexing and search - Remix, transform and re-interpret - Create accessible copies for people with disabilities - Fair dealing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing> and fair use <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use> I will also be attending to ensure that Freedom of Panorama <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Panorama_ZA> has made it in. As you know this is a very important issue to the South African editing community. Fair Use is also an important issue and at Wikimedia ZA's last AGM we voted to support efforts to get the *fair dealing *clause amended to be replaced with a *fair use* clause so that editors are at less risk when editing Wikipedia. The basic difference between fair use and fair dealing is that fair use basically says you can use X so long as it does *not violate* a few conditions. Whilst fair dealing says you can use X so long as it *satisfies or adheres to* one or more of a list of conditions. Fair use is therefor easier for the public to understand and people to adhere to as it is more flexible whilst still protecting the rights of copyright holders. There are concerns that the bill in its current form encourages both data hugging, private censorship, and exploitative behaviour by large rights holding monopolies and duopolies that is against the public interest. Related to this: A coalition of South African digital creators and entrepreneurs -- called Re-Create -- will be attending the meeting and is inviting support for their declaration of principles for creator’s rights: You can learn more about Re-Create by reading their statement here: http://tiny.cc/bt8gty Please forward this on to anyone you feel might be interested in this. Regards, Douglas