South Africa’s Proposed Copyright Fair Use Right Should Be a Model for the World

[Sean Flynn, Michael W. Carroll, Peter Jaszi, Ariel Katz, Leandro Mendonça, Diane Peters, and Allan Rocha de Souza] Copyright laws the world over are under massive pressure to reform to fit the digital environment. One key area often in need of reform is in the exceptions to copyright that enable the digital practices. Without exceptions, common practices may be illegal, such as sharing photos on social media, making technical copies to send and stream, and uploading excerpts to closed networks for student access. None of these and dozens of other digital issues were considered when most of our laws were drafted in the 1970s. South Africa is on the cusp of reforming its law with a new hybrid exception that contains both a set of modern specific exceptions for various purposes and an open general exception that can be used to assess any use not specifically authorized.