The Coalition for Effective Copyright has petitioned President Cyril Ramaphosa not to sign the Copyright Amendment Bill into law. At a media briefing at Constitutional Hill yesterday, the coalition's spokesperson Collen Dlamini said if the Bill was signed into law it would amount to expropriation of local content without compensation, says a TimesLIVE report.

‘SA creatives will no longer be paid for the content they create. Our writers will stop writing. Our singers will stop singing and our artists will stop drawing. Big global tech companies with access to an abundance of cheap local content will be the winners,’ Dlamini said.

He said the Bill would also fragment the rights in sound recordings, meaning substantial catalogues of recorded music would simply become unusable, ending the revenues they generated for composers, performers, songwriters, publishers and producers alike.

The coalition comprises writers, book and music publishers, film directors, producers, musicians, performing artists, film and television workers, content creators and business people. These include representatives from heavyweights like Kagiso Media, NB Publishers, Sony, Warner, Universal, Juta, the Recording Industry of SA, the Independent Black Filmmakers Collective, Media24 Books, DALDRO, the Music Publishers' Association of SA, the Visual Arts Network of SA, the David Gresham Entertainment Group, the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors' Association of SA, Sony/ATV, Shuter & Shooter, the Publishers' Association of SA and Pearson SA.

Full TimesLIVE report