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Upgrade due for SA's cyberspace laws

Digital counterfeiting and piracy are hindering innovation, ultimately resulting in SA's economy stagnating and job losses, says the DTI.

Lebo Mashiloane
By Lebo Mashiloane
Johannesburg, 04 Apr 2014

SA needs to fast track its incorporating of international digital treaties into the country's cyberspace laws to help curb digital counterfeiting and piracy, according to Simphiwe Ncwana, director of commercial law and law at the Department of Trade and Industry.

Addressing delegates at HP's 2014 anti-counterfeit conference in Johannesburg, Ncwana emphasised how piracy, along with the use of computers or digital equipment to make counterfeit copies of printed resources such as business checks, collectibles, fake identifications and credit cards, are hindering innovation and harming the country's economy.

"You cannot innovate with the knowledge that what you are creating will be copied and sold at a value much lower than it's worth," said Ncwana. "We have seen how pirated products, whether copies of movies sold at intersections or music pirated electronically and distributed in our personal spaces or through unmonitored online platforms, continues to hamper the livelihood of those creating the work."

According to Ncwana, the dti has put legislation in place to create awareness of the impact this scourge has on the country's economy, with SARS and the police following suit.

"There's a need to create awareness of the finer details of what intellectual property laws entail, this is one way to get our judicial system to also mete out harsher sentences for intellectual property offenders," noted Ncwana.

He pointed out that this has led to the department examining how to update the country's digital laws with guidelines from international digital treaties platforms such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

WIPO, according to Ncwana, is one of the organisations deeply involved in the ongoing international debate to shape new standards for copyright protection in cyberspace. The organisation administers the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WPPT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonogram treaty (WPPT), known together as the "Internet Treaties", which set down international norms aimed at preventing unauthorised access to and use of creative works on the Internet or other digital networks.

"Among other things, both the WCT and the WPPT address the challenges posed by today's digital technologies, in particular the dissemination of protected material over digital networks such as the Internet," explained Ncwana, adding that "the treaties also require countries to provide not only the rights themselves, but also two types of technological adjuncts to the rights which are intended to ensure that rights holders can effectively use technology to protect their rights and to license their works online."

The first, as stated on the organisation's Web site, is known as the "anti-circumvention" provision and tackles the problem of "hacking". It requires countries to provide adequate legal protection and effective remedies against the circumvention of technological measures (such as encryption) used by rights holders to protect their rights.

The second type of technological adjuncts, according to WIPO, safeguard the reliability and integrity of the online marketplace by requiring countries to prohibit the deliberate alteration or deletion of electronic "rights management information": that is, information which accompanies any protected material, and which identifies the work, its creators, performer or owner, and the terms and conditions for its use.

Ncwana believes that only once aspects of the guidelines from these treaties are integrated into laws that govern SA's cyberspace platforms, will the country be able to curb illegal copying and trading of digital innovations.

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