Why Wikimedia SA supports the Copyright Amendment Bill
Freedom of Panorama — the right to take pictures of public works and share them — is made explicit in the new bill
Freedom of Panorama refers to the right take pictures of public works of art, such as the public-facing façades of buildings or monuments located in public spaces, such as parks, and the right to share those pictures with others. In Wikimedia SA’s case, sharing the pictures over the internet, specifically. The current bill does not allow for this and is written in such a way that makes it possible for the owners of public works to sue people photographing them and sharing them over the internet. So if you or someone you know has taken a photograph of a recently built monument, such as the statue of Nelson Mandela in Sandton, and shared that photograph with people on Twitter or Facebook (for example) then, according to a strict interpretation of current copyright law, the owner of that statue could sue you. This opens up possibilities for private censorship in addition to criminalising large numbers of law-abiding citizens for doing something people reasonably believe is both otherw...
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