Copyright Review Commission Report - ICT Law and Regulation ...

about 30%, which is the highest among the selected collecting societies. Based on the analysis, it is clear that thebiggest problem is the labour cost, which is not generating competitive revenues. IPRS has the second highestratio of R18,38 (behind SWISSPERFORM).14.1.12. South Africa’s copyright duration (in Table 28 (i)) for authors is the lowest at ‘life plus 50 years’ compared to ‘lifeplus 70 years’ for the developed countries. Most of the music played locally is imported and more than 95% of theold music (30 years and older) played by the local radio station is foreign as discussed in paragraph 11.4.6. Anychange to the copyright duration is, therefore, likely to be substantially more beneficial to foreign artists asopposed to local artists and, as a result, the CRC does not believe amendments to the duration should be madethis stage. A review may be required in the future, once local content has improved on a sustainable basis.14.1.13. South Africa has the lowest local music content of 24% for artists, excluding payments made to music publishers,compared to 77% for Brazil and 95% for India. Both Brazil and India do not have targets for local music content,but are passionate about their cultures and local music. Brazil has been independent from Portugal for about 200years and has created its own identity. The impact of colonisation on Indian local cultural activities was minimal.Even after the sixth generation of descendants of Indian emigrants, Indian cultural activities are still practised indifferent countries outside India. In 2010, India exported about 25% of the local music. The situation is different inSouth Africa because the country is still struggling to recover from the repercussions of apartheid, which portrayedlocal cultural and tribal activities, including local African languages, as primitive and inferior to the Westernlanguages. Unfortunately, this belief was entrenched in the education system and it will take decades to eradicateit.14.1.14. The revenue-sharing split on sound recordings (in Table 28 (s)) between record producers and artists is 50% forthe UK, France, Norway and Switzerland. In India, only record producers are entitled to the sound recordingroyalty income, and the performers are paid by the record producers in accordance with the contracts between theparties. In South Africa, the Regulations are vague and appropriate changes have been recommended.14.1.15. Automatic reversal of copyright ownership (in Table 28 (t)) is not in place in all countries selected for comparativestudies. In South Africa, there is a high proportion of musicians and authors who are ignorant about copyrightissues and, as a result, there are several cases where the rights are assigned to third parties without a fullunderstanding of the implications. In order to minimise the impact of these transactions, the CRC hasrecommended an automatic reversion of copyright to the original owner after 25 years, regardless of the terms ofthe original transactions.14.1.16. The challenges around the royalties payable on ringtones and digital downloads have been resolved in alldeveloped countries selected for benchmarking (in Table 28 (v)), including India. Brazil, Senegal and South Africahave not yet managed to resolve these challenges.- 100 -