Stop creating. Now.

So this is what our government is sneaking into law while nobody watches. The quick version is that the copyright of whatever you create will (if the legislation is passed) belong to the government once you croak.
       In terms of the Berne Convention, to which twelve point nothing eleventy six and a quarter seventy countries have subscribed, copyright vests with the heirs of the estate for fifty years after the creator dies. This is ensconced in the Copyright Act of 1978, and is about to be undone by the Copyright Amendment Bill of 2015. The Rand Daily Mail gives you the taste of nothing to come right here. And PEN SA is really grumpy about this too. 

       So here we are, the cultural collective. Authors, musicians, choreographers, poets, playwrights, singers, photographers, illustrators, film-makers, poets, actors, whatever. Whether we sell heaps like Wilbur Smith, or a little dribble as I do, when Wilbur dies, or I do, our Department of Trade and Industry would have it that the government is to benefit from the royalties and other income our work might continue to generate.
        How is this logical, first up? Let’s say that someone puts up an office block. He draws an income from the rental, and the value of the property itself increases. After he pops his clogs on the golf course, the property is inherited by his offspring – who then benefit from the fruits of his labour. The state does not step in and assume ownership of this inheritance (yet, anyway. I mean, we’re not Zimbabwe, are we?). So why should Mr Smith’s children and grandchildren be deprived of fifty years’ worth of royalties on his work?
       To my mind, it’s simply another channel our government is seeking to open in order to secure further funding for its nepotism and its corruption. An insidious and cynical theft disguised as yet another tax, if you will. 
       But, shame, I suppose they’re running out of ways to squeeze pennies out of a base of only ten million taxpayers. Individuals already shell out a sizeable chunk of their income for PAYE.  
       Another 14c of every rand we spend goes to VAT.
       Every litre of fuel we buy carries a levy of around R5 in tax and to fund the hapless RAF – the tax component alone is around 30% of the cost. 
       We’re taxed on dividends paid out by shares that we used our after-tax money to buy.
       For some of us, eTolls chip away a little more.
       And now there’s talk of a wealth tax on the way, where individuals who earn a million rand or more per annum will be punished further for their efforts. 
       I will bet all my royalties that this figure of a million rand means pre-tax earnings. I’m hardly an actuary, but in terms of PAYE and VAT alone, my primitive maths says this individual is already forking 54c of every rand they earn to the treasury. And this excludes whatever they’re spending on petrol, or property rates and taxes, or eTolls. This means that the million-rand man will face a wealth tax on what in reality is at most R460,000 – less than the median income of full-time employees over 25 in the USA, on which they pay personal tax of just 25%.
       Not that many writers and artists can look forward to this kind of income in South Africa anyway. If you’re one of the lucky few to sell a thousand copies of a book that retails at R200, you can look forward to an income of around R10,000–R15,000, depending on your agreed royalty percentage. And that’s before tax, of course.

       The Bill put forward by the DTI also, as the Rand Daily Mail points out, creates new criminal offences. Refusing to grant permission to use copyright for educational purposes could see you in jail for 10 years, or fined up to R50,000. That’s great, if you’ve only earned ten grand on the work in the first place, being forced to give away your IP for no income so that it can appear in a text book with a print run of 20,000.

But, listen properly. What is the actual message here?

To me it says don’t bother. Don’t bother to think, and if you do don’t bother to commit your thoughts to material form, and if you do that, don’t bother to sell your work. You’ll only have to get your heirs to hold a book-burning in the back garden if you don’t want the state to benefit from any sales after your death.
       At worst, the Copyright Amendment Bill is a tentative step towards negating all forms of inheritance, where anything of value left behind by the deceased would transfer to the state.
       At best, it’s a kick in the balls of culture. Churchill has been attributed, when faced by a proposal that arts and culture grants be cut to fund the war effort, with saying “Then what are we fighting for?” Whether he said this or not doesn’t matter, it’s an expression of attitude, and it’s tragic that our government takes a view 180 degrees removed from this.
      Surely a truly progressive country would seek to encourage its pool of creators – making earnings on creative works tax-free, for instance, or zero-rating VAT on books – instead of pissing on their batteries? But here we are, on the cusp of having someone go “Heh heh heh” all the way to the bank with our money once we’re six feet under.

Comments on the Copyright Amendment Bill of 2015 closed on 26 August. Attorney Jeremy Speres of Spoor & Fisher, the legal firm specialising in matters of intellectual property, handily summarises the Bill here.