If ‘Noot vir Noot’ is going international, SA needs to do more to protect it

JRR Tolkien died in 1973 so had he hung out in Bloemfontein for a while and written his works here, they’d be in the public domain next year. Because Britain klaps on an extra 20 years to their copyright, we’ll have to wait until 2044 before we can mess around with Frodo without a licence. If you’re willing to forget about Bilbo Baggins, you can get excited about Mickey Mouse entering public domain next year, though we’ve been waiting for that since 1928.

Why does it take so long for these incredible characters to enter public domain? Other countries understand the value of intellectual property and have gone to great lengths to protect them. In 1998, the United States even passed legislation to extend copyright protection. Mexico offers up 100 years of protection so even though La Cucaracha is incredibly old, Leon Schuster’s Hier kom die Bokke is still technically a copyright infringement.

South Africa offers half of that protection. Since the author is likely to be dead by the time a work enters into public domain, you may think the difference of 50 years is negligible but what if the work becomes a public treasure?

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The amount of money we pay to licence Spiderman mugs, Barney the Dinosaur costumes or anything our kids demand is deceptively high. That’s paid before anything is even printed or produced. Selling just the rights to use characters is a lucrative business so naturally, when a nation can capitalise on it, they’d want to protect their abilities to do so.

In 2018, Netflix paid $100 million for a year of streaming Friends. The Office goes for that amount annually. So, at $200 million a year just for those two works, you’d understand why the US would get excited about extending their protection by a couple of years. Maybe they fall out of public favour. Maybe they don’t. How much do you think Mickey Mouse has brought in over the last 30 extra years? How many millions do you think Amazon pumped into their ‘Lord of the Rings’ series?

Copyright is an asset and though there is a clock on it, it’s a valuable asset and you’d do well to extend that clock as long as possible. Other countries have understood that and for good reason. South Africa hasn’t and also for good reason. We haven’t had any work that carries public favour that long, though that’s not to say it will never happen.

There’s that saying of sowing your seeds before it rains and we should probably start looking at that since the South African creative scene is thriving in many respects and getting attention from abroad.

Also, it hardly costs much relative to a bunch of other interventions, to amend the Copyright Act to extend protection. Oh wait. What’s that? We’re already amending the Copyright Act? Well, what a perfect time to be scoring some points with the creatives of our country and giving their work more protected longevity.

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Hidden between news of the Brics summit and the moonshot pact, something actually exciting was reported – Noot vir Noot is being shopped globally by the same people who took the Japanese show Tigers of Money and turned it into Dragons’ Den. There’s value in South African entertainment and we owe it to ourselves to protect it for its own sake and the benefit of the nation.

Beyond any of that, if we want to make South Africa a groovy place to create, we at least need to make it look attractive.

Let’s do this small thing for our creatives. Let’s breathe extended life into their works and make it so that legacy can be created and the nation can benefit.