1,720,959 research outputs found
Abezimu/Badimo (ancestors) and copyright law: from the Decolonial Turn to the pluriversal author
Full text link"A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism” is the sentence that opens Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' iconic text, The Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels set out what was to become the primary program of action for all communist parties in Europe. The Communist Manifesto's cardinal observation was that Communism was an epochal inevitability, and that it was the task of all revolutionaries to ensure that conditions are befitting for a Communist reality. Although in a completely different context, this thesis accepts that the spectre that is currently haunting Africa and the Global South is that of Decoloniality and Decolonisation. This thesis studiedly perceives the #MustFall moment as one that presented South Africa with a Decolonial Turn – this is an epochal inevitability that seeks to complete the incomplete task of decolonising society. To respond to the Decolonial Turn, this thesis methodologically employs decolonial theory, Black consciousness philosophy and Black Marxism to study the essence of copyright law's authorship from the perspective of people on the other side of Western modernity. The basic contention of this thesis, and its original contribution to the corpus of literature as regards authorship in copyright, is that the logical aftermath of the Decolonial Turn leads to a “pluriversal author” – this is a type of author that is reflective of the pluriversal epistemic and ontological patterns of a decolonised world. This is a world where many worlds exist. One of those worlds is inhabited by people whose epistemic traditions suggest that an author in copyright is inclusive of “Abezimu/Badimo”, that is the non-human author who is represented in an onto-triadic edifice of Being; the living, the dead and the yet-to-be-born. The thesis that is defended in this doctoral project is that Abezimu/Badimo are an author in copyright, and that this ought to be accepted, embraced, and reflected in prevailing copyright law legislative frameworks
Authorship in copyright law: a critique in the context of the fourth industrial revolution
No full textDissertation(LL.M.(Mercantile Law))--University of the Free State, 2023This dissertation critically examines the demands for an amendment of the South African Copyright Act 98 of 1978 to bring it in line with modern times. It investigates authorship in copyright law from the perspective of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This dissertation focuses specifically on artificial intelligence (AI) and its ability to generate copyrightable works under the Act. The growing use of AI technology inversely leads to the growing production of works generated by AI. These mechanically produced works share the same traits as those that, according to South African law, are entitled to copyright protection. As a result, there is currently uncertainty over who the author of such works is, because AI machines do not qualify as authors under the South African Copyright Act.
This dissertation examines the definition of an author in the existing Copyright Act, as well as the requirements for authorship and copyright protection, in order to determine if this section of the Act needs to be amended to reflect the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
To accomplish this, the dissertation investigates prominent South African intellectual property law textbooks as well as international sources that have conducted extensive research on the subject. The dissertation reveals the excessive use of artificial intelligence machinery and its products in the country and around the world. It demonstrates the growing need for legislation to govern such machinery in the country, as well as rules to regulate the usage of such technology and the copyrightable works it produces.
The dissertation studies the nature of copyright in a work made by AI equipment nationwide and internationally, as well as how these machines will affect different areas in the country. An analysis of the requirements for copyright is provided, and it is argued that the present requirements for copyright cater to works generated by artificial intelligence even though these machines do not qualify as authors under the Act. Furthermore, the dissertation demonstrates how a lack of regulations in this regard will have a negative impact on specific areas, such as the country's education system. It indicates that South African legislation has not advanced sufficiently in comparison to other countries.
The dissertation finds that the current Copyright Act is outdated and needs to be amended to account for AI generated works as well as AI authorship. Furthermore, legislation to oversee AI technology in the country should also be considered
Morena Mohlomi le Badimo: reading decolonial articulations into the intellectual property law curriculum.
Full text linkThe Council on Higher Education (CHE) expresses itself cogently in affirming the validity of the calls to specifically decolonise the LLB curriculum. Public discourse and the CHE report present an emerging clarion call for the academy to critically engage the question of decolonisation of the curriculum. This paper proposes Transmodernity as a methodological endeavor towards engaging African epistemologies in an effort to find alternatives in teaching various intellectual property law concepts. To tease out the fundamental decolonial question of how the dismembered can be re-membered, the paper tests the theory of Mohlomism and its applicability to the intellectual property law curriculum. Mohlomi was a mentor to the king of the kingdom of Lesotho, Morena Moshoeshoe I. He would travel around Southern Africa teaching society about his philosophy of truthfulness, justice, peace, the love of man and for sane humanism. Re-membering the Being of the proverbial “other”, reverses the effect of the prevailing legacy of epistemicide in the curriculum and may gradually lead to a transformed legal pedagogy. The paper discerns decolonisation as a project that inter alia seeks to create a pluriversal intellectual community that embosoms the epistemic traditions of the global South.
 
The call to decolonise higher education : copyright law through an African lens
Full text linkThis dissertation reflects critically on the calls for the decolonisation of South Africa’s higher education sector by studying the historical development of legal pedagogy in South African law faculties. It focuses in particular on the intellectual property law curriculum broadly, and more specifically on the copyright law module. Africa’s colonisation by Western powers ravaged it in various ways. This is starkly illustrated in the areas of knowledge production and research. Against this background the dissertation teases out the prevailing extent, depth, and reach of colonialism in the copyright law curriculum with the aim of identifying possible ways to give practical effect to the calls for the curriculum to be decolonised.
To achieve this, the dissertation examines leading South African intellectual property law textbooks through an African lens in an express attempt to assert the pluriversal, epistemicological traditions of the global South. In each chapter and with each theme the dissertation proposes how an envisaged decolonised copyright curriculum could look.
The dissertation grapples with the various theories underpinning the decolonial discourse, laying groundwork for an academically sound basis on which to decolonise the copyright law curriculum. It provides an African critique of the Eurocentric intellectual property law ‘justifications debate’ and posits communal modes of property ownership in Africa to counter Western individualistic notions of property ownership which lend credence to the current justification debate. The dissertation analyses the nature of copyright in a work using the philosophy of Ubuntu as an alternative in teaching this theme within the curriculum. A decolonial analysis of the requirements for copyright is offered, and it is argued that the current sta-ndards and threshold used for the subsistence of copyright is colonial and furthers the onslaught on the Black Body, both in its practical application and in how it is taught. The dissertation concludes by studying copyright exceptions, critically urging the academy to apply a differentiated model of exceptions to different jurisdictions in light of their colonial history (and present).Lomtlolo utjheja ihlangothi lokufuna bona kutjhugululwe iimfundo zemkhakheni wezefundo ephakamileko yangeSewula Afrika ngokufunda ngetuthuko yokufunda kanye nokufundisa ngemNyangweni wabajameli. Utjheja khulu umthetho wepahla wezefundo khudlwana kanye nomthetho welungelo lokukhuphela. Ukuthunjwa kweAfrika ngabamhlophe kone ngeendlela ezinengi. Lokhu kutjengiswa kumbi mikhakha ekhiqiza ilwazi kanye nerhubhululako. Ngalesi isendlalelo lomtlolo utjheja ngokudephileko ukobana ukuthunjwa kweAfrika ngabamhlophe kulethe muphi umuthelela ngehlangothini lomthetho welungelo lokukhuphela lezefundo ngomqopho wokufumana iindlela nofana iinzathu zokobana kutjhugululwe ifundo yangeemfundweni eziphakamileko. Ukuphumelelisa lokhu, lomtlolo uhlahluba iincwadi zobuhlakaniphi bomthetho wepahla ngokutjheja indlela yokwenza izinto ngeSewula. Isahluko esinye nesinye kanye nommongo omunye nomunye utjheja bona ifundo etjhugululweko ingaba njani.
Lomtlolo utjheja amathiyori atlolweko kanye nekukhulunywa ngawo lawo akhe umkhanyo wokutjhugulula zefundo. Utjheja isiphoqo seAfrika ngobuhlakaniphi babamhlophe ngomthetho wepahla ‘ikulumopikiswano yesizathu sokwenza okuthileko’ begodu ibeka ngaphambili indlela yokwabelana ipahlo eAfrika ukulwisana nendlela yabamhlophe yokungabelani ipahlo ekubange ikulumopikiswano yesizathu sokwenza okuthileko. Lomtlolo uhlaziya isisusa sokukhuphela ngokutjheja ikolelo yegama elithi ‘Ubuntu’ njengegama elisetjenziswa lokha nakufundiswa lommongo eemfundweni. Indlela etjhugululweko yokuhlaziya iimfuneko sokukhuphela yindlela yabamhlophe begodu igandelela indlu enzima, ngendlela yokwenza kanye nangendlela efundiswa ngayo.
Lomtlolo uphetha ngokufunda isiphambuki sokukhuphela, ngokubawa isikolo ukobana sisebenzise indlela ehlukileko kunaleyo ebegade isetjenziswa ngabamhlophe ekadeni kanye nesikhathini sanje.LL.M. (Intellectual Property Law)Private La
Contested Legacies of the SA Constitution: An Engagement with Albie Sachs' Oliver Tambo's Dream.
No full textSachs wrote Oliver Tambo\u27s Dream based on a series of four public lectures that he delivered on four separate topics, and at four different universities in South Africa. The golden thread that runs through the four lectures is Sachs\u27 application of the South African constitution on various social questions and as well as his recount of President Oliver Tambo\u27s influence therein
The Socio-legal Praxis of Leviticus 25
No full textTo Whom Belongs the Land? Leviticus 25 in an African Liberationist Reading, by Ndikho Mtshiselwa
Peter Lang. 2018. xviii + pp. 284.
ISBN: 978-1-4331-3893-5
https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4331-3897-
WHY DECOLONISATION AND NOT TRANSFORMATIVE CONSTITUTIONALISM
Full text linkPaul Mudau and Sibabalo Mtonga proffer ‘Extrapolating the role of transformative constitutionalism in the decolonisation and Africanisation of Legal Education in South Africa’ to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about South Africa’s LLB curriculum, and to make studied comments about the need to shift from colonial modes of knowing, thinking, and doing. Their article does well to study the strides that have been made in this discourse, as they make use of the University of Pretoria’s Curriculum Transformation Document as one example of the progress that has been made. Mudau and Mtonga conclude that adherence to transformative constitutionalism may enhance decolonisation and Africanisation, and thus lead to the gradual transformation of legal education in South Africa. This rejoinder sets the argument from a different starting point — it insists that the definitive thrust of the Decolonial Turn in South Africa presents a decided critique of the 1994 constitutional arrangement, therefore rendering transformative constitutionalism a misfit in the quest to decolonise and Africanise South African legal education. This article concludes by asserting that South African law teachers, and anyone interested in the quest to alter colonial pedagogies, should concern themselves with seeking definitional clarity, and the rest shall follow
Prophecy and the Pandemic: The Vindication of Decolonial Legal Critical Scholarship
No full textThe ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic offers the legal academy a special opportunity to reflect on various conceptual, ideational, and ideological questions that cleavage the academy and society. In this exposition, I embrace an exegetical-cum-legalist enunciation to analyse the material conditions that define the lives of the historically and presently colonised peoples of South Africa. In the main, this treatise advances two arguments: (1) that the present socio-economic conditions illustrate the decisive thrust of decolonial legal critical scholarship and its ability to predict the future; and (2) that critical approaches to the law constitute a legitimate intellectual prophetic engagement. I conclude by insisting that decolonial legal critical scholarship should be the cornerstone and a focal point of emphasis in the calls to shift [and decolonise] all facets of the law and its curriculum
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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