The fair dealing/fair use landscape for artificial intelligence innovation and computational research in Africa

Abstract

This paper sets out the issues of copyright ownership and risk of copyright infringement liability raised by data science research use of data held by public bodies (in particular, public service broadcasters) in South Africa and Nigeria. Considering both the fair dealing exception in South Africa’s Copyright Act of 1978 and Nigeria’s Copyright Act, 2022 as well the proposed fair use provision in South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill B13F-2017, the paper discusses these issues elaborating on the reasons why data science researchers in public research institutions should not and do not require a copyright licence or be considered to be infringing copyright when they use copyright-protected materials held by public bodies for data science and artificial intelligence or machine learning research. The paper also suggests that where the outputs of data science research are copyright-protected, they should be made available in an open and accessible manner with reasonable safeguards.