On 26 June 2026, the Constitutional Court of South Africa delivered its landmark judgment in the Ex Parte application of President Ramaphosa in re: Constitutionality of the Copyright Amendment Bill (CAB) and the Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill (Case CCT 306/24). 

Fair use was a central point of contention throughout the copyright reform process. In its judgment, the Court affirmed the constitutionality of the fair use provision and most of the related exceptions under review.  Only Section 12D (1–5), which governs educational reproduction, was declared unconstitutionaldue to its incompatibility with constitutional requirements. However, Section 12D (6–9) was upheld as constitutional, and therefore remains a valid and enforceable component of the Bill.

The Court Order reads as follows:

On referral from the President of the Republic of South Africa in terms of sections 79(4)(b) and 84(2)(c) of the Constitution:

1. The referral by the President in terms of section 79 of the Constitution in respect of sections 6A, 7A and 8A of the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2017 (CAB) as a whole is incompetent.
2. The fair use exception in section 12A of the CAB is not arbitrary and does not infringe the right to property under section 25(1) of the Constitution and is constitutional within the scope of the President’s referral.
3. The exceptions in sections 12B and 12C of the CAB are not arbitrary, do not infringe the right to property under section 25(1) of the Constitution and are constitutional within the scope of the President’s referral.
4. The exceptions in subsections 12D (1)-(5) of the CAB constitute an arbitrary deprivation of property under section 25(1) of the Constitution and are unconstitutional.
5. The exceptions in subsections 12D (6)-(9) of the CAB are not arbitrary, do not infringe the right to property under section 25(1) of the Constitution and are constitutional within the scope of the President’s referral.
6. Section 19B of the CAB is not arbitrary, does not infringe the right to property under section 25(1) of the Constitution and is constitutional within the scope of the President’s referral.
7. Section 19C of the CAB is not vague and does not constitute an arbitrary deprivation of property under section 25(1) of the Constitution.
8. The orders in paragraphs 1-7 in relation to the CAB also apply to the relevant sections of the Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill, 2017.

Despite the Constitutional Court’s judgment, opponents of the CAB continue to make public statements claiming that fair use is unconstitutional, or that the entire Copyright Amendment Bill is unconstitutional. These claims are incorrect and misleading. The Constitutional Court did not find fair use unconstitutional, nor did it declare the CAB unconstitutional in its entirety. Continuing to make such claims risks creating unnecessary public confusion, particularly among those who may not be familiar with the details of the judgment or its legal implications.  

At the recent IP for Growth workshop in Johannesburg, convened by the U.S. Consulate General Johannesburg, U.S. Mission Geneva, and Universal Music Group, some participants and even a presenter claimed, without correction, that the CAB had undergone neither economic assessment nor meaningful consultation with the creative industries.  These claims are misleading.   An economic assessment was conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry, while extensive countrywide consultation has been ongoing since the CAB was first published in 2015, including a multistakeholder conference and regional workshops, written submissions across multiple rounds of public participation, including further submissions and comments on specific clauses and amendments, as well as public hearings held by Parliament and the Provincial Legislatures.  Disagreement with the outcomes of these processes should not be presented as evidence that they did not take place.

As EIFL states: “Since the Copyright Amendment Bill was introduced in parliament in 2017, over 90 official activities and events have taken place, including public consultations, stakeholder meetings, technical expert reviews, legal briefings and debates, making it one of the most scrutinized copyright bills in the world. The Bill has twice been passed by both Houses of Parliament and sent to the President for assent. The President has twice questioned the constitutionality of some of the provisions (including copyright exceptions for educational and academic activities).” 

On 15 October 2024, the President referred the Bill to the Constitutional Court for a ruling on its constitutionality in terms of Sections 79(4)(b) and 84(2)(c) of the Constitution. Yet again, during the Constitutional Court hearings on 21 and 22 May 2026, stakeholders, as amici curiae, had a further opportunity to present their positions on the Bill to the judges.  The creative/entertainment industries and others were well represented at all stages of the Bill and in the Constitutional Court hearings.   

The Court gave no specific instructions regarding the next steps for the Copyright Amendment Bill and Performers’ Protection Bill.  In her article, Professor Chijioke Okorie from the University of Pretoria, states: “the ball is in Parliament’s court to decide whether to strip out the bits held unconstitutional, finalise the Bill, and send it to the President for signature. That to me is the path of least resistance: given the Constitutional Court’s ruling on those provisions, the President cannot raise constitutional reservations about them again.”

In view of the Court’s judgment, policymakers and affected institutions will now need to consider revising or replacing the provisions that have been invalidated. It is hoped that a decision on the way forward will be reached as soon as possible, allowing the Bill to be revised and resubmitted to Parliament for approval and, ultimately, presented to the President for assent.

• Comparative Study on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions (GRTKTCE)
• Copyright for Librarians: Module 8: Traditional Knowledge
• Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge Treaty: Realising the Promise
• Government support for indigenous knowledge for sustainability in Southern Africa (2025)
• IFLA Statement on Indigenous Traditional Knowledge
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems in South Africa 2026
• WIPO Database of Contracts Related to Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources and Data
• WIPO Diplomatic Conference on Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge May 2024
  WIPO Documentation of Traditional Knowledge
• WIPO Documenting Traditional Knowledge – A Toolkit
• WIPO Frequently Asked Questions
• WIPO Glossary of Key Terms Related to Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions
• WIPO Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Portal
• WIPO Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge
• and Traditional Cultural Expressions (rev.2020)
• WIPO Presentations on Indigenous and Local Community Experiences
  WIPO Protect and Promote Your Culture (2017)
• WIPO Report on the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) – Decision (2025)
• WIPO Summary of the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (2024)  
• WIPO Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expressions & Genetic Resources Laws
• WIPO Traditional Knowledge Updates – Archive
• WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge

South Africa

• IK Act, (No 6 of 2019) – Presentation to the DTI Portfolio Committee
• National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act 2004
• Policy Framework for the Protection Of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge Through the Intellectual Property System and the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill, 2008
• Protection, Promotion, Development and Management of Indigenous Knowledge Act No. 6 of 2019 (IKS Act)

Articles

• Decolonization of Indigenous Knowledge Systems in South Africa:
• Asking the Traditional Knowledge Question as a Reality Check
• Digitization of Indigenous knowledge systems in Africa: the case of South Africa’s National Recorded System (NRS)
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Learning  In Rural South
• Africa
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems in South Africa 2026
• Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ Decolonial Struggle over Transplanted Western IP
• Information Systems and Digitization of Traditional Knowledge: Trends in Cultural Heritage and Memory Institutions and the WIPO Genetic Resources Treaty
• Listening for the Voices: Connecting Traditional Knowledge and Conservation in South Africa
• National Heritage Council Act, No. 11 of 1999 – G19961
• Property Rights and Traditional Knowledge
• Protection of Traditional Knowledge in South Africa: Does the ‘Commons’ Provide a Solution? (2011)
• The WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge: A Negotiating, Contextual and Conceptual Appraisal
• Traditional Health Practitioners Act, No. 22 of 2007 – G30660
• Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions in South Africa
• Traditional Knowledge and the Public Domain
• Transmission of indigenous knowledge systems under changing landscapes within the Vhavenda community, South Africa (2024)

• Bibliometrics Methods in Detecting Citations to Questionable Journals (2023).
• Citation Contamination: Citations to Predatory Journals in the Mainstream Scientific Literature (2019) (R.Anderson, Univ. of Utah). 
• Citation Contamination: References to Predatory Journals in the Legitimate Scientific Literature (2019) 
•  Citation Contamination by Paper Mill Articles in Systematic Reviews of the Life Sciences (2025)
• Citations Are the Currency of Science – Then there are the counterfeiters. (2020)
• Don’t be surprised by AI chatbots creating fake citations (2023)
• Citations to questionable journals threaten research integrity: bibliometrics as a key actor in the detection (2023)
• 15 Kinds of Bogus Citations (2024)
• Fifty years of research on questionable research practises in science: quantitative analysis of co-citation patterns (2023)
• Fighting Citation Pollution — The Challenge of Detecting Fraudulent Journals in Works Cited (2019)
• How Junk Citations Have Discredited the Academy: Part 1
• How Junk Citations Have Discredited the Academy: Part 2
• How Junk Citations Have Discredited the Academy: Part 3
• How Junk Citations Have Discredited the Academy: Part 4
• How Junk Citations Have Discredited the Academy: Part; 5
• Poisoning the Well: Citation Contamination of Systematic Review Literature in the Life Sciences by Paper Mills (2025)
• Professor says ‘junk citations’ have created ‘distrust’ in academic research (2023)
• Publishing ethics committee warns of ‘problematic pollution’ of the scholarly record (2024)
• Questionable papers in citation databases as an issue for literature review (2017)
• Retracted Covid-19 papers and the levels of ‘citation pollution’: A preliminary analysis and directions for further research (2020) 
• The right to refuse unwanted citations: rethinking the culture of science around the citation (2021)
• Top tips on identifying citation misconduct (2024)

AI Pollution of Research

• AI fake citations – How can researchers guard against them? (2026)
• Artificial Hallucinations in ChatGPT: Implications in Scientific Writing (2023)
• Artificial Intelligence and the Research Paper: a Librarian’s perspective (2023)
• Can Researchers Stop AI From Making up Citations? (2025)
• ChatGPT and Fake Citations (2023)
• Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers (2026)
• Fabricated citations in the age of AI: A wake-up call for editors, reviewers, and authors (2025)
• Fake Citations Are Everywhere — Here’s How to Spot Them (2026)
• False authorship: an explorative case study around an AI-generated article published under my name (Diomidis Spinellis) (2025)
• Fraudulent citations, blamed on AI hallucinations, are becoming more common in research papers (2026)
• From Integrity to Inflation: Ethical and Unethical Citation Practices in Academic Publishing (2025)
•  Generative AI and misinformation: a scoping review of the role of generative AI in the generation, detection, mitigation, and impact of misinformation (2025)
• Guarding against artificial intelligence–hallucinated citations (2025)
• Hallucination (artificial intelligence) (Wikipedia)
• “Looks Cited” Doesn’t Mean “is Cited.” Why 1 in 5 AI References Fail. (2026)
• South Africa Pulls Ai Policy After Hallucinated Citations Expose Drafting Scandal (2026)
• Study finds nearly two-thirds of AI-generated citations are fabricated or contain errors (2025)
• Surge in fake citations uncovered by audit of 2.5 million biomedical science papers (2026)
• Teplitskiy: AI-generated “slop” is polluting scientific citations (2026)
• The citation catastrophe: Propagation of AI-generated counterfeit citations in scholarship (2025)
• The Citation Trap: How AI Is Quietly Failing Students Around the World (2025)
• The Fabrication Problem: How AI Models Generate Fake Citations, URLs, and References (2025)
• The Illusion of Evidence: Why Fake AI Citations Demand Caution in Nursing (2026)
• Understanding Citation Ethics: Why You Should Never Rely Solely on AI for Literature Discovery (2026)
• What is AI Pollution?  

• APA Formatting and Style Guide (7th Edition) (Purdue OWL)
• Citation Style Guide: Citation Management and Formatting Tools (NYU)
• References, citations and avoiding plagiarism (UCL)
• Citation Styles and Management Tools Guide: Citation Management (UCONN)
• Citations in Academic Writing: Styles, Types, and How They Work (2026)
• Reference Management Tools: A Beginner’s Guide (2025)
• Referencing and Citation Styles in Academic Writing: APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, IEEE (2025)  
•  15 Different Styles of Referencing with Examples — Complete Guide for Students (2024)

Academic Writing Tools and Resources

• Academic Writing (Purdue OWL)
• Academic writing (University of Staffordshire)
• Academic Writing – Jeffrey R Wilson (Harvard)
• Academic writing: Writing in an academic style (University of Reading)
• Academic Writing resources (Reading University)
• Academic Writing Style (USC Libraries)
• Academictips.org – Tips for Writing Research Paper  
• Acknowledging, Paraphrasing, and Quoting Sources (WISC)
• ENGL 105, Academic Writing: Websites – Libguides at University of the Fraser Valley 
• Essay and Dissertation Writing Skills (Oxford University)
• Evidence — The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill 
• General Writing (Purdue OWL)  
• Graduate Writing Skills (Purdue OWL)
• Guidelines For Writing Research Proposals (UJ) 
• Guidelines on Typography and Formatting your Thesis or Dissertation   
• How to write a Research Proposal: Home (UNISA)
• Keep it simple: plain language
• Improve your research with these free digital tools
• List of Academic Writing Software
• Nine Basic Ways to Improve Your Style in Academic Writing
• Quoting, Paraphrasing & Summarizing (Purdue OWL) 
• Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting (Harvard)
• The Bestselling Guide to English Usage (The Economist)   
• Typography and Formatting of Research Reports 
• Paraphrase: Write it in your Own Words  
• Write in plain English
• Write it in your Own Words
• Writing an article – how is it different from writing a thesis?   
• Writing Podcasts (Purdue University OWL)
• Writing Resources (OWL, Purdue)  
• You Quote it – You Note it (Tutorial) –
• 7 Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills
• 9 tips to improve your academic writing
• 50 Essential Academic Writing and Publishing Tips: Expert Strategies for Research Success
• 150 Resources to Help You Write Better, Faster, and More Persuasively | OEDB 

(Source: https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/ai-hallucinations-mit-spinout-themis-development-healthcare-ethics-society-bias-1024×768.jpeg)

Intellectual Property

Copyright – South Africa

• Copyright Amendment Bill B13F-2017 – ConCourt hearings were on 21/22 May 2025.  Ruling still awaited one year later.
• Music Royalties in South Africa and Who Gets Paid Under Copyright Law
• Training AI with copyrighted books ruled ‘fair use’ in US: Implications for SA

Copyright – Globally

• Can a rhythm be owned? What a reggaeton lawsuit reveals about how copyright misunderstands music
• Can you own a voice? Taylor Swift’s latest legal move raises big questions for AI and copyright (trademark)
• Canada:  Copyright year in review – 2025-2026 – final version
• Copyright in AI Prompts: Chinese Court Ruling on Generative AI and Originality
• Starting from slogan, copyright protection demands multiple-pronged approach

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• AI, Copyright, and the Future of Creativity
• Malatsi moves to rescue South Africa’s botched AI policy
• The Global Evolution of AI Fact-Checking: Copyright and Research Gaps
• The pastiche exception in copyright law: what recent cases mean for creators and for AI
• Three copyright rulings and an EU deadline have rewritten the rules for AI images
• US Copyright Registration Guidance:  Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence – General

• Artificial intelligence and uncertainty
• Ban for Authors Submitting AI Content ‘Welcome but Unenforceable’
• Cybersecurity Will Swallow Digital Policy in the AI Age
• Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
• Glossary of artificial intelligence (Wikipedia)
• Instant AI answers can trivialise human intelligence, warns Royal Observatory
• Is AI really ‘writing’? From a priestess to philosophers, ancient authors would have said ‘no’
• Is your AI chatbot manipulating you? Subtly reshaping your opinions?
• Living guidelines on the responsible use of generative AI in research
• On Memorization
• Pope approves creation of Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence
• Targeted consultation on the draft guidelines for the classification of high-risk artificial intelligence systems (EU)
• The jagged frontier of AI and law (Podcast)
• The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails
• What are AI guardrails?
• Your AI Glossary: 54 Terms Everyone Should Know

Misinformation/AI Hallucinations

• A Bibliometric Analysis of Disinformation through Social Media
• A Framework for Information Disorder:  Modeling Mechanisms and Implications Based on a Systematic Literature Review
• A Strategic Roadmap for Mitigating Generative Artificial Intelligence Hallucination
• AI Hallucinations and the Misinformation Dilemma
• AI is getting more powerful, but its hallucinations are getting worse (2025)
• AI Misinformation vs AI Hallucinations: What’s the Difference
• AI keeps inventing fake cases. Lawyers keep citing them
• Asking chatbots for short answers can increase hallucinations, study finds (2025)
• Combatting Disinformation: Analyzing Effective Communication Strategies and Tactics for Organizational Resilience
• Deep Fakes
• Fact or Fiction? Artificial Intelligence Misinformation
• Future of disinformation studies: emerging research fields (2023)
• “Hacking and information disorder: the weaponization of leaking”
• Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?
• Hallucination Mitigation using Agentic AI Natural Language-Based Frameworks
• Information disorder: disinformation, misinformation and a ‘polluted’ information space
• Information Disorder and Resilience in the Global South: Structural Drivers, Governance, Media Literacy, and Fact-Checking
• Information Disorder Report (Council of Europe)
• Key insights from BBC Media Action’s research into information disorder around the world (2024)
• Mapping the Impact of Generative AI on Disinformation: Insights from a Scoping Review
• Mis- and disinformation (OECD)
• Misinformation vs. Disinformation in the Age of AI
• Misinformation, Disinformation & Malinformation: A Guide (Princeton Library)
• New sources of inaccuracy? A conceptual framework for studying AI hallucinations
• Scientists’ behaviour towards information disorder: A systematic review (2024)
• The Risks of AI Hallucinations and Misinformation: An Examination of ChatGPT and DeepSeek
• The trust crisis in artificial intelligence: AI hallucinations and human-AI collaboration
• When AI ‘Fictions’ Redirect History: Generative Models, Historiography and Misinformation (2025)
• When AI Gets It Wrong: Addressing AI Hallucinations and Bias

Open Access, A2K, Research and Scholarly Communication (incl. AI)

• A key science publishing platform is cracking down on AI slop
• AI-generated papers overwhelm academic peer review
• Analysis reveals AI’s impact on research, journals
• APC Caps and Bans — Why Funder Policies Aimed at Curbing the Publishing Industry Don’t Work
• Artificial intelligence as a reflexive collaborator in graduate studies supervision (2025)
• ArXiv to Ban Authors for a Year Over Unchecked AI-Generated Research Papers
• Calls for African code of conduct for research integrity
• ChatGPT in thematic analysis: Can AI become a research assistant in qualitative research?
• Framing the source: How African newsrooms present information disorders
• Generative AI creates transparency crisis in research
• Guest Post — A Friendly Debate: Where Automation Will (And Should) Land in the Research Lifecycle
• Guest Post — When AI Helps Write Research: What Happens to Lived Experience?
• Guest Post — When Thinking Is Outsourced: A Warning from a Scientist Trained Before AI
• Harvard-backed ToolUniverse reaches 500,000 AI agent analyses across 113 countries
• NASA just dropped more than 12,000 Artemis II photos—here’s how to see them
• Promoting Collaboration and Partnership among Science Academies in Africa (ADI2026)
• Taking digital inequality seriously for digital public infrastructure and data governance
• The Arithmetic of Prestige: How Research Metrics Began to Measure Everything Except Thought
• UNESCO 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report
• University of Free State drops AI detectors over accuracy concerns
• Why Scholarly Societies Must Compete Through Stewardship, Not Scale

Research Integrity – Challenges & Deceptive Practices

• Five early warning signs of research misconduct
• If using ChatGPT is cheating, what about ghostwriting? The old debate behind a new panic
• Researcher Ordered to Repay Grants Over Alleged Plagiarism
• Scientific Integrity in the Age of AI and the challenges of transparency: Fraud, manipulation, and the new transparency challenges
• The rise of ‘predatory’ publishing (2026)

Libraries and Archives (incl. AI)

• Adoption of artificial intelligence in academic libraries: A systematic review of current practices, challenges, and research opportunities
• Envisioning AI’s Role in Libraries: Perspectives from an LIS Student, a Library Director, and a University Librarian
• From Information Literacy to AI Literacy: Preparing Librarians for Emerging Responsibilities
• Leveraging Technology, Copyright, and Libraries to Benefit the Public Interest
• Librarians as guides in the age of AI
• Libraries as proactive agents in the age of artificial intelligence (AI): an interview with Loida Garcia Febo
• The future of libraries: a dialogue with CUHK’s university librarian
• Why Every Publisher Needs a Library Relations Strategy
• Why Libraries Matter Now More Than Ever to Democracy: Legal and Policy Issues Affecting the Future of Public Knowledge

Workshops/Webinars – 2026

• Scholarly Horizons – Topics Include: Copyright, Plagiarism, Citation and Quotation, Open Access, Scholarly Communication, Deceptive Publishing Practices, AI Issues, POPIA, Data management and Archival matters, and Others – For more information, email: Denise.Nicholson@scholarlyhorizons.com 

Online Symposium – 2026

• IFLA Symposium on Artificial Intelligence 2026 – Theme: “Building an AI-Empowered World: Practical Applications of AI” – 9-13 Nov 2026

Conference 2026

• LIASA Annual Conference 5-9 October 2025, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa