Draft bill introduced into Parliament, March 29, 2018. Draft Bill on Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech (1) establishing the concept of hate crime in South African criminal law; (2) making other forms of unfair discrimination a crime; and (3) developing measures to combat hate crime, hate speech and unfair discrimination. Accrding to Article 4 (1) of the bill: (a) Any person who intentionally, by means of any communication whatsoever, communicates to one or more persons in a manner that – (i) advocates hatred towards any other person or group of persons; or (ii) is threatening, abusive or insulting towards any other person or group of persons, and which demonstrates a clear intention, having regard to all the circumstances, to – (aa) incite others to harm any person or group of persons, whether or...
According to Article 16: Any person who unlawfully makes available, broadcasts or distributes, by means of a computer system, a data message to a specific person, group of persons or the 5 general public with the intention to incite— (a) the causing of any damage to any property belonging to; or (b) violence against, a person or a group of persons, is guilty of an offence. According to Article 17: ny person who unlawfully and intentionally makes available, broadcasts or distributes, by means of a computer system, a data message which is harmful, is guilty of an offence. (2) For purposes of subsection (1), a data message is harmful when— (a) it threatens a person with— 15 (i) damage to any property belonging to, or violence against, that person; or (ii) damage to any property belonging to, or violence against, any...
Policy designed to “bring about a comprehensive and fundamental transformation for online content regulation in the country”, “ensure that children are protected from exposure to disturbing and harmful content” and “ensure that classification and compliance monitoring focuses on media content, rather than on platforms or delivery technologies". It establishes a special regime for the classification of user-generated content which can be activated on its own accord or on the basis of complaints by third parties. To enforce the regime, the Policy establishes that the Film and Publications Board may approach media platforms including internet service providers to take down existing content, request content classification or access restriction, order a particular classification or institute criminal charges. The Policy...
"In South Africa, Internet service providers (ISPs) that host information are granted immunity against claims for hosting information, but only on condition that the service provider remove information on receipt of a complaint. Unlike other takedown regimes, such as that in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is not confined to copyright; exemption from liability extends to any grounds of civil legal liability, while the potential subject of complaint is not restricted in any way." Initial Excerpt from the chapter Censorship on Demand: Failure of Due Process in ISP Liability and Takedown Procedures, by Andrew Rens on the book Global Censorship: Shifting Modes, Persisting Paradigms, edited by Pranesh Prakash, Nagla Rizk & Carlos Affonso Souza, as part of Yale's Access to Knowledge Research Series.
Setting forth some general principles (section 2), minimum requirements (section 5) and some preferred requirements (section 6) for the codes of conducts to be adopted by industry representative bodies.
(1) Introducing liability limitations for mere conduit (section 73), caching (section 74), hosting (section 75) and information location tools (section 76). (2) The conditions to fall under these categories differ from the corresponding provisions in Europe since they require complainants to use a specific procedure of notice and takedown (described in section 77), but at the same time differ from the provisions in the United States as they require such specific procedure to be followed only in case of hosting and caching, and not for information location tools. (3) Furthermore, the limitations are partial as they do not extend to injunctions - and in the case of hosts and information location providers to criminal liability as well - and do not affect obligations of service providers founded on an agreement, a...