The second part of the public consultation for Singapore’s Draft Copyright Bill begins today, February 22, 2021.

The Ministry of Law and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore launched the first part of the consultation on February 5.

The second part seeks to gather feedback on legislative provisions relating to the regulation of collective management organizations – issues which were raised for public consultation in 2017 and 2020.

The Draft Copyright Bill, set to repeal and replace the Copyright Act (Cap.60 Rev. Ed. 2006), contains new rights including the following:

• right for creators and performers to be identified whenever their works or performances are used publicly
• default ownership of commissioned photographs, portraits, engravings, sound recordings and films unless otherwise stated in the contract

It includes expanded rights of use, such as:

• specific right to use works for computational data analysis, including uses relating to text and data mining, data analytics and machine learning
• new right for educators and students to use online materials for educational purposes, whether for face-to-face or online learning
• expanded rights for certain uses of works by galleries, libraries, archives and museums to facilitate their work, such as for exhibition, preservation and cataloguing of works.

Singapore’s Draft Copyright Bill also enumerates new civil and criminal liabilities for commercial dealings in illicit TV set-top boxes, among other enhanced remedies.

In addition, the Bill re-structures the Copyright Act by grouping the content into themes and putting all exceptions in a single Part. It also simplifies the language for easier comprehension.

The first part of the consultation, which began on February 5, aims to gather feedback on whether the draft Bill will appropriately implement recommendations raised during a 2016 public consultation. It also seeks the public’s opinion on whether the language used is clear and more easily understood.

The public consultation – for both parts - will end on April 1, 2021.

Legal practitioners, academics, content creators and users, performers and interested institutions may provide their comments here. They may also email their feedback to MLAW_Consultation@mlaw.gov.sg using the subject or header “Feedback on Copyright Bill Consultation Paper.”

View the full public consultation paper here.

Espie Angelica A. de Leon