Morocco’s Committee on Education, Culture, and Communication of the House of Representatives adopted a new draft law on copyrights for writers in the country, amending and supplementing existing legislation on the matter.
During a meeting held this Wednesday, March 9, chaired by Minister of Youth and Culture Mehdi Bensaid, the new bill was unveiled and passed the commission, said a press release from the ministry.
The bill “aims to add new provisions concerning the protection of copyright and related rights” in the digital age, and “includes provisions on the digital exploitation of musical, audiovisual and visual works.”
According to the Ministry of Culture, new provisions concerning follow-up rights for writers and publishers will now be introduced, which will enable writers to benefit from sales’ revenues, spanning translation rights and reprints.
Such provision will also concern the material rights of visual artists, who will too, benefit from the resale revenue of their original works, be it paintings, sculptures, or other artwork.
New definitions of what constitutes a work of art have been specified in the new bill, including the “arts of drawing and painting” and the “service of sharing content via the Internet,” in accordance with the new provisions.
The text comes in response to “the aspirations of a category of professionals and various actors in the sector and the changes related to the technological and computer revolution to remedy the lack and accompany the sector in its accelerated development at the international level,” said the Ministry.
The legislative effort additionally aims to promote the compatibility of domestic law with international conventions, “in particular with the Treaty of Marrakech to facilitate access to published works for the visually impaired and people with other difficulties in reading printed texts.”
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