Publishers’ association of south africa

Electronic document management

Approximately sixteen South African laws force every local business to retain certain documents for specified periods, e.g. in terms of the VAT Act an invoice needs to be retained for 3 years. A list of all the document retention laws is listed in Annexure B hereto.

In terms of Chapter 3 Part I of the ECT Act, businesses may now archive the necessary documents in electronic format e.g. a business may scan an original invoice, destroy the original copy and archive the electronic copy.
It is unclear whether a business will infringe the copyright in documents if they scan such documents (make a copy) and destroy the original. We suggest that the legislator should address the issues as it stands in the way of effective electronic document and record management by local businesses.

The ECT Act may be downloaded from: http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/legislation/2002/act25.html

Appendix

6ELECTRONIC COPYRIGHT –

PASA SUBMISSION ON THE ELECTRONIC COMMERCE BILL