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Legal Deposit Act, 1997 (Act No. 54 of 1997)

1. Definitions

 

In this Act, unless the context indicates otherwise—

 

"Committee"

means the Legal Deposit Committee referred to in section 8;

 

"Department"

means the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology;

 

"document"

means any object which is intended to store or convey information in textual, graphic, visual, auditory or other intelligible format through any medium, and any version or edition of a document which is significantly different from that document in respect of its information content, intelligibility or physical presentation, is considered to be a separate document;

 

"medium"

means any means of recording or transmitting information intended for subsequent reading, listening or viewing;

 

"Minister"

means the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology;

 

"official publication"

means a document published by an organ of national, provincial or local government, a parastatal organisation or any other institution listed as a public entity in terms of section 3 of the Reporting by Public Entities Act, 1992 (Act No. 93 of 1992);

 

"official publications depository"

means a place of legal deposit designated in accordance with section 6;

 

"place of legal deposit"

means a library or institution referred to in section 6;

 

"prescribed"

means prescribed by regulation made under section 12;

 

"published"

means produced to be generally available in multiple copies or locations to—

(a) any member of the public, whether through purchase, hire, loan, subscription, licence or free distribution; or
(b) the members of an association or a society, the membership of which is open to any qualifying member of the public;

 

"publisher"

means the person who or body, whether public or private which—

(a) publishes and distributes a document;
(b) authorises and accepts the financial risk of the production, whether by that person or body or by another, of a document which is intended to be generally available;
(c) imports a document produced abroad for a South African publisher or a document specially adapted for the South African market to make it generally available;

 

"this Act"

includes the regulations made under section 12.