Copyright Agency – 10 Things You Should Know

Collecting societies negotiate licences of their members’ works, collect the licence fees, retain a percentage of the fees that they collect as a commission, and then distribute the remainder to their copyright owner members. Collecting societies allow for efficient licensing.

1. Membership is free

Any Australian creator who owns copyright of published works can join the Copyright Agency for free. Being a member makes it easier for Copyright Agency to pay you if your writing has been copied, or is available for copying, under Copyright Agency’s licences for the education, government or business sectors. If you aren’t already a member, you can join here. The ASA encourages all members to join Copyright Agency!

2. There are two main types of payments for authors

They are:

1. Payments to book authors with publishing contracts that share Copyright Agency pa

  • these payments come from specific sectors (e.g. from schools or universities) which occur at different times of the year (but mostly April to June each year)
  • you can receive these payments directly from Copyright Agency, or indirectly from your publisher 
  • if rights to Copyright Agency payments have fully reverted to the author, Copyright Agency pays the entire allocation for the book to the author/s. 

2. Payments to other authors in the Annual Writers Distribution

  • this is an annual distribution, which does not include works for which the author receives royalties from a publisher which are covered by (1)
  • payments are to authors for all works, other than those covered in (1), available for copying and sharing under Copyright Agency licences
  • To calculate payment, Copyright Agency uses a combination of past usage data from licensees and information provided by members about publications containing their writing for which they retain copyright.
3. Most payments from copyright fees from the education sector are for education resources

Teachers at schools and universities mostly copy and share material specifically developed for education, such as textbooks, workbooks, practice tests and lesson plans. You can see the sorts of books commonly copied in schools here.

4. You can list publications that aren’t already in Copyright Agency’s databases

Want to confirm which of your publications are in the CA databases? As a member you can log in to your online account to see which of your publications are listed, and add any publications containing your work that may be missing.

5. About 84% of copyright fees are passed on to the creative industry sector

Copyright Agency currently deducts only 15.3% of licence fees: 13.8% for anticipated operating costs, and 1.5% for Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, which supports vital grants for Australian writers, illustrators and literary organisations.

6. Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund provides about $2m in grants a year

Grants are awarded to individual authors, as well as to organisations which make up the literary ecosystem. You can see more about Cultural Fund grants and the application process here.

7. Copyright Agency payments work differently to PLR and ELR

The Australian lending rights schemes (PLR/ELR) are Government programs administered by the Ministry for the Arts, and are intended to compensate authors for loss of potential sales income due to their books being available for free from public or educational libraries. This is different to the licence schemes administered by the Copyright Agency, where licence fees allow the use of copyright content that would otherwise require copyright clearance, and the distribution of licence fees reflects the usage of the content by the licensees. Read more here.

8. There are four creator Director positions on Copyright Agency’s Board

There are 11 director positions on the Copyright Agency’s Board. Of those, two directors are appointed by the Australian Society of Authors, one is an Author Director position elected by Copyright Agency’s author members, and one is an Artist Director position elected by Copyright Agency’s artist members.

9. Copyright Agency advocates for the interests of authors, artists, and publishers

Copyright Agency has more than 37,000 members, the majority of which are authors and artists. It represents the copyright-related interests of authors, artists and publishers in a variety of ways, most significantly through  submissions to policy makersin the Australian government, Opposition and committees of inquiry. Copyright Agency works closely with the Australian Society of Authors on these issues.

10. Copyright Agency publishes detailed information about its activities

Want to know more about Copyright Agency? Read their annual reports, distribution policy, distribution schedule, and reports on its compliance with the Code of Conduct for Copyright Collecting Societies.

Taken from ASA news May 2022.