Mind Your Business: Who is Keeping Your Royalties?
It should piss you off, too!
Did you know that companies and institutions here in the U.S. and in foreign countries around the world pay royalties for photocopies they make of pages and images in books and written and visual materials? Did you know that companies here in the US collect those royalties on your behalf? Did you know these sums run into the millions of dollars?
Have you gotten your check? No, as an illustrator, most likely you haven't.
These royalty payments for making copies of our work are called reprographic royalties.
Reprographic royalties are collective fees owed to authors, illustrators and photographers (but not always paid) for the licensed photocopying of published work used in compilations such as books, journals, blogs, newspapers, e-books and such. Colleges, institutions and businesses photocopy great masses of printed matter.
To protect themselves from possible lawsuits for copyright infringement from authors and publishers, these users pay a fee to a copyright collecting society, also known as a Reprographic Rights Organization (RRO).
In theory, these collecting societies should return shares of these collective fees to the rights holders, whether they are authors, illustrators, publishers or photographers, just like jukebox money is returned to songwriters, composers and music publishers.
In music, collecting societies are well known. ASCAP and BMI collect and distribute money for and to songwriters and composers.
While fine artists have the Artists Rights Society (ARS, which does distribute royalties, http://www.arsny.com ), illustrators have no collecting and distributing society that I am aware of.
This means that all the reprographic royalties and other collective fees are either being held in escrow or are being paid to various societies and publishers and the royalties never make it to us, the illustrators, who produced and hopefully own the rights to our own work, which has been published in various formats.
Let's follow the money trail. Institutions and businesses pay a reprographic royalty to a collecting society, a Reprographic Rights Organization or RRO. The RRO then makes royalty payments to authors or publishers. Publishers should then make payments to the authors and illustrators whose copyright protected work was photocopied.
According to the Authors Coalition of America's website, the American RRO, which is collecting reprographic royalties, is the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) (www.Copyright.com). The CCC website states, "The CCC was created in 1978 by a group of authors and publishers."
Some of my books (Storyboards: Motion In Art, 2nd & 3rd Edition, Producing Independent 2D Character Animation, Facial Expressions) are with large publishers and I have found them listed on the CCC website. (Finding your illustrations on any database is not so easy…yet.)
There are a few ways institutions can pay the CCC for permission to photocopy elements of my books for various uses.
One, there is a pay-per-use option where a specific title is searched for and photocopy rights may be purchased for that title. When I searched on the CCC website for my book Facial Expressions, I found that copying my book for use in a classroom costs $0.177 per page. My book Producing Independent 2D Character Animation would cost $0.25 per page to copy.
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Hi, I am the living example that was quoted in the article who lives in Oslo, Norway. I just came back from attending the international conference for the Association of Medical Illustrators in Portland, OR. I was able to attend this meeting since I was awarded this spring a $ 5800 travel stipend from reprographic rights money collected here in Norway. I can not emphasize enough to illustrators the importance of letting ASIP be your collecting society. Sign up today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Sincerely, Kari C. Toverud
Mark,
Thanks again for taking such an interest in the subject of reprographic rights and thanks for taking so much time with the article. You did the art business a great service in 08, when you helped us get the Orphan Works story out. Now you’ve performed a similar public service with this piece.
We started ASIP for one reason: nobody else was doing it and unless somebody does it, it won’t get done.
In the last several months, over 500 of us have signed reprographic rights mandates. We invite any artist to join who’s had at least two published works in publications with ISBN or ISSN numbers. The form’s easy to fil out and membership is free.
Reprographic licensing is a multi-million dollar business. The money comes from the secondary licensing of our work by publishers. But it’s like jukebox money: we can never get a fair share of it until we come together as a copyright society. The distribution has to be done in a legally-accountable manner.
Other countries have pioneered the statistical means to determine how payments should be made. A good example is Great Britain’s Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS). Read about their Payback system here: dacs.org.uk
The second goal of a copyright society is just as important: to give artists an effective voice in the future management of our secondary rights.This is critical because of the way our business is changing.
When I started as an artist, we made our living doing commissioned work. Back then it was considered unethical to license art to one client that we had done for another. But the Internet has changed all that. Now many clients commission work only when they can’t find stock.
Stock and royalty-free sales, reprographic licensing, orphan works infringements: these are all part of the same rights picture.
They’re all efforts by opportunists to control our secondary rights. But unless artists come together as a market force, sooner or later the opportunists will win.
Two years ago we beat the odds. We stopped the Orphan Works Bill. We did it despite warnings from everyone that it couldn’t be done. We did it, but we had to rally like Minutemen in our nightshirts to the bridge at Concord. How many times can we keep doing that and expect to win?
The anti-copyright lobby didn’t go home when the last Congress adjourned. They’re a permanent presence in Washington. A copyright society – if properly funded – could give artists a permanent voice in Washington to protect and advance our rights. That’s why we started ASIP and that’s why I’ve signed the ASIP mandate myself.
The 12 groups that came together as ASIP include editorial, book and advertising artists, magazine and editorial cartoonists, medical and general science illustrators and architectural and aviation artists. It also includes regional arts organizations. These groups formed the nucleus of the 85 groups that united to fight orphan works.
Two years ago we showed what artists can do by coming together. Joining ASIP could be the first step of the next step toward protecting our rights in the Internet age.
On behalf of the board of ASIP, we invite you to join us.
– Brad Holland
For the Board of ASIP
Is it true that the Graphic Artists Guild has been collecting reprographic fees for years on behalf of artists in the U.S.?
If you're a professional artist, follow Mark's advice and sign the ASIP membership form. It's easy, free, and might even result in you getting a small check some day.
I've signed for my cartoons.
Stu Rees
stu@stus.com
Kuldeep,
If you are asking about our Hit Makers Summit, that is not a festival. It's a TV conference where we work with our members on the development, packaging and how to pitch their TV concepts.
Mark
hello sir
i am a student of animation doing from delhi (INDIA). i want to ask something for this great event. please send me a reply.
1. can student's can show their artwork in this festival.
2. is any charge will taken from student / if any how much..??
i will be very obliged to you if you send me the reply.
thanking you sir
kuldeep singh rathore
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