From: John Cox <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:21:31 +0100

The answer to Kevin Smith's question may lie in the way the particular
'national copyright organization', has been established.  Incidentally, it
is more precisely described as a 'Reproduction Rights Organisation' (RRO).
There are nearly 90 RROs in the world, mostly one per country, members of an
international network that collect fees from copyright users and pays fees
to the rightsholder or RRO representing the copyright holder.  Each RRO is
different, as it has been established in its particular country's
circumstances. IFRRO acts as a network, facilitating rights payments on a
reciprocal basis between its member RROs: see www.ifrro.org.

In the USA the RRO is CCC, a non-profit organization that operates a series
of licences enabling libraries, corporations, government departments etc to
copy material that falls outside fair use, and pay the fees generated to the
rights holders.  It pays US-based rightholders directly, and pays fees due
to foreign rightsholders to the RRO in the country where the rightholder is
based.

In the UK, the RRO is the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA).  CLA is owned
jointly by authors and publishers, via the Authors' Licensing & Collecting
Society (ALCS) and the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) respectively.  CLA
revenues are distributed between ALCS, PLS, DACS (which represents artists
and desigers) and the international RROs.

The book publishing contract Kevin Smith refers to may have its origin with
a UK publisher, because CLA distributes monies to the author, via ALCS, as
well as the publisher via PLS.  It also assumes that the author retains
copyright in his/her work, rather than assigning it to the publisher.

Lest you get too excited about this, let me tell you that as an author I
receive a very (very) modest payment from ALCS each year, on which I pay
income tax, and as a publisher, albeit retired but still in touch, the
payments from PLS representing all the RRO revenue worldwide, was nice to
have but insignificant as a percentage of overall revenue.


John Cox
Rookwood, Bradden
Towcester NN12 8ED
United Kingdom
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----

From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 19:07:00 +0000

I have been busy recently helping various faculty authors review publication
contracts, and I ran across a clause recently that prompts this question.

In a book publishing agreement from a major publishing house, the last
paragraph of the section on royalties said this:

"Any publisher's proceeds from rights managed by national copyright
organizations. are the sole property of [name of publisher].  Any such
author's proceeds are the sole property of Author."  The clause went on to
say that the author is responsible for taxes on this income and that this
provision had precedence over any other royalty arrangement.

On its face this seems like a very reasonable provision.  I am not sure why
I have not noticed similar clauses before in other contracts; it may just be
my own inattention.  But it raised the question for me (and the author!) of
how the publisher's proceeds and the author's proceeds are determined.  I
presume, but do not know, that this division is specified in the contract
between a publisher and an organization like the Copyright Clearance Center
(who are specifically mentioned as an example of a national rights
organization).  If that is the case, the author clearly has no say in the
division of royalties, but I wonder if s/he has any way to even know what
that division is.

Can anyone clarify for me how or where the publisher and author proportions
of licensing income are decided, and if authors have any way to inquire into
that determination?

Thanks for your help,

Kevin

By the way, this contract is very clear and direct about the division of
licensing income if the publisher licenses directly, which is one reason
that the cryptic phrasing of this provision about licensing through a
collective rights organization caught my eye.

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.

Director, Copyright and Scholarly Communication Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC  27708 [log in to unmask]