Copyright Review Commission Report - ICT Law and Regulation ...

agency, its rights being derived from individual mandates granted to it by its local and foreign principals (whoare the rights holders).9.1.3. DALRO was founded in 1967 with the objective of providing copyright protection and licensing services toauthors and publishers of literary, dramatic and dramatico-musical works. Originally, its main activity was thelicensing of dramatic and dramatico-musical works for stage and radio. It also hired out or sold rehearsal andperformance materials, such as scripts and musical scores. In response to appeals from the internationalcopyright community for the establishment of a reprographic reproduction organisation (RRO) to bring thephotocopying of copyright-protected works under licensed control, it established its Reprographic RightsLicensing Division in 1993. This division produces the major part of DALRO's income, viz 88% to 92%, while thedramatic and dramatico-musical licensing division produces the remaining 8% to 12 %.9.1.4. In a written submission to the CRC (from which most of the information contained in this section of the report isderived), DALRO representatives described the 'core function' of the Reprographic Rights Division as being thelicensing of the reproduction of extracts from books and articles from journals and magazines on behalf of localand foreign rights holders. There is a great need for this service in the Higher Education (HE) sector, wherestudy material is compiled and disseminated to students by way of course packs and handouts or institutionalIntranets or electronic reserves. All public HE institutions have obtained licences from DALRO to provide theirstudents with supplementary study materials reproduced in terms of blanket (i.e. pre-authorised) or transactional(i.e. pay as you copy) licences.9.2 FUCNTIONING OF DALRO AS A COPYRIGHT LICENSING AGENT9.2.1. In order to provide these licences, DALRO has acquired mandates from all major South African publishers,especially those which publish for the academic, scholarly and FET sectors, as well as a growing number ofnewspaper publishers. It is thus able to offer educational institutions licensed access to what it describes as “anear-inclusive repertoire of copyright-protected works”. It is also a full member of the International Federation ofReproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), as a result of which it is a member of an international network ofRROs and has entered into agreements of reciprocal representation with 24 foreign RROs, includingorganisations in the UK, the US, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America,Kenya and Zimbabwe. These agreements duly mandate DALRO to grant licences for reproduction from books,journals, magazines and, in many instances, newspapers published in the countries in which the RROs withwhich it has agreements operate.9.2.2. The blanket licences issued by DALRO involve the granting of permission to make copies from works in therepertoire administered by DALRO in return for an upfront payment, followed by retrospective reporting by thelicensee on copies made. By arrangement with DALRO's foreign associates and the rights holders, blanketlicences are available to institutions in the public HE sector with what DALRO describes as “a proven record ofcopyright compliance through transactional licensing and with the requisite infrastructure to support and sustainfull reporting on institutional copying”. The blanket licence tariff, which was negotiated with the HE institutions incollaboration with the Department of Education in 1999, is annually adjusted for inflation and is currently R88,65(plus VAT) per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at a university and R66,47 (plus VAT) at a university oftechnology.- 68 -