KopinorNews 1999-1

Kopinor News No. 1
Volume 3 Spring 1999
ISSN 1500-0729

KOPINOR'S CHAIR HELGE RØNNING:

"A busy and exciting year"

One year ago Helge Rønning was elected to chair Kopinor's Board of Directors, replacing Trygve Moe. On 14 April he was reelected for another term. He is a former chairman of the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers' and Translators' Association, and works as professor at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo. He is also one of Norway's foremost experts on Africa, and travels extensively on that continent. He has lived both in Zimbabwe and more recently in Mozambique.

- This past year has been busy as well as exciting. We have been planning for the future, and our document on Aims and Strategies of Kopinor has been thoroughly revised. Some 2/3rds of reprographic reproduction in Norway has now been licensed, and maintaining and renegotiating agreements with users is now a main task. Our agreement for universities and colleges has been renegotiated, to mention one example, and we finally resolved the issue of reprography in the Church of Norway, says Rønning.

- We have also made progress in the area of bilateral agreements with other RROs. In the near future we hope to have such an agreement in place with our friends in Sweden, after many, many years of complex negotiations. Furthermore, several Type B agreements have or will be replaced with Type A agreements.

The Challenge of Digital Uses
- Kopinor's Board of Directors has also confronted the challenges of licensing digital uses head-on. Our 21 member organisations are being invited to take part in broad deliberations on these issues in the coming months, based on a forty-page memorandum. When summer is over we will chart out our future course of action, concludes Rønning.

THE 1998 RESULTS: NOK 159.6 million

1998 Annual Report and Accounts approved by AGM on 14 April 1999

The report shows that Kopinor's revenues in 1998, including financial income, totalled NOK 159.6 m (US $ 21.1 m). This is an increase from the previous year of NOK 16.7 m ($ 2.2 m). Licensing revenues alone increased by 11.7 %.

Operating costs in 1998 were 9.8 %, down from 11.3 % in 1997. Rightsholders in Norway and abroad were paid remuneration of NOK 115.4 m ($ 15.2 m) in 1998. Kopinor maintains its staff at 23.

Income per Capita
With a population of 4.3 m, collections per capita for reprographic licensing in Norway reached NOK 37,12 or US $ 4.88 (at the exchange rate of 31 December 1998 of NOK 7,60 to the Dollar.)

LICENSING OF CHURCHES INTENSIFIED

Nine Denominations covered by Agreement

After the agreement on copying in the Church of Norway (the Lutheran State Church) was concluded on 22 December 1998, negotiations on an agreement with The Council of Free Churches in Norway could begin. The council represents nine denominations, including the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Salvation Army and the Pentecostal Church.

On 18 March 1999 the council and Kopinor signed the licensing agreement. The nine denominations represented by the council have a total of 800 congregations and numerous institutions which can come under the agreement by notifying the council.

The solution is flexible and takes into account that the denominations have varying structures. The fee per copy-page is NOK 0.454 (6 US Cents), but 15 times that sum for sheet music, and 100 times as much for overhead transparencies. The number of copies to be paid for will be determined by a statistical survey still to be conducted.

Kopinor is now making efforts to license the Catholic Church and other churches and religious organisations. Christian Copyright Licensing International has established itself in the Nordic countries, and is offering Kopinor interesting competition in the church sector.

THE INTRANET EXPLOSION:

57 % of Norwegian Corporations will soon have Intranets

In September 1997, and again in October 1998, the Markeds- og Mediainstituttet A/S, a Norwegian polling institute, conducted a survey among approx. 630 CEOs of major Norwegian business corporations. One aim was to enquire into their knowledge of copyright and the activities of Kopinor. An interesting result was that 58 % held the view that rightsholders are entitled to remuneration when their works are photocopied (up from 53 % in 1997).

Another aim was to chart the use of closed networks based on web-technology for internal dissemination of information, so-called intranets. Such networks may also use the Internet as a backbone.

29 % have already established intranets, an increase from 18 % a year ago. Another 28 % are planning to establish intranets in 1999 or soon thereafter.

Kopinor is increasingly coming across businesses that post published material on their intranet sites. Only a few have so far come to Kopinor requesting licenses for such activities.

NEW GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS ON:

Electronic Archives

On 1 January 1999 new regulations on public archives came into effect. According to the regulations all government authorities on national, regional and local levels may exchange their paper archives with electronic archives. This applies to government owned institutions as well (including publicly owned schools and universities). The regulations have been issued by the Ministry of Culture, which also happens to be responsible for copyright matters. Ironically, the regulations do not clarify that it is a violation of the copyright law to scan and store published material, unless rightsholders have granted permission.

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Nigeria: In December 1998 a Kopinor delegation consisting of Trond Andreassen, Rolf Egil Moe and John-Willy Rudolph visited Nigeria. They attended meetings with authors' and publishers' associations, government officials and the interim board of REPRONIG, The Nigerian Reprographic and Print Rights Organisation. In March 1999 Dr Wale Okediran, the General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), spent a week in Norway acquainting himself with Norwegian authors' associations and the operations of Kopinor.
• Spain:John-Willy Rudolph, the Executive Director of Kopinor, participated in a seminar organised for rightsholders by the Spanish reproduction rights organisation CEDRO in February. He shared information about how reprographic remuneration is distributed to rightsholders in Norway. Colleagues from the United Kingdom and Germany shared similar information.
• Francophone Africa: In February Kopinor's Director of Licensing, Hans-Petter Fuglerud, attended as a speaker a regional IFRRO/ WIPO seminar on management of reprographic rights for representatives from 15 Francophone African countries in Lomé, Togo.
• SADC: In March Kopinor's chair Helge Rønning spoke at a two-day copyright workshop conducted for member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Maputo, Mozambique. One aim of the workshop, which was sponsored by IFRRO, Kopinor and UNESCO, was harmonisation and modernisation of copyright legislation.

30 April 1999
Edited by J.W. Rudolph/M. Yvenes