KopinorNews 2000-2

No. 2 Volume 4
Winter 2000
ISSN 1500-0729

Kopinor authorised to begin blanket licensing of digital copying

At the 29 November 2000 autumn General Meeting of Kopinor's Council of Representatives, it was decided that licensing of digital uses is a new area of operations for Kopinor.

Each of Kopinor's 21 member associations has one vote in the Council. The November decision of the Council entails that Kopinor shall offer licenses to users in regard of digital copying in libraries, educational institutions and for internal uses in other institutions and enterprises. The copying thus licensed must not take the form of a publishing venture.

Thorough organisational process
The decision marks the end of a two-year process. In May 1999 Kopinor's Board of Directors sent a memorandum on digital copying to the member associations. It also asked for a written response. 19 associations have concluded that they are in favour of Kopinor undertaking blanket licensing of digital copying and agreed to request of Parliament that an extended collective license for this purpose be included in the Copyright Act. These organisations are:

• The Norwegian Specialized Press Association
• The Norwegian Authors' Union
• The Norwegian Publishers' Association
• The Norwegian Association of Fine Arts Photographers
• GRAFILL (Norwegian Graphic Designers and Illustrators)
• The Norwegian Association of Professional Photographers
• The Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers' and Translators' Association
• The Norwegian Union of Journalists
• The Norwegian Society of Composers
• The Norwegian Critics' Association
• The Norwegian Music Publishers' Association
• The Norwegian Association of Literary Translators
• The Norwegian Magazine Publishers' Association
• Norwegian Writers for Children
• The Association of Norwegian Visual Artists
• Norwegian Playwrights' Association
• The Association of Norwegian Artisans
• NOPA (Norwegian Composers and Lyricists)
• "Ny Musikk" Composers' Group

Two associations gave different replies: The Association of Norwegian Editors favoured licensing by Kopinor, but has not taken a stand on possible legislative support, while The Norwegian Newspaper Publishers' Association was negative on both points. Norwegian newspaper publishers are presently conducting their own study on uses of newspaper material in digital form.

Pilot licenses of Norwegian material
The member associations have through their statutes been authorised by their individual members to license certain digital uses on a non-exclusive basis, and to further authorise Kopinor to undertake this task on their behalf.

Until changes have been made in the Copyright Law Kopinor will license uses of the works authorised by its members on a pilot basis only. Under Kopinor's structure and system, both the author side and the publisher side must agree before blanket licensing will be undertaken. For this reason, the licenses will, for the time being, not include material from the daily press.

A fundamental rule for Kopinor is - in the digital as well as in the reprographic field - that its licensing activities must not unduly compete with normal publishing activities.

What does Kopinor mean by "digital copying"?

Licensing Officer Hege Døssland has been heavily involved in the process leading up to the recent decisions in Kopinor.

(Photo: Jan Soederstrand)

- What does Kopinor understand with the expression "blanket licensing of digital copying"?

- With this expression we understand agreements with users, which give permission in advance to make copies, against a fee, of minor portions of publications for non-commercial, internal uses, for example in a company's intranet or in its digital archive. We assume that such agreements will have a lot in common with our present reprographic licenses, but we will of course have to find new ways to define use and payment for use.

- Who are making digital copies today?

- Kopinor is frequently being approached regarding digital uses by private businesses, governmental bodies and educational institutions. In all areas people see new possibilities for information exchange and training by using intranets, e-mail etc., and digital archives make information retrieval much easier. When we take into account that Norway is at the forefront internationally in employing digital technology, one can assume that we so far only have seen the tip of the iceberg. We assume that many users are copying copyright protected works without considering the legal aspects.

- Will Kopinor license Internet publishing?

- No, not through blanket licenses. Each individual rightsholder must decide in each case if he or she wishes to publish a work for the whole world, so to speak, on the web. Kopinor's Rights Clearance Service can, however, assist rightsholders and users with clearing rights for web use or any other use beyond what is permitted in our blanket licenses.

- Will your blanket licenses also include audio and audio-visual works?

- Kopinor is not authorised to deal with audio and audio-visual works. But we see that for example pupils and students are involved in creating multimedia projects using portions of pre-existing text, illustrations, photos, sound recordings of music as well as audio-visual works. It is therefore required that Kopinor in certain cases co-operate with other collective management organisations to find simple solutions to meet the needs of users. Norwegian CMO's are by the way already co-operating through the Clara Association in regard of information (see www.clara.no).

Reprographic Reproduction

Licensing dispute resolved

In previous newsletters we have reported in some detail about our negotiations since the Summer of 1999 with the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS) regarding a new agreement for copying within education and administration operated by local and regional governments. A complicating factor has been KS' demand that three agreements covering different types of uses, become one: The three areas are 1) Primary and secondary schools, 2) Municipal music and culture schools, and 3) Local and regional government administration. After four months of arbitration with the assistance of the National Arbitration Tribunal, a solution was reached on 14 November 2000.

No meter readings in schools
The most dramatic change is that approx. 4,000 primary and secondary schools no longer will have to report meter readings of their copying machines to Kopinor. Payment of remuneration will no longer be on the basis of a percentage of the total volume of copying, but by volume per pupil as indicated in the statistical surveys.

In our previous newsletter we reported on the data of our last school survey, which showed that 36.3 % of the total copying was of protected material according to the 1999 survey, a decrease from 38.9 % in the 1995 survey. The 1999 survey shows that 240 pages of copyright protected material is copied per pupil in primary schools and 457 pages per pupil in secondary schools. An overview of these and other survey results can be found on Kopinor's website.

Reduced remuneration per page
The new agreement allows Kopinor to dismantle its costly database for monitoring copying machines in schools, and will also allow reduced personnel and other costs. With this cost reduction, Kopinor could also agree to a reduced fee per page. The new fee per page for 2000 is NOK 0.31, down from NOK 0.32. The fee per transparency is NOK 19.00. Reduced volume and reduced remuneration will of course affect Kopinor's income the next few years. A new survey on copying in the local and regional government sector will be undertaken in 2003.

Joint panel on digital uses
According to the new agreement the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities and Kopinor will also set up a joint panel to study and find solutions to copyright issues in connection with digital storage and use of copyright protected material in schools and other sectors of local government.

Edited by J.W. Rudolph