Copyright Agency collects licence fees for the reuse of text and images and distributes these as copyright royalty payments to our creator members.
We manage the Statutory Education copyright scheme, the Commonwealth, State and Territory Statutory Government copying schemes, the Resale Royalty scheme for visual artists, and the special provisions for institutions assisting people with print disabilities – all by appointment by the Government or by the Copyright Tribunal.
Our near 40,000 members are made up of authors, journalists, publishers, visual artists, and surveyors.
In addition, we issue licences to commercial business across sectors like Banking & Finance, Energy, Property and Media Monitoring Organisations and manage end-to-end Visual Arts Licences and return these licence fees to our creator members too.
We also have agreements with International Affiliates to license the use of foreign content in Australia, and collect licence fees for Australian content used overseas.
Find out more about Our Heritage.
We are responsible to:
- the Commonwealth Minister for Communications and the Arts under our appointments to manage the ‘statutory’ licences for education and government, and the artists’ resale royalty scheme. (See Declaration by the Attorney-General)
- our members under the Corporations Act.
- people for whom we hold licence fees under trust obligations.
In addition:
- the Copyright Tribunal can review licence fees and other licence terms.
- we report annually to the Code Reviewer (a former Federal Court judge) on our compliance with the Collecting Societies Code of Conduct.
what we don’t do
- contact APRA|AMCOS if you want to copy, record, perform or play someone else’s music in public, and PPCA (as well) if you want to play recorded music in public
- contact Screenrights if you are an educational institution that records broadcasts for education, or a creator whose work has been broadcast
- we can’t give you legal advice, but you may be able to get advice from Australian Society of Authors (ASA) if you are a member of the ASA, or the The Australian Copyright Council.