Distribution update
September 6, 2022
You can see the distribution schedule for July to December on our website here. It includes distributions for artwork licences, full-text databases and universities. The pool for the November universities distribution is likely to be similar to that for the June distribution due to the appeal by Universities Australia of aspects of the Copyright Tribunal’s determination in May this year (see here and here).
We have started reviewing the dataset for the June 2023 distribution of licence fees from schools. Surveys in schools remain paused while new methodologies for data collection are being resolved, with the assistance of the Copyright Tribunal (see here and here). We are continuing to work hard to get new data collection methodologies in place that harness modern technologies and minimise administrative burden for teachers.
The data will include information from past surveys of usage in schools, titles from high online questionnaires completed by teachers, and recently published books. Following the online questionnaire for teachers in 2021, we are currently re-running the process to collect information about books and digital products copied by teachers in the last year, and we are reviewing other potential sources of supplementary data.
We have updated our Distribution Policy (here), webpage on Fees (here) and webpage on Unpaid Allocations (here) to reflect a change in policy regarding unpaid allocations (rollovers). From 1 July 2022, we are adding unpaid allocations to distribution pools rather than using the funds to meet expenses (which had the effect of reducing deductions for anticipated operating costs). Each year a small proportion of total allocations remain unpaid. In 2020–21, 1.7% of allocations from 2016–17 remained unpaid. The main reasons that allocations remain unpaid are that we were unable to identify a rightsholder or contact an identified rightsholder with resources proportionate to the allocated amount, or that a contacted rightsholder did not become a member.