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| rightsholders > royalty distribution
What are the guidelines for distribution of royalties?
Distribution policies are set by Access Copyright's Board of Directors, and reflect these underlying principles:
- Distribution should be tied to usage. Licence fees should be collected and distributed in a way that reflects what has actually been copied. The problem is that it isn't always feasible to gather full details of every instance of copying. When full usage records are not available, data should be gathered in a way that reflects this principle as far as is reasonable, and royalties should be distributed accordingly.
- The ratio of the cost of distribution (including the data collection process) to the amount being distributed should be reasonable. When the amount of royalties being collected is relatively small, lower cost methods of data collection and distribution of royalties will be chosen.
- Foreign rightsholders must enjoy the same rights as domestic rightsholders. This basic principle of national treatment is a tenet of international copyright treaties and is upheld by most copyright laws and collectives world-wide, including by Access Copyright.
Who gets royalties?
Generally speaking, copyright owners whose works have been copied receive royalties. Access Copyright determines what has been copied through a variety of means (for more on this, see below). As well, each year we receive royalties that can't be attributed to specific copyright owners. Access Copyright endeavours to distribute these royalties appropriately by devising models which take into account relevant factors, including the likelihood of works being copied that have been made available for copying by our affiliates. Most Access Copyright affiliates receive payments from us each year.
When are royalties distributed?
Royalties collected in one fiscal year are generally distributed the following year.
How are royalties divided between publishers and creators?
Where royalties cannot be specifically attributed to a copyright owner, the Access Copyright Board of Directors has established default divisions of royalties based on industry standards and the type of publication in which the work appeared:
| Type of publication | Creator % | Publisher % |
| Newspaper - contributed by freelance creator | 100 | 0 |
| Newspaper - other | 0 | 100 |
| Scholarly periodicals - copyright assigned by creator | 0 | 100 |
| Other periodicals (magazines) | 65 | 35 |
| Trade books (in-print) | 60 | 40 |
| Educational books (in-print) | 50 | 50 |
| Out-of-print books - rights revert to creator | 100 | 0 |
| Any other works | 50 | 50 |
Royalties for publishers distributed directly to them. Royalties for affiliated creators are distributed directly to them, while royalties for non-affiliate creators are distributed to their publishers for further processing.
Where do I get more information?
For more information on distribution, contact our Membership Department at 1-800-893-5777 (or 416-868-1620 in Metro Toronto), or e-mail affiliates@accesscopyright.ca
What are the methods of distribution?
Four methods for gathering data and distributing royalties have been developed, with each reflecting a balance of two of the guiding principles of copyright royalty distribution: actual usage balanced against the cost and practicality of collecting data on usage. Variants on these models are used world-wide. Data collection can be costly and time-consuming for licensees, and so the method of data collection is negotiated as part of the licensing agreement, with ease of implementation a significant factor.
- Full-reporting
How it works: Licensees submit full bibliographic information for the works copied, including the number of pages copied. Payments are made to those rightsholders appearing in the reports.
In which licence sector is this method used?
- post-secondary Part B (copies for resale, e.g. coursepacks)
- copyshops licensed to prepare and sell coursepacks
- media monitoring
- document delivery
- transactional licences (one-time permissions)
- Sampling
How it works: All copying by a sample group representing a particular sector is recorded for a predetermined period of time. Those rightsholders appearing in the bibliographic sample receive payment.
In which licence sector is this method used: primary-secondary schools.
- Modelling
How it works: In cases where no usage data can be used to base the distribution on, but the royalties collected are significant, distribution is based on alternate data that may reasonably be expected to reflect copying. For example, library holdings, subscriptions or publishers' sales figures may all be good indicators of works that are available to be copied. Those rightsholders whose works appear in the model data receive payment.
In which licence sector is this method used?
- federal government
- provincial governments
- post-secondary Part A (not for sale)
- corporations and non-profit organizations
- public libraries.
- Repertoire
How it works: Royalties are divided into a creators' portion and a publishers' portion and divided among all those rightsholders who were affiliates of Access Copyright for the full year during which the royalties were collected, according to formulae approved by the Board of Directors.
When is this method used?
- incomplete sampling or full-reporting records
- royalties that have been refused
- licences where no bibliographic data is collected and for which no alternate data can be found.
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types of licences
