Reproduction Rights Organisations (RROs) license reproduction of copyright-protected material whenever it is less advantageous for rightsholders to act individually.  RROs derive their authorisation from national legislation and/or from mandates with rightsholders.  Each year, national RROs license hundreds of thousands of users to copy from millions of titles published throughout the world.

There is a wide range of images or visual material contained within books, magazines, newspapers and journals in addition to the text.  Because visual material can be photocopied and/or scanned, it follows that the right to copy visual material should be included in reprographic licences and schemes.

Reprographic licences and schemes are designed to provide users with easy to use, convenient solutions which enable them to copy and/or scan portions of books, magazines, newspapers and journals legally.

The Irish Copyright Licensing Agency (ICLA) collects through blanket licences in the education and business sectors.  These blanket licences permit limited photocopying and scanning of copyright works for internal use.

The characteristics of the uses administered by ICLA are that the copying relates to :-

(i)         secondary uses; through

(ii)        multiple reproduction, making available and distribution of

(iii)       portions; of a

(iv)       large number of works; which have

(v)        already been published; involving a

(vi)       high number of creators and publishers; to

(vii)      a limited group of recipients.

The blanket licence for education is set out in Statutory Instrument 514 of 2002.

ICLA has a mandate from IVARO, which is the collecting society in Ireland representing visual creators.  The portion of the licence fee set aside for visual works is then given to IVARO to distribute through our REturn scheme.  This mandate permits photocopying, preparing slides, acetates and Power Point presentations, scanning, downloading from a secure intranet, printing out and the production of educational course packs.

It does not permit adapting, manipulating or altering a work, using a copy to substitute for an original art work, substituting commissioning of an original work or a licence of a primary reproduction or further commercial uses.