reprographics coalition
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POSTED 17TH JANUARY 2008
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American Society of Illustrators Partnership (ASIP)
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POSTED OCTOBER 2004
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OCTOBER 1, 2004 Several professional illustrators' groups have banded together as a coalition to investigate how visual artists are represented in the distribution of reprographics royalties in the U.S. and abroad, and to explore the possibility of using these existing funds to create a licensing and collecting society for American illustrators.
The groups in this Coalition are (in order of their founding):
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- The Society of Illustrators- founded 1901 (1,000 members worldwide)
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- The Association of Medical Illustrators- founded 1945 (800 members)
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- The National Cartoonists Society- founded 1946 (600 members)
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- The American Society of Architectual Illustrators- founded 1986 (400 members)
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- The Illustrators' Partnership of America- founded 2000 (300 members)
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The goal of this coalition is to explore the possibility of collecting and pooling artists' reprographic fees which are currently being lost, dissipated or escrowed and, if possible, to use the money to create a collective rights administration to return reproduction royalties to illustrators.
Reprographic Rights Organizations (RROs) already return royalties to illustrators in countries such as Canada, Sweden and Australia. These have been paid to them by organizations and institutions for the right to photocopy or digitally republish previously published material anywhere in the world. Reprographic royalties may derive from articles, cartoons, illustrations, photographs, maps, charts, etc. in various published media.
In the U.S., the Copyright Clearance Center currently collects over 100 million dollars a year in reprographics fees. The CCC is unable to track illustration usage to determine how much of that money should be returned to artists. The goal of a collecting society would be to implement the technology necessary to track that usage and create a mechanism for returning it to rightsholders. The Reprographics Coalition made its first contact with the CCC May 19, 2004 and over the summer began preliminary discussions with that organization to discuss ways in which illustrators may register as authors.
The subject of reprographic rights is fairly new to most American Illustrators. It was one of several issues brought to our attention by attorney Bruce Lehman in his keynote speech at the first Illustrators' Conference in 1999. Bruce Lehman is a former U.S. Commissioner of Patents & Trademarks and was principal legal advisor to the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives during the drafting of the 1976 Copyright Act. In 1994, the National Law Journal named Lehman its "Lawyer of the Year" and in 1997 the National Journal named him one of the 100 most influential men and women in Washington, observing, "In today's Information Age, the issue of intellectual property rights is no longer an arcane concern, but a vital part of U.S. trade policy." Bruce Lehman is a Founding Board member of the Illustrators' Partnership.
The members of this Reprographics Coalition include over 2,500 of the most prolific and widely published cartoonists and illustrators in the world. Their pictures illustrate a wide spectrum of general and special interest publications. The majority are independent contractors and have reserved reproduction rights on a substantial body of their published work. By banding together, the officers of these organizations hope to end the isolation that has brought disarray to the tracking and collection of these royalties in the past.
Over the last four years, representatives of the Illustrators' Partnership (IPA) and the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) have laid the groundwork for this coalition by meeting with the heads of certain foreign RROs and the Chairman of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO). These inquiries have made it clear that most foreign collecting societies will be unsure of how to return royalties to American illustrators until there is unity in the U.S. among the various groups representing the interests of artists. The IPA is now an Associate Member of IFRRO, and as such, is prepared to serve as a template for an official coalition group by gradually replacing members of its current board with representatives from each of the Coalition organizations.
For the moment, the Reprographics Coalition is a working group. Other professional organizations representing published illustrators are welcome to join. The sentiment of the Coalition is expressed by Anne Altemus, Ex-Officio, and Gary Schnitz, Immediate Past President of the Association of Medical Illustrators:
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"The AMI is pleased with the ongoing efforts of the IPA, and supports the coalition to represent America's leading artists, cartoonists illustrators, administrators and others whose goal is the creation of a licensing and collection society for the reprographic royalties for American illustrators."
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And Frank Costantino, Co-Founder of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators, speaks for his organization: "ASAI is pleased to announce its association with IPA in this initiative and its enormous efforts to move it forward."
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Cynthia Turner and Brad Holland, speaking for the IPA, stress that this is an untried and uncertain venture: "Certain patterns have already been established in the marketplace over the last two decades which have not acknowledged artists' rights. These patterns may be difficult to reverse. Initial inquiries by the IPA suggest there may be significant amounts of money available for creating a collective rights administration, but unless we make a unified effort, we're unlikely to find out for sure. The challenge for artists will be to display the collective will to unite and find the means to implement a system to track usage. We hope this coalition will be able to play a role in seeing that artists are properly represented in this emerging source of income."
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