YEARS OF STANDING UP FOR AUSTRALIAN CREATORS

HELEN O’NEILL

2014 marks 40 years since the Copyright Agency was formed.

40 Years Of Standing Up For Australian Creators, written by Helen O’Neill,

documents the changes, successes and challenges in the decade since

2004. It is a companion document to Realising the Vision: A History of

Copyright Agency Limited 1974-2004, written by Peter Meredith.

© Copyright Agency 2014

www.copyright.com.au

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2004-2014 Capturing the digital landscape ....................4A new Chair ..............................................................................5Electronic monitoring .............................................................5New premises, new leadership ...........................................6The case for surveyors ..........................................................8The Cultural Fund ....................................................................9Reading Australia .................................................................. 10LearningField ........................................................................... 11RightsPortal ..............................................................................13Improvements in sourcing data ..........................................13Resale royalty right for artists ..............................................14Viscopy Services Agreement ............................................. 15John Fries Award .................................................................. 16International developments .................................................17New leadership in 2014 ........................................................17

Foreword

In 1974, the Australian creative arts industry was beginning to bloom, yet authors’ and artists’ rights weren’t being protected and their work was being copied frequently without permission. The Copyright Agency was formed to stand up for creators and ensure respect for their work.

Its early founders, Gus O’Donnell, Peter Banki and David Catterns, were forced to litigate for a decade to ensure creators’ rights were respected. With the leadership of the first CEO, Michael Fraser, they built the organisation into a critical and highly trustworthy part of the landscape. It is no coincidence that Australia today has a robust and innovative educational publishing and writing community.

Yet in 2014, 40 years later, the fight for creators’ rights remains as pressing as ever. The digital era has brought an even greater set of challenges and so the Copyright Agency has adapted and expanded, rising to the new landscape with, as always, the cause of creators at its core.

Sandy GrantChair

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Copyright Agency’s first CEO Michael Fraser

2004-2014 Capturing the digital landscapeIn 2004, Copyright Agency Limited, now known simply as the Copyright Agency, turned 30, and it celebrated with delight and determination. Despite the battles won and milestones achieved for Australia’s creators, the copyright landscape continued to transform profoundly. There remained much to be done.

The Copyright Agency’s 2003-2004 financial year results had once again proved impressive. Its record 7,970 direct

members, comprised of 5,228 authors and 2,742 publishers, represented an increase of 15 per cent from the previous year. Annual revenue had jumped 20 per cent to around $67 million as the higher rates set by the Copyright Tribunal for copying works such as short stories, poems and dramatic works in schools flowed in.

CEO Michael Fraser used the annual report to single out a 40 per cent hike in digital rights management of online communication, with payments for electronic copying and communication under the licences with universities. Member payments were up 52 per cent as distribution went from $32 million to $45.4 million.

Yet there was no time for complacency. Within Australia and overseas, evidence mounted that rates of print copying outside the schools sector was either plateauing or decreasing as users embraced digital methods of replicating works.

Challenges from other quarters threatened to strip away hard-fought gains and the stakes appeared to be escalating, as the potential of intellectual property became recognised as never before.

‘COPYRIGHT IS A HUMAN RIGHT.

AN AUTHOR WHO CANNOT LIVE BY THEIR WORK IS SILENCED, IS IMPRISONED.’

MICHAEL FRASER

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A new Chair‘It was a watershed for copyright stakeholders in Australia when, during the political debate on the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, intellectual property issues took centre stage,’ wrote incoming chairman Brian Johns in his 2004 ‘Chair’s Review’.

The Copyright Agency was also experiencing something of a watershed at board level with the retirement of two long-serving board members, former chairman and publisher Michael Webster and author Dale Spender, the outgoing chair.

Brian, an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology, brought to the chair a unique spectrum of expertise. A former Penguin Books director, he had been managing director of both the ABC and SBS, and chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

‘Normally the chairman was author, publisher, author, publisher – I was the first chair to be independent,’ he said. Considering the bitter struggles between authors and publishers that had characterised episodes of the Copyright Agency’s history, Brian judged his appointment emblematic of a strategic entente cordiale.

‘Authors’ perspectives come forward because we need them, publishers’ perspectives because we need them, but it’s not divided,’ he said. ‘Important … in terms of mediating change, being a catalyst for it or doing it ourselves, because we are working to an industry, collectively.’

Political pressures intensified as the Government raised the spectre of changes

to Australian copyright law. Socially, the powerful trends of downloading, digital copying, aggregation and distribution continued apace.

Electronic monitoringAddressing the change in behaviour involved adding digital monitoring systems to the existing monitoring of photocopying; engaging in discussions over rates, and developing systems for commercial copyright users.

The Copyright Agency launched an Electronic Use System (EUS) to monitor the

Director and former Chair (04-09) Brian Johns

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copying and communication of copyright works. Automation brought efficiency, speeding up the process of dealing with ever-increasing volumes of data, reducing the reporting burden on the Copyright Agency’s clients, and cutting costs.

The first EUS payment distributions took place during 2004-2005 and resulted in authors, visual artists and publisher members receiving almost $5 million for the electronic use of their works in educational institutions.

That financial year, the Copyright Agency had 33 data collection schemes in place, had spot surveyed 326 institutions and had processed a record 19 million copied pages.

New premises, new leadershipOn 1 October 2005, the Copyright Agency transformed physically by moving to new offices in 233 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, and taking over two floors, Level 14 and Level 15. The relocation provided additional space for events and meetings, and more room for more staff as the organisation’s processing capabilities continued to increase.

Within the Copyright Agency competing views emerged about how best to protect its core vision, reach out to members and users, and develop strategies to protect copyright in the fast-moving digital terrain.

During 2007, Michael Fraser resigned as Chief Executive Officer after two decades at the helm. The Board named Jim Alexander, who had joined the Copyright Agency one year earlier as General Manager, as its new acting CEO.

General Manager, Caroline Morgan described the leadership baton-change as a challenging time.

Michael’s prescience had served the Copyright Agency well, she said, citing conversations as far back as the mid-1990s in which he identified the importance of ‘the communication right rather than copying … globalisation … changes to the copyright system … tagging and tracking.The organisation would not have achieved what is has achieved without him.’

Michael said he walked away with a considerable sense of pride. He had become the Copyright Agency’s sole employee with the mistaken belief that convincing universities and schools of

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‘the enlightened self-interest of making sure that intellectual property was highly valued’ would take two or three years.

‘I thought …they would enthusiastically pay for their copying. This was not the case, their short-term business interests were the driving force for them, and we had to establish [legal] precedents.

‘It was, from day-to-day, a tremendous, on-rushing experiment in managing unexpected technological tidal waves … a process of constant reinvention’, he said, adding ‘what an honour and privilege it was to work with … such dedicated creative people of great vision and integrity.

‘The teamwork, the collegiality, the brilliance of ideas [and] the commitment that so many colleagues had to the Copyright Agency – it was a great delight.’

Jim Alexander took the reins having had an association with the organisation for many years. A former CEO of market research companies, he had designed Copyright Agency’s original, hard copy survey sample system in 1989, and long acted as a consultant.

‘Coming inside’ as he put it, opened his eyes to the complexity and sophistication of the Copyright Agency’s operations, and the need for an expensive system upgrade.

Within the broader community, the

emergence of the Creative Commons copyright-sharing regime exemplified ‘a new focus, a new aggression around user rights, rather that creators’ rights,’ said Jim. He described this as ‘a “flip”, at policy level, in government and in local activist level, fuelled by the people with a vested interest in getting stuff for free – the global aggregators like Google and others.’

This change to public thinking would prove influential and damaging, normalising online piracy among the general population and ‘making our position more precarious, to say nothing about that of creators,’ he said of the ongoing challenge to respond at policy level.

As Michael had, so Jim joined the board of international rights organisation IFFRO to add his weight to the Copyright Agency’s international voice.

Jim’s appointment was accompanied by a change at the Copyright Agency’s executive level. Board member and future chair Sandy Grant credited Brian Johns with being a ‘transformative’ chairman who ‘redirected the organisation’.

This new dynamic was ‘a more traditional relationship between management and the board,’ said Sandy, ‘[With] Brian being much more active in strategic leadership, management was sharing their progress towards their strategies in a more traditional, corporate way.’

Others would characterise the years that followed as bringing in a focus on building trust with potential business partners, ensuring transparency of process, and moving away from the litigious battles of the past. One test case, however, was still rolling.

General Manager, Caroline Morgan

CEO 2007-2013, Jim Alexander

Chair, Sandy Grant

‘COPYRIGHT AGENCY HELPS KEEP THE PRACTITIONERS DOING THEIR JOB AND THEIR JOB IS MORE THAN

JUST SCRIBBLING STORIES, IT IS ABOUT CREATING AUSTRALIA.’

ANGELO LOUKAKIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASA

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The case for surveyors In 1997, the surveying industry approached the Copyright Agency with concerns that the Government was commercialising their material without recognising their creative rights.

In 2003, the Copyright Agency’s negotiations stalled and it filed in the Copyright Tribunal.

‘We all thought it was going to be … a simple rates case,’ said Senior Solicitor Melissa Willan of legal proceedings that slowly moved from the Copyright Tribunal to the full Federal Court, the High Court and back to the Tribunal.

‘It was like a snakes and ladders game.

‘We didn’t think that it would result in so many questions of law.’

One of those questions, an implied licence issue about whether the government could do what it liked with a surveyor’s plan, propelled proceedings to the highest court in the land when, upon losing the implied licence argument in the Federal Court, the Copyright Agency appealed to the High Court.

‘It was about fundamental recognition … it was exhausting but the surveyors were amazing,’ Melissa said, singling out Pat MacNamara who had been appointed to liaise with the Copyright Agency by Surveyors NSW as ‘tireless’.

On 6 August 2008, the Copyright Agency’s external lawyer phoned to relay the High Court’s decision. The State of New South Wales was not entitled to use surveyors’ plans without fairly remunerating copyright owners. The Copyright Agency and the surveyors had won.

It would take another six years for proceedings to end in the Copyright Tribunal and NSW to make its first back-payment in July 2014: $2.25 million for 10 years’ worth of copying. Caroline Morgan wryly compared the saga to Jarndyce v Jarndyce, the interminable lawsuit immortalized by Charles Dickens in Bleak House.

The win enabled the Copyright Agency to establish a new scheme for distributing to surveyors.

‘What surveyors were doing in getting recognition for their work was like what architects did 20 years before that,’ said Melissa of the litigation’s significance. ‘Nobody doubts that an architect’s design

Pat MacNamara of Surveyors NSW

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plan has copyright and now nobody will doubt that a surveyor’s plan is the same.’

In Caroline’s mind the fight could not have been more fitting.

‘People think of [surveyors] as being quite different from our traditional members like authors and publishers [but] they are exactly the same, they have copyrights and they were challenging a big government agency that would not recognise their copyrights,’ she said.

‘That is no different to the situation that we found ourselves in right at the beginning.’

The Cultural FundOne activity that would change was the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

In 2004 the fund, comprising 1 per cent of the Copyright Agency’s revenue and directed primarily towards copyright research, had no dedicated staff member looking after it. In 2006 the board decided to take a more structured approach.

Copyright research should be supported by core funding, the thinking went, because the Cultural Fund had the potential to engage with Australia’s creative community in a fashion that was much more direct. Susan Hayes, as fund manager, brought in some structure, set formal application deadlines and oversaw a portion being set aside for professional skills development.

Zoë Rodriguez took over from Susan in 2008. Brian Johns told her that ‘without the Cultural Fund we’re about as sexy as the Tax Office’ and that it should

increase to 1.5 per cent. That could only be achieved by a voted amendment to the Copyright Agency’s constitution, so Zoë lobbied members to attend the 2010 AGM, explaining: ‘Yes, you get half a cent less in every dollar we distribute but half a cent more in every dollar we collect goes towards the Cultural Fund and things that will benefit the whole industry.’

Jim told her ‘Get ready for disappointment,’ recalled Zoë. ‘I said, “Get ready to be really surprised”.

‘It’s the only AGM we’ve had standing room only … There was a standing ovation when it came through [from] publishers, authors, artists. It was a fantastic moment.’

This was, some would say, a demonstration of the cultural mission underpinning the Copyright Agency.

Advertising the fund boosted application rates and spread the word among artists as well as author and publishers

Cultural Fund Manager Zoë Rodriguez addressing the 2010 AGM where members voted for an increase in revenue to the fund.

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because a substantial amount of the Copyright Agency’s revenue came from the use of visual artworks and the feeling was, according to Zoë, ‘we should be giving back to that part of the creative community’.

By 2014, the fund was supporting around 100 different projects a year and directing an annual $150,000 into the Career Fund to provide grants of up to $5,000 to individuals in the creative industries wanting to develop their professional skills. Grants ranged from the small scale and individual to heftier industry-directed initiatives such as Australian Publishers Association internships and Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance training, residencies and exchange programs and ongoing support for prizes celebrating creative excellence.

‘We know that writers are some of the least-rewarded members of the community,’ Jim Alexander told the Courier Mail in 2012 as the Cultural Fund gave $20,000 to the Queensland Literary Award, the volunteer-led prize that replaced the abolished Queensland Premier’s Awards.

‘We have provided our support this year in the hope that the Queensland Government will reconsider their support for major literary awards.’

Brian would express satisfaction that since the Cultural Fund’s decision to support the Miles Franklin Award with the proviso that money be given to short-listed authors, some other major Australian literary awards had started doing the same.

‘These strategic things help the community but they also help us, because they keep us involved and the organisation keeps realising what it is about,’ he said.

Reading AustraliaThe largest grant would go to a scheme called Reading Australia, an in-house initiative that stemmed from a visit by the Copyright Agency’s representatives, including Brian, to the National Library for a briefing on its collection digitisation scheme. The trip coincided with a national debate about the paucity of Australian literature studied in schools.

‘I thought ‘What?’ We went through this in the ’50s and ’60s when we were struggling to get Australian literature studied in universities,’ said Brian. ‘Sure enough when we looked into it, Australian literature was having trouble being placed.’

The Copyright Agency turned to the Australian Society of Authors Council, a team including Gavin Souter and Frank Moorhouse, to suggest an initial book list which would mark a starting point rather than a literary canon. The resulting list covered work for students of different age groups and broad categories of literature from poetry, drama and novels to historical touchstones such as Ned Kelly’s 1879 Jerilderie Letter.

The Copyright Agency formed an educational steering group to develop the concept further, and surveyed teachers to discover what was stopping them bringing Australian literature into their classrooms.

Writer Andrew Upton presents writer Angela Betzien with the Cultural Fund-sponsored 2008 Richard Wherrett Playwriting Award at the AWGIEs.

‘WE MUST NOT BE

COMPLACENT ABOUT THE STATUTORY

LICENCE.’ COPYRIGHT AGENCY’S

GENERAL COUNSEL, KAREN PITT

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The broad answer was lack of resources, and the timing fortuitous in terms of the national curriculum’s development.

Reading Australia – Copyright Agency’s online, one-stop, Australian literature site providing the curated range of works and associated teaching material – went live in late 2013. It made significant Australian literature easily accessible to schools, and including an expanding array of support material and specially commissioned literary essays. Teacher feedback indicated the essays not just valuable teaching tools but engaging examples for students on how to structure an essay.

The Copyright Agency continued to develop key educational initiatives. In 2010 it expanded its Master Copy Catalogue, a free service for the visually impaired, into a searchable database

available to institutions covered by the print disability statutory licence, a list which would go, alphabetically, from the ACT Department of Education and Training Vision Resource Centre to Wodonga’s Institute of TAFE.

May 2011 brought the Australian Poetry Library, an online archive of more than 42,000 poems by 217 Australian poets launched by Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, Governor of NSW at Sydney’s Government House.

This joint venture between the University of Sydney and the Copyright Agency had stemmed from an idea by poet Dr John Tranter. It was hailed as an inventive, educational way of supporting poets and became an ongoing library to which new poets, and associated contextual material, would be added as time went on.

Above: The Arrival.

Shaun Tan working in his studio.

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LearningFieldLearningField, another landmark Copyright Agency project, began life as a brainwave that emanated from within the Copyright Agency’s board.

By 2010 David Barnett, Managing Director of Pearson and Copyright Agency board member, knew that some within the government and educational sphere had gripes with the cost of the statutory licence, having witnessed what he described as a ‘ferocious attack’ from one bureaucrat on the Copyright Agency and the licensing scheme.

Some educational organisations felt they were paying for content that should have been free to use.

In Canada, anti-copyright forces were also at play.

In 2012, the Copyright Agency witnessed the consequences of the combination of legislative changes in Canada and a Supreme Court case that changed the way educational organisations treated copyright content. The events had a dramatic and devastating impact as educational institutions opted out of licensing arrangements and publishers and other creators were hit hard financially.

The Copyright Agency’s revenue to creators relied heavily on statutory licences. Its diminishment could herald disaster financially and culturally, in terms of whether Australian voices would continue to be heard in a world dominated by digital giants like Google, Apple and Amazon.

In an attempt to help local publisher and authors influence their own future the notion of an online portal was promoted

that could potentially give teachers the flexibility to cherry-pick sections of different texts from different publishers under a single subscription. A Copyright Agency-funded study was developed to gauge on how such a scheme might work.

‘Despite all the potential reasons why we wouldn’t get this off the ground – and the fact that we’re intense competitors is a very powerful reason – we all saw that there was a bigger opportunity for us,’ David Barnett said.

Step by step, the Copyright Agency developed LearningField, creating an operator platform and trialling a subscription model where one annual fee provided all-title access.

‘That is the game-changer, it is all about choice,’ said LearningField Director Ben Heuston. ‘Choice is the thing that made it work.’

The Copyright Agency trialled it in schools in 2013. Four publishers (Cambridge, Jacaranda, Oxford and Pearson) committed to content agreements, and that September the first 14 urban and regional schools across NSW, Tasmania and Victoria signed on for 2014.

The Copyright Agency came into existence because teachers photocopy text, Ben said. ‘This is another way of connecting users of copyright with creators of copyright; another way of facilitating use of copyright material.’

LearningField was also completely new. In October 2014, the Copyright Agency’s new CEO Murray St Leger was invited to present it to the international publishing community at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

‘It’s a primary licensing vehicle that

A student from PEGS in Melbourne using LearningField.

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RightsPortalIt was not the first time the Copyright Agency had partnered with businesses to build a scheme that would generate international interest.

In September 2013, a hard-hitting national advertising campaign promoted a way of buying rights instantly online through the Copyright Agency’s RightsPortal, built in consultation with journalists and newspaper publishers attempting to deal with profound industry changes.

Newspapers had provided free advertising space to address copyright infringement and promote the RightsPortal as a way to easily obtain a licence.

‘You can go online, find out how much it would cost to reuse a newspaper article and a price [and] purchase the permission to do so. It … makes it easy and instant online, at a value-for-money price,’ said the Copyright Agency’s Director of Commercial Licensing Ross McCaul. The system has also been sold to South Africa as a potential solution for licensing news content there.

That Copyright Agency could create such innovations in-house reflected the far-reaching changes taking place within the organisation.

Improvements in sourcing dataDavid Blair, who would become Data Logistics Coordinator, joined the Copyright Agency in 2008 when hard copy records dominated and data logistics barely existed at all. Part of his original role involved bundling piles of paper into manageable packages, so that an army of cardboard boxes could travel between researchers and rights management teams.

With ever-increasing volumes of electronic records coming into the building the Copyright Agency’s processes became increasingly sophisticated, as in-house tools were developed to cope.

delivers content straight to the students – anytime, anywhere, any device,’ Murray said, describing LearningField as ‘enormously exciting’.

‘This is a world-first digital subscription model in education for core text book content [and] they want to know more.’

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Prior to 2005, when the Copyright Agency piloted the electronic schools usage survey, the organisation had no way to capture data about what was being used on computers in schools. Classification of the terms and conditions of Internet pages began the following year.

Another key change took place in 2011 with the implementation of notified payments.

‘We now invite owners of copyright to tell us the splits in works,’ said Damien Sims, Manager of Rights and Data. ‘We used to pay one person the whole sum and expect them to pay the other shareholders; now we try to take the administrative burden away from them … and pay each individual has owns rights in a work.’

By 2014, most of the work was done by automated systems with librarians concentrating on identifying rights holders in difficult cases.

The Copyright Agency employed computer specialists, actuaries, analysts and statisticians focusing on pre-modelling data to guide distributions of fees for licencees that no longer supplied the Copyright Agency with raw information - computer modelling that held indications about broader, general trends.

‘Is digital going up? Is hard copy going down? … Our database is exploding with integral rights and contractual payment information,’ Damien said.

Greater transparency of process had developed, with licensee access to survey data, continually reviewed protocols, more information in annual reports and continued compliance with the Code of Conduct for Collecting Societies.

‘We are highly scrutinised and we have to stand by the decisions we make’ said Damien who, by 2014, was casting ahead to potential improvements in how the Copyright Agency could pull in more research information from external databases. ‘I think that will be the next frontier.’ But the Copyright Agency’s copyright expertise was not limited to authors and publishers.

Resale royalty right for artistsIn 2010, the Government created Australia’s newest intellectual property right by enacting the resale royalty scheme, under which artists would

Visual Arts Manager, Judy Grady

An advertisement for the resale royalty scheme featuring artist Kamahi Djordan King.

‘COPYRIGHT AGENCY IS AN

ESSENTIAL ORGANISATION FOR WRITERS.’BLANCHE D’ALPUGET, AUTHOR AND FORMER

DIRECTOR

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receive five per cent of the sale price of eligible artworks resold for $1,000 or more.

The scheme had the potential to benefit many artists including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists who might sell their artworks for low sums of money only to see them re-trading at far higher rates.

The Copyright Agency, which had already paid out more than $20 million to artists creating visuals for everything from anatomy books to wiring diagrams, tendered to manage the scheme and in May 2010 was appointed its collecting society for a five-year term.

Judy Grady, Visual Arts Manager, joined four months later and quickly realised how much stakeholder engagement had already taken place. Many art market professionals had qualms about the scheme so the Copyright Agency’s representatives had travelled the country to ensure that artists, galleries, auction houses and dealers knew about the scheme and could meet their legal requirements.

The Resale Royalty scheme generated over $2.4 million in royalties for more than 910 artists in its first four years.

The scheme also generated more income for artists than was projected in this timeframe and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists are greatly benefitting. With 66 per cent of the artists receiving resale royalties being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, ‘It is a really good scheme,” said Bronwyn Bancroft, artist and Copyright Agency board member.

Viscopy Services AgreementOn 2 July 2012, visual arts licensing organisation Viscopy entered a services agreement with the Copyright Agency. The agency would provide management and administration of day-to-day operations to Viscopy’s members (some 11,000 by 2014) and licensees.

In 2012, Judy became head of the newly created visual arts team, responsible for both Resale Royalty and Viscopy licensing.

‘For us it’s about creating income, recognition and respect for visual artists, and the complementary nature of the licensing schemes Viscopy and Copyright Agency offer made it a good fit,’ she said. ‘Our role is to connect the users and the creators of material.’

Board director, Bronwyn Bancroft

The Copyright Agency’s Trish Adjei (left) discusses resale royalty, wills and artists’ rights with Mrs Eunice Porter from Warakurna Arts in Western Australia. Photo: Alicia Moody.

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Bronwyn Bancroft considered the partnership ‘perfect’ because of the Copyright Agency’s track record in delivery to members.

She cited the impact of appointing Patricia Adjei as Copyright Agency’s Indigenous Communications Coordinator and Legal Officer, the road trips made to connect with remote communities, and the work done educating artists on resale royalty and the importance of having a Will.

Jim Alexander also considered the Copyright Agency-Viscopy marriage ‘a wonderful opening up of possibilities’.

Judy said, ‘The association is about creating a one-stop shop…one place for customers to get all their clearances, and the process of

working with organisations as diverse as publishers, bag manufacturers, galleries and deceased estates takes expertise and time. For instance, in 2012 Viscopy managed the copyright clearances for merchandise associated with the Art Gallery of NSW’s Picasso exhibition.’

‘Artists have a very strong sense, and rightly so, around how their works are used…the companies they are prepared to be associated with, the types of products their images are used on and how that is done,’ Judy said. ‘We need to manage that process the whole way through.’

John Fries AwardBy 2014, Viscopy’s John Fries Award for emerging artists was in its fifth year. Attendees included arts identities such as MONA’s David Walsh – ‘a real coup for the artists because if you are on the radar of one of the most important men in the arts you are doing all right,’ said Visual Artist Manager Tristan Chant.

Launched in memory of former Viscopy director and Honorary Treasurer John Fries, and chaired by his daughter Kath Fries, the Award offered $10,000 to new and emerging artists from Australia and New Zealand.

It was aimed at ‘not just emerging artists but emerging art forms, experimental ways of using technology and new ways of using old technology,’ said Tristan, adding that it echoes of Copyright Agency | Viscopy’s cutting edge approach to digital challenges, ‘There’s some nice synergy going on there.’

John Fries Award curator Sebastian Goldspink discusses the finalists’ exhibition at UNSW Galleries.Photos: Tim Levy.

Visual Artists Manager, Tristan Chant

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International developmentsAcross the broader landscape, the Copyright Agency continued to make strides in the international arena, assisting ASEAN countries to develop robust, effective copyright managements systems for themselves.

‘Those systems had to be inclusive, providing benefits for everybody – local publishers, foreign publishers, local authors, foreign authors and visual artists,’ said Caroline Morgan, who in 2014, was chair of IFFRO’s Asia Pacific Committee and Legal Forum.

‘There are a number of small reproduction rights organisations within ASEAN…we’re working with them to

professionalise their organisations, build their licensing reach, providing our skills. We’re also working with Malaysian rights’ holders on developing an organisation which would mirror exactly what we do but in Malaysia.’

Licence fees are starting to flow already, ‘proof of concept, effectively’, Caroline said, listing a multitude of benefits which include potentially even playing a role in law reform.

‘I find it energising because it is so much like the early days of the Copyright Agency where you had nothing, and you had nothing to lose.’

New leadership in 2014On 5 February 2014 Murray St Leger, who had been Deputy Chief Executive Officer for a year, became the third CEO in the Copyright Agency’s history. A former managing director of McGraw-Hill Australia and APA President, he had a strong background in both commerce and publishing.

Copyright Agency | Viscopy struck Murray as ‘a complex, sophisticated, dynamic institution. The longevity of some of the key people is a testament to what this organisation stands for, which is standing up for the rights of creators, and those people are passionate,’ he said.

The central strategic directions were clear: ‘delivering greater value to members, continuing to advocate for the copyright system and respect for creators’.

‘We must listen to our customer’s needs, demonstrate and deliver value in

John Fries Award benefactor Vivienne Fries (left) with 2014 award winner Bridie Lunney (centre) viewing part of her installation, This Endless Becoming, (featuring her brother James Lunney). The other human element of the work, featuring Lily Paskas, can be seen in the image opposite.

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licensing and industry-wide solutions, while investing in both digital and regional opportunities.’

The Copyright Agency had to continue to show leadership in a culture where creators’ income rates were dropping while an entire generation of users had grown up expecting content for free. ‘I’m very interested in education and demonstrating the value of what is being used,’ Murray said. ‘As a society if we don’t get that across, if we don’t make sure people get remunerated for use of their work, there won’t be anybody doing that work.’

Viewed through the 2013-14 financial statistics, Copyright Agency | Viscopy looked healthy, employing around 85

permanent staff and 20 contractors. Copyright Agency had more than

28,000 members across the full spectrum of publishing technology (19,891 authors, 8,187 publishers, 270 author/publishers, and 27 collecting societies), while Viscopy represented 11,000 Australian and New Zealand artists, and approximately another 37,000 from overseas.

Revenue from licence fees and royalties stood at $127.0 million, with distribution payments at $103.3 million bringing the total collected and distributed to members by Copyright Agency since inception to $1.24 billion.

As Copyright Agency approached its 40th anniversary, it waited for the Federal Government’s responses to two potentially far-reaching reviews: the resale royalty scheme and the Australian Law Reform Commission Report on Copyright and the Digital Economy.

In an uncertain landscape, one thing remained clear. Technology may change but the Copyright Agency’s mission would not be altered. Asserting creators’ rights remained as critical as it had always been.

‘WE HAVE TO SHOW THOUGHT

LEADERSHIP IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY.’

CEO, MURRAY ST LEGER

Murray St Leger became Chief Executive in February 2014.

ABOUT THE AUTHORHelen O’Neill is an award-winning, internationally published journalist and the author of four books, the most recent of which is A Singular Vision: Harry Seidler.

Level 15, 233 Castlereagh St, Sydney NSW 2000 T: +61 2 9394 7600 E: info@copyright.com.au ABN 53 001 228 799

www.copyright.com.au