Any institution, organisation or business concern needing to make photocopies in multiples should contact DALRO for details of which method of licensing is best suited to their needs. Below are a few of the questions that have been directed at DALRO about transactional and blanket licensing:

Where can I get a licence to photocopy a whole book?
It must be stressed that no RRO may allow the reproduction of whole books, either by a transactional licence or under a blanket licence. Reproducing a whole book as a substitute for buying it is unlawful and its detrimental effect on creativity - scholarship, research, writing and publishing - cannot be underestimated. The purpose of licensing is to allow numbers of students and of professional employees, who would in any case not have bought the published work, to lawfully gain access to a photocopied extract from it.

Does this apply even if the book is out of print?
If the book is out of print and unavailable, DALRO will approach the publisher to clear the permission transactionally.

Does DALRO own copyright in the works which it licenses?
DALRO doesn’t own the copyrights at all. It is mandated by the rights holders (authors and publishers) to administer their reprographic reproduction rights. DALRO receives these mandates in three ways:

• by direct assignment from the author or publisher;
• through an association such as the Publishers Association of South Africa (PASA) which has already collected in the mandates of its individual members and passes them on to DALRO through a contractual arrangement;
• through its bilateral agreements with RROs in other parts of the world;
  

How extensive is DALRO’s repertoire?
DALRO is able to license the reprographic reproduction of the great majority of works published in South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zimbabwe.

What happens to the licensing fees collected?
After deducting an administrative fee, DALRO distributes royalties to the authors and publishers whose works have been copied. DALRO is not a profit-making organisation.

Does DALRO license ‘electronic rights’?
Despite the rapidly increasing use of all kinds of digital media, photocopying remains, even in the industrialised nations, the primary means of access to published information when the published work itself cannot be acquired for various reasons. For instance, a survey conducted in Norway in 1998 indicated that university and college students each acquired over 900 pages of photocopied material annually.

It would be unwise, however, to ignore the explosion of digital uses which are creating challenges for both rights’ owners and users.

Material appearing on the Internet is protected in South African law as a literary work, and just as one may not freely reproduce a literary work, so one may not freely reproduce from the Internet. In the wake of the World Copyright Treaty (WCT) adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organisation at the end of 1996, South Africa, as a signatory to the WCT, will in time be amending its copyright law to take account of digital technology and uses. Rights' holders believe that ‘digital is different’ and that a new law is necessary both to protect intellectual property in the age of electronic technology and to provide for a system of licensing to cater for users’ needs.

DALRO’s photocopying licences do not yet authorise digital use or storage beyond the “transient electronic copy” which is a paper-to-paper copy enabled by digital technology; however, in accordance with international trends, and in concurrence with similar efforts by other RROs, DALRO is currently updating its mandates with local publishers to include the licensing of digital reproduction.  As the decision to allow DALRO to license the digital reproduction of their works lies with individual publishers, not all publishers may choose to allow their works to be digitally reproduced.

DALRO is also negotiating the extension of its current bilateral agreements with other RROs for the inclusion of digital reproduction licensing of foreign repertoires.

Will DALRO prosecute copyright infringers?
DALRO has always subscribed to the view that copyright correctness should be fostered through persuasion rather than litigation, and we believe in nurturing a copyright-compliant society which respects intellectual property. However, if all efforts failed to persuade a user to obtain a licence for the reproduction of a copyright work entrusted to its custody, DALRO would have no option but to protect and defend the rights of its constituents.

With easy and cheap access to published works through licensing, there can be no excuse for copyright infringement. Theft of intellectual property is not only against the law, but it is also morally reprehensible and socially unacceptable.