Knowing what is copied

Every year we ask some of our licence-holders to complete a data collection exercise. The data is important because it allows us to distribute money collected from licence-holders to the creators/copyright owners of the work that is being copied. Some of the creators we support may even be your colleagues.

This additional source of income is really important to ensure that creators here in Aotearoa New Zealand can continue to tell our stories. It also helps to support overseas creators whose work has been copied in New Zealand.

Working on a sampling survey basis, we gather copying data from a representative number of licence-holders, who are able to maintain strictly accurate records without assuming onerous and costly administrative responsibilities. The data collection process is structured to be representative of the copying conducted over the term of each licence and to account for variations in location, size and enrolment numbers amongst licence-holder groups.

In some circumstances, copying records are also obtained from licence-holders using digital technologies (this is known as eReporting). This copying data is provided to us digitally and uploaded in our systems to be processed.

Working this way follows international precedent: the majority of RRO’s use sampling surveys as the basis for licence fee distribution.

If your organisation has been selected to participate in a data collection exercise we will inform the Chief Executive, School Principal or equivalent person in your organisation. This person will be asked to designate a Data Collection contact within your organisation to manage the process.

It is a requirement in our licensing agreements that licence-holders take part in a data collection process (for most licence-holders this occurs less than once every five years).

The data collection process takes place electronically using a digital and/or hard copy spreadsheet template that we supply. The spreadsheet is supplied at the beginning of the process and supporting information and instructions are supplied along with it.

The spreadsheet is intended to be distributed to staff to complete their part of the exercise; alternatively it can be completed by the Data Collection contact with staff providing their input individually. While each organisation may decide how best to collect the data, the Data Collection contact is responsible for ensuring that it is complete, accurate, and comprehensive.

Once the process has been completed, the spreadsheet containing the data will be submitted to Copyright Licensing and processed by our Research and Data Entry team.

Once your data is supplied to us (along with data from other participating organisations), it is processed by our in-house team. This can involve researching and finding the correct owner of the work that has been copied, so it's important to include all the information you can.

Once processed, financial distribution is now possible to the authors and creators whose works are shown to be copied.

At the completion of the data collection, we'll share some information on the outcome of the process with the Data Collection contact who will be encouraged to share with the rest of their team. We do this so everyone can see the contribution they have made to New Zealand authors and creators.

The data collection process isn't meant to be difficult or time-consuming and we want to do all we can to make it easy for our licence-holders. We will supply free resources to support your data collection process including guidance collateral and posters. We can also provide copyright workshops for staff, please get in touch with us to discuss.

Some of our copyright licences permit data collection to take place through eReporting. This involves data collection using specialised software from which data is extracted by the licence-holder and then electronically supplied to us on a regular basis.

All New Zealand Universities and some ITPs carry out eReporting. If you’d like to learn more about how eReporting works and whether it's suitable for your organisation, please contact the Contracts and Policy Manager.