We are the Picture Industry Collecting Society for Effective Licensing (PICSEL), a not-for-profit Collective Management Organisation (CMO, commonly called a collecting society) for Visual Artists.
Established by Rightsholders For Rightsholders in 2016, PICSEL provides representation for visual artists in the field of secondary rights.
We ensure that rightsholders receive payment through collective licensing when work is copied and where direct licensing is not practical. We have distributed over £6 million to our members since 2016.
We receive money from a variety of copyright licensing bodies in the UK and overseas that permit copying under license. We then distribute it to our members after deducting a 15% administrative fee.
Our membership includes over 10,000 rightsholders whose works — published in books, magazines, journals, and TV broadcasts in the UK — are subject to secondary licensing.
In addition, we oversee the mandated rights of our members by the collective licensing of these rights through various licensing organisations. This involves advocating for their interests during the creation and execution of collective licenses.
Collective Licensing allows for the legal copying (or use) of published works. A blanket license is a simple and cost-effective solution that permits users to copy from a wide array of works in exchange for a licensing fee. Royalties from the fees are distributed to the rightsholders.
Collective Licensing is managed by Collecting Societies (common term for a Collective Management Organisation or CMO). Collecting Societies are granted authority from their members to ensure that the licensing body has the right to permit the copying of their works under specific licences. This warranty guarantees that the licence holder adheres to copyright regulations. CMOs exist for all types of creators.
The IPO (Intellectual Property Office) is the regulator under law for collective licensing in the UK. A CMO is required by law to publish on its website each year an audited Annual Transparency Report (ATR) which outlines its activities, compliance and finances for the year.
Insert link to IPO homepage https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office
Secondary Rights apply when a third party makes use of your images by reproducing part of the original publication that was licensed under your primary licence.
Examples include teachers or students copying excerpts for coursework, or businesses making copies for internal reference or research. These are considered secondary uses.
Primary rights refer to the permissions granted for the initial use of you images, outlined in the “primary license.”
Secondary rights serve as a significant revenue stream for both creators and publishers. Safeguarding these rights from potential exploitation is as important as defending your moral rights.
Ensure that you secure your rights by being fully aware of the terms outlined in any licensing agreements. Exercise caution, especially as publishers increasingly seek to include AI training rights in contracts, sometimes applied retrospectively.
A blanket licence, obtained from licensing bodies like the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), allows institutions and businesses to legally copy and use works without the need for individual permissions.
A blanket license permits the licensee to use the entire catalogue managed by the licensing body for specific purposes within a set time frame.
For example, a teacher wishes to produce coursework for their class and copies a chapter of an illustrated book. It would be impossible to clear these copying rights with all the rightsholders individually, and the blanket license allows that copying to take place legally without copyright being infringed.
There are several entities in the UK and overseas that PICSEL works with that are under the regulation of the IPO (Intellectual Property Office).
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) is the largest licensing organisation in the UK, overseeing the licensing of publications and associated websites.
The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) provides licences to businesses and media monitoring organisations (MMOs) on behalf of Publishers Licensing Services (PLS) for copying magazines and newspapers. MMOs were once referred to as clipping agencies in the past.
The Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licence allows schools, colleges, and universities to utilise TV and radio broadcasts for educational purposes.
Additionally, revenue is generated through bilateral agreements with international collecting societies and licensing organisations where UK publications have been copied in these territories.
PICSEL is a founding member of the CMO, the Audiovisual Licensing Alliance (AVLA), which licenses the making available to the public of broadcast television in public spaces such as hotels, bars, gyms and offices.
The IPO give details of recognised UK CMOs on their website.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/licensing-bodies-and-collective-management-organisations
Secondary licences permit restricted copying and usage of UK-published books, magazines, journals, and associated websites, as well as US university press publications and TV broadcasts in the UK, Republic of Ireland and other territories.
Typically, the copying limits allow for one chapter from a book and one article from a periodical. Copies may only be utilised as teaching aids, for internal presentations, and for reference purposes. The use of any copies is limited to internal purposes, and images cannot be used independently. Commercial applications, such as public-facing websites, social media, or published materials, are not allowed.
Increasingly the use of published content with AI in the workplace and classroom, as prompts or for analysis, is being licensed. As with published or broadcast works the licenses prohibit the use of the works for commercial purposes.
Secondary Licences are not legally required in the UK. Businesses or organisations who want to guarantee copyright compliance secure a Secondary Use Licence.
Nearly 100% of educational institutions acquire a licence in the UK. The Department for Education (DfE) holds a licence which covers all state schools. Universities and private schools obtain licences through their respective trade bodies. Other private schools and language schools are individually licensed by the CLA and ERA.
Almost all central and local government entities, including the NHS, hold licences. The legal, financial services, and pharmaceutical sectors are strong advocates of copyright, and various other business sectors also maintain compliance through these licences.
Instances of copying by licence holders are recorded using a range of data collection techniques, and as technology advances, the data becomes more plentiful and accurate.
Given that licences are voluntary, it is crucial that any process for providing information by licence holders is not punitive. For this reason, a range of collection techniques appropriate for those industries have been developed, along with a growing use of technology.
Site visits, surveys, questionnaires and use of technology solutions like PaperCut improve data and understanding of licensee behaviour. For example, do they still use photocopiers? The answer is yes they do use photocopiers and increasingly so? What do they copy? Is it text and/or images? How often, in what volume etc.?
The CLA maintains a 5-year data pool and allocates licence revenue to the titles within it. When you submit a claim through PICSEL, it is matched against this data pool and royalties are allocated accordingly.
If a title is represented it qualifies for royalty allocation. The CLA database currently contains 17 million titles.
Not all titles are represented by CLA, and not every instance of copying can be recorded. Therefore, part of any distribution to rightsholders will cover titles not in the CLA repertoires, as they are available to be copied, and remuneration should follow.
Yes, you can opt out of secondary licensing by notifying the relevant licensing body or collecting society.
CLA maintains a list of opted out works. But be aware that this alone will not prevent your work being copied. You have made it known that permission to copy has not been granted, but it is now up to you to enforce any infringement.
You are eligible to claim if you have had your work reproduced in any UK published book, magazine, journal or used in UK TV broadcasts.
Each year you can claim for every book, magazine or journal ever published that contains your work. You simply add new uses to your previous year’s claim.
For TV it is restricted to the broadcast in the year of your claim only even if it is a repeat from a previous year’s initial broadcast. It is also restricted to certain channels which are detailed in the claim form.
You must claim through a collecting society that it is a member of the licensing body such as PICSEL. You cannot claim directly through a licensing body like CLA.
No, you cannot claim for the same category of rights from multiple CMOs.
The exclusivity arises from the mandate you grant to the CMO, which warrants that it has the authority to grant rights in your work to the licensing body, thus ensuring that the licence holder is copyright compliant. This arrangement would be ineffective if multiple CMOs held a mandate from you, as one CMO could grant rights while another might not.
This also prevents so-called double dipping, where the same rights are claimed for more than once.
Yes, but you cannot claim for the same uses as this would be seen as double dipping. You cannot be paid twice for the same use.
The more data you provide, the greater the royalty check to you.
To match your data in the data pool, the publication title and the ISSN (magazines) or ISBN (books) is the bare minimum required. If you know the year, publisher, and title of the publication, you can locate all of these with ease. As a matter of course, we would advise you to get these details when licensing your photos.
To make use of PICSEL-id you will also need to include your image reference. This makes it possible for PICSEL-id to link directly to your image online.
This is dependent on a number of variables, including the quantity and quality of your data, the number of other claimants for the same title, and how often the title has been copied.
Allowing for the caveat above regarding data, in 2020 individual images earned from £0.01 to £2,300 and an individual rightsholder received between our minimum of £25 and the top end of £10,000.
PICSEL makes every effort to distribute the full allocation, minus our administrative charge. While not mandated by law, PICSEL's distribution strategy tries to ensure revenues follow rights wherever possible. This strategy was decided upon by PICSEL members.
A global network of licensing bodies provides visual artists with a share of royalties collected in the UK, and overseas, from various secondary licensing schemes. Through our membership of the CLA, Copyright Licensing Agency, we can distribute revenue from their licenses due to visual artists. They license all state schools, private schools, and language schools to copy a portion of books and magazine for classwork. Businesses and Government Departments are similarly licensed. Through PLS, Publishers’ Licensing Services, we also distribute a share of visual artists revenue they raise from the copying of magazines contracted to them. Through our membership of ERA, Educational Recording Agency, we distribute a share of the revenue due from their licensing of educational establishments. These licenses enable schools , colleges and universities to make educational use of recordings of TV and Radio broadcasts. Further revenue comes from overseas CMOs for both publications and TV where your works have been copied.
Our members reflect the broad range of image licensing rightsholders and their representatives reflected in the structure of the Board of Directors. We are owned and run by our members, who elect the Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting. The Board is made up of representatives from large, medium and small photo agencies, as well as individual photographers and independent non-executive Directors in accordance with our Articles of Association. As a CMS we are regulated by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) under the Collective Management of Copyrights (EU Directive) Regulations 2016, commonly known as “The CRM Regulations”.
We are members of several trade bodies and associations, both national and international organisations that distribute royalties and work to safeguard copyright globally. As a member of CLA (Copyright Licensing Agency) we receive a share of the visual arts allocation for distribution to our members and have observer status on their Board. As a member of ERA (Educational Recording Agency) we are entitled to a share of the visual arts allocation and a directors seat on the Board. As a member of IFFRO (International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations) we are part of a global network of CMOs working to protect and enable easy legal access to copyright material. As a member of BCC (British Copyright Council) we are part of an effective, authoritative and representative voice of the creative community. As a member of BAPLA we work to educate the industry about collective licensing and support their work in the protection of copyright. As a member of CEPIC we reach out further, to their international membership and the global community of image licensors that attends their annual Congress.